Problem

The U.S. Forest Service's Northern Institute of Applied Climate Science (NIACS) needed a way to extend and amplify delivery of its Adaptation Workbook to resource managers. The program's materials and workshops were tremendously successful but needed a way to reach a wider, more diverse audience with the information and tools to develop climate adaptation plans for forests, agriculture and urban forests.

Solution

AdaptationWorkbook.org - a climate change tool for land management and conservation

DJ Case web developers strategized with the NIACS team to structure a self-guided, online decision support and planning application that offers resource managers a structured, intuitive process for considering climate impacts and how to adapt based on their own individual objectives.

The collaborative NIACS/DJ Case team employed lean startup, agile methodology to validate and invalidate hypotheses about data structures, user interfaces and interactions, and design.

The core workbook functionality utilizes Drupal and AngularJS for a single page application (SPA), desktop-software-like interface for users to produce a customized and detailed adaptation plan.

AdaptationWorkbook.org is a structured process to consider the potential effects of climate change on forest, urban and agricultural ecosystems and design management and conservation actions that can help prepare for changing conditions. The process accommodates a wide variety of geographic locations, scales, forest types, management goals, and ownership types. It provides users with climate impact statements specific to their region. The application prompts users to interpret, evaluate, and comment on how large-scale regional impacts will affect their local area and management objectives.

Process

  • Lean Startup
  • Agile

Code

  • Drupal
  • AnglularJS
  • XML
  • Bootstrap