RII Track-1: Change Hawaii: Harnessing the Data Revolution for Island Resilience

The Change Hawaii: Harnessing the Data Revolution for Island Resilience [Change(HI)] project aims to develop the appropriate tools and workforce in Hawaii to study and understand the existential threat of climate change on the state. The diverse and complex climate and geography of Hawaii presents unique challenges to measure and gather reliable data to properly monitor weather-related events.

These events have been enhanced in frequency and intensity due to the accelerated change in climate. While data at a larger scale is currently available, there is lack of sufficient downscaled products in Hawaii to facilitate modeling of climate impacts, alternative energy planning, and improvement of present-day weather forecasts. Climate science depends on data science, analytics, and visualization to close data gaps, and to develop actionable science and models which in turn will support Hawaii’s transition to a data-driven, “smart” economy.

Change(HI) is committed to producing actionable science resulting from data/climate interdisciplinary research. At the same time, the project seeks to train a workforce in computational and climate science that would help diversify and regenerate the Hawaiian economy, which is dependent on tourism. Change(HI) will consolidate participants from four Hawaii's higher education institutions: University of Hawaii Manoa, University of Hawaii Hilo, University of Hawaii West Oahu, and Chaminade University.

The project will establish multi-campus and multidisciplinary teams in areas such as data science, climate science, cyberinfrastructure, education, and workforce development. Change(HI) will position Hawaii to “harness the data revolution” to confront climate change and support the state’s economic diversification.

Hawaii is currently considered underserved in climate analysis products because national analyses and monitoring networks are often restricted, resulting in data gaps and information scarcity for decision making in Hawaii. In addition, the diverse topography of the islands as well as the dynamic climate make it difficult to obtain the high-resolution data needed to obtain reliable outcomes from different predicting models.

The Change Hawaii: Harnessing the Data Revolution for Island Resilience [Change(HI)] project proposes to obtain the necessary data by using current and new sensors and generating the proper downscaling climate products. The data will be easily accessible for the various stakeholders through a data portal that is currently operational and will be upgraded to handle the new climate information.

Change(HI) will focus on identifying critical gaps that are not duplicative of ongoing and highly funded efforts in areas such as seawater inundation, coastal ecology, coral resilience, and storms. The research plan is divided into four focused themes: 1) monitoring, visualizing and communicating change; 2) predicting and simulating regional climate change; 3) ecohydrology of change; 4) characterizing land-use change tradeoffs.

Change(HI) will deliver fundamental and actionable advances in the science of climate change for Hawaii, including data products, collection strategies, and analysis tools that will be applicable to other Pacific islands. The project includes recruitment and inclusion strategies that will increase participation of groups under-represented in STEM and computational disciplines such as data science, promote indigenous participation, and promote community co-production and agency in data science.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.