The CCAT (Coastal Communities Adapting Together) project is recruiting a part-time intern with experience in GIS and local government open data portals e.g. Fingal Open Data, Lle Geo-Portal for a 3 month period.
The project aims to support coastal communities in understanding climate change and how they can adapt together. The Irish Sea and its coastal communities are directly impacted by climate change and this project aims to respond by helping to build resilience (adaptive capacity to change); facilitate marine and climate citizenship; and realise the potential of the Irish Sea region. The project will do this by (re)connecting coastal communities with their place, their dynamic coastal systems and our changing climate. The CCAT project will build capacity to adapt to these changes through citizen engagement in activities such as participatory mapping, geodesign workshops, GeoGames clubs, interactive teaching resources and knowledge exchange events.
The project is part-funded by the European Regional Development Fund through the Ireland Wales Programme and will run from 2019 to 2022. The project will engage with communities in Fingal in Ireland and Pembrokeshire in Wales. The Irish partners are Fingal County Council, University College Dublin, University College Cork/MaREI (Marine and Renewable Energy Research, Development and Innovation Centre) and the Welsh partners are Cardiff University, Pembrokeshire Coastal Forum and the Port of Milford Haven.
Job description
The internship is part-time position for 14 hours a week (2 days approx.) and will focus on the creation of the first three models of the Geodesign Framework (Steinitz, 2012), which represent the knowledge building effort to support the design of informed and sustainable alternatives in a geodesign study. Geodesign is an emergent participatory design approach that involves the co-design of negotiated solutions for complex, large scale, multi-stakeholder, multi-system, multi-issue environmental and spatial challenges where there may be conflicting perspectives. It is a fluid, dynamic, collaborative and creative process that exploits new opportunities presented by digital technologies. The 6-step geodesign framework process involves data and map preparation and a workshop. This novel planning approach and the related set of digital tools are increasingly used by communities and local authorities as a way to collaboratively plan for the future.
The main tasks will be:
- Building a GIS project supplementing Authoritative Geographic Information (e.g., Fingal Open Data, Lle Geo-Portal) with User-Generated Contents (e.g., Open Street Map, Flickr, participatory mapping projects, questionnaires) to describe ongoing territorial dynamics in the study area, identify users’ interests and needs and define the main local development trajectories/territorial sub-systems;
- Applying, in a GIS environment, well-established spatial multi-criteria overlay techniques and combinatorial analysis to the multi-source spatial data previously collected. The result of this process is a set of evaluation maps identifying locations of interest or not appropriate areas for future development strategies in respect to a particular territorial sub-system (e.g., tourism, green infrastructure, etc).
- Supporting the organisation of geodesign workshops involving the local community in the CCAT study areas.
- Supporting the creation of a compendium of best practice in geodesign as a valuable methodology for coastal management. The International Geodesign Collaboration (IGC) past projects will be analysed to identify those case studies dealing with climate change adaptation in coastal areas.
The intern will gain valuable experience in the following areas:
- User-Generated Content opportunities in (geo)design processes
- Land Suitability Analysis and Combinatorial Analysis based on multiple criteria
- Geodesign approach and techniques
A stipend of €1,000 per month will be paid.
Applications are now closed for this internship.
