Communicating with Coastal Decision-Makers and Environmental Educators via Sea Level Rise Decision-Support Tools

Abstract

Communicating about environmental risks requires understanding and addressing stakeholder needs, perspectives, and anticipated uses for communication products and decision-support tools. This paper demonstrates how long-term dialogue between scientists and stakeholders can be facilitated by repeated stakeholder focus groups. We describe a dialogic process for developing science-based decision-support tools as part of a larger sea level rise research project in the Gulf of Mexico. We demonstrate how focus groups can be used effectively in tool development, discuss how stakeholders plan to use tools for decision-making and broader public outreach, and describe features that stakeholders perceive would make products more usable.