Community resilience is frequently defined as the ability of a community to prepare, respond, and recover from natural and human-caused hazards. Preparedness is a vital aspect of community resilience, but our existing frameworks and emergency guidelines generally focus on response, rather than seeking to understand the connection between events and preparing for subsequent hazards. The majority of disasters involve a chain of events occurring in a cascading manner.

Farmers in the United States (US) Corn Belt produce ~30% of the world’s corn and soybean, which depends on the use of fertilizers containing both nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P). However, due to a lack of consistent and reliable information, these farmers tend to over-apply fertilizer. This practice directly affects farmers, as they are paying higher fertilizer costs than necessary, and negatively impacts environmental sustainability. Yet, farmers’ perceptions of nutrient management challenges vary widely as does their willingness to adopt novel nutrient management approaches.

Food access is an unfortunate but very real problem for the many Americans that live in food deserts where the combination of distance to full service supermarkets and access to transportation makes healthy, affordable food less attainable. Today's technological innovations have the potential to address this problem, however they must be adapted to apply to the challenging socio-economic conditions of these communities.

Irrigation plays an important role for agricultural sustainability in U.S. and around the globe. In particular, the agricultural economy in the state of Nebraska, the largest U.S. state in terms of irrigated area, highly relies on irrigation in the growing season. With insufficient precipitation that has never met the demand for crop growth, the rural areas in Nebraska faces a central challenge to best utilize limited underground water in the Ogallala Aquifer for irrigation to sustain the growth of economy in the state.

Information and communication technologies allow individuals to apply for benefits like health care and housing, to have groceries delivered to their homes, to schedule/attend healthcare appointments, and to apply for employment. However, digital inequalities in terms of access, use, and self-efficacy reflect offline socioeconomic inequalities and pose a serious threat to today's increasingly tech-reliant society.