Autistic individuals often face traumatic encounters with first responders due to a lack of understanding and training on autism-specific behaviors. Research shows that a significant percentage of autistic youth have negative interactions with police, leading to fears among autistic individuals and their caregivers. Current de-escalation protocols based on behavioral science are effective but not widely accessible or integrated into first responder training.

Although the adoption of the American with Disabilities Act (ADA) shifted the paradigm for physical accessibility, many aspects of the built environment are still not easy or satisfying for people who use wheelchairs. This is mainly due to the practice of the building industry, i.e., the compliance of those guidelines mainly focuses on design and construction requirements whereas the actual experience of wheelchair users is not fully investigated after the construction phase.

Popular destinations, such as national parks, and their gateway communities are co-dependent, complex systems. The remote and fragile economies are exposed to compounding stressors, such as disasters, peak visit seasons, and infrastructure and workforce capacity limitations. Future long-term resiliency planning is critical; however, existing efforts have been siloed, non-comprehensive, and limited to short planning horizons.

This project will provide support to the third round of NSF’s Civic Innovation Challenge (“CIVIC 3.0”) program, a “research and action” competition driven by community priorities. MetroLab will provide the NSF with support to grow CIVIC’s impact, and provide outreach, capacity building, and programming, while elevating this unique program to the greater civic research ecosystem. MetroLab’s work will foster a Community of Practice, enabling and elevating the work of the teams receiving CIVIC awards.

Developing neighborhood connectivity, trust, and belonging is essential for the mental health of young people. Social connections help mitigate the stressors young people face. Technologies that build community engagement and include information of public and local interest, that is, civic technologies, have shown promise for improving social connections. Yet existing tools often fail to sustain public interest or help the public intuitively navigate the complex data displayed, and also often lack transparency.

On September 27, 2024, Hurricane Helene brought historic rainfall and related floods and landslides to Western North Carolina (NC), causing over 100 deaths, destroying or damaging tens of thousands of homes, and costing over $50 billion. The aim of this project is to collect hyper-local, individual experience data on the response and recovery efforts to Hurricane Helene in Western North Carolina to synthesize lessons learned and to better understand how communities with high risk of inland flooding can increase resilience to better prepare for future disasters.