Challenge
How can open innovation support communities as they work to rebuild and improve resilience after a natural disaster?
Background
In September 2017, Hurricane María made landfall in Puerto Rico. The Category 5 hurricane devastated the island and was ultimately rated the most destructive natural disaster in the history of Puerto Rico with an estimated $94 billion in damages.
Post María and post-pandemic, an ambitious government implemented a multi-sectoral resilience and rebuilding plan. To date, over $24 billion in investment in recovery projects has been rolled out. However, before the island could fully recover, it was struck again by a devastating hurricane. This time, in October 2022, Hurricane Fiona made landfall. Yet again critical infrastructure— emergency services, power, water, and communications systems, were all critically damaged or destroyed.
Despite the government’s best efforts to rebuild, everyone in Puerto Rico has been affected by regular power outages, which hinder work done to rebuild and regain socio-economic stability. Each region experiences unique challenges and opportunities to remedy these challenges. In this project, we wanted to support local knowledge with open data sets to pair renewable energy and community leaders to partner for renewable solutions in their rebuilding efforts to safeguard the future.
Project Phases
The PWR Project is an initiative by Orange Sparkle Ball (OSB) and Seven25 for the U.S. Census Bureau Opportunity Project (TOP) sprint. It is focused on energy resilience for island communities. We developed the Power (PWR) Project, an open innovation framework and digital tool that uses open data to match communities with energy resilience technology and community partners to facilitate implementation. Based on vulnerability and opportunity data, the PWR framework is designed to guide communities through the steps required to pilot energy resilience technologies that best fit their community needs.
The PWR Project helps communities identify their own renewable energy vulnerabilities and opportunities by learning how to access open data sets to make decisions about which solution(s) would best suit their needs.
The proposal has three phases: discover, identify, and protect. In the first phase, “discover”, the PWR Dashboard and toolkit are used by community partners to help understand their vulnerability and need. During the second phase, "identify," several renewable energy solutions are evaluated. For the third and final phase, “connect”, community partners and technologies will be connected to improve the community’s capacity to implement solutions locally.
Final Deliverables
As of Spring 2023, the PWR project is in ongoing development. As such, OSB and partners are currently workshopping the complete set of final deliverables. One of the key deliverables is the PWR Dashboard. This open-data dashboard will allow community leaders to see vulnerabilities, explore data points and key indicators, and develop a plan to best meet their specific energy challenges. Please stay tuned for more updates.
OSB Insights
Integrating stakeholders at every step is vital. During this project, we have had the opportunity to receive stakeholder feedback. The first avenue for feedback was through community listening sessions with CBOs and nonprofits. This feedback has been incorporated into the development of the deliverables for this project, including the dashboard. This has served as a reminder that having ongoing touchpoints with the community is essential.
The second avenue for feedback has been regular meetings with our partners from all organizations. They have been vital in facilitating cross-team collaboration. Keeping everyone in the loop when it comes to analyzing progress and implementing change has helped the PWR project reach its full potential.
Iteration is key! At OSB, iteration is a strategic decision meant to ensure that our pilot development process produces real-world solutions. This, coupled with the thoughtful integration of community perspectives, is the key to ensuring long-term buy-in and sustainability.
Key Takeaway for Your Organization
The world is constantly brimming with emergent technologies and along with the staggering amount of data we have, it can all feel overwhelming. Yet, turning that data into actionable insights and making sure technologies are implemented with the needed context to ensure their long-term use can be the most difficult challenge in business. Our generalist nature is a key strength in combatting that challenge. We can transfer learnings across sectors to help successfully pilot technologies across all contexts and lead implementations in any industry while gleaning actionable insights from the data being generated. We make sure all stakeholders, from community members to C-suite executives, understand the value being derived and are prepared to reap long-term rewards from best fit technologies.
