RETRACE Project Team Meeting - Trondheim, Norway
Drs. Guangqing Chi and Erika Gavenus joined other members of the RETRACE project in Trondheim, Norway for our second annual Team Meeting. The RETRACE project seeks to work with communities of the Arctic and Pacific Regions to integrate local, intrinsic, and cultural resilience into decision-support tools. Funded through the Belmont Forum, the international consortium includes researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, the University of Versailles Saint-Quentin, and Indiana University. We are working with communities across three sites: Northern Norway, Marquesas Islands, and the Copper River Region of Alaska. We were grateful for the opportunity to gather in-person to learn from each other, to share our progress, and to discuss what comes next.
During the first day students and postdocs who are working closely with communities at each of the three study sites shared initial findings and impressions. The updates provided a lot to think about regarding common stories of resilience across diverse sites and how this project can support and hold-up actions communities are already undertaking.
Erika was able to share some insights from research activities that took place over the summer, including interviews and household surveys with residents of the Copper River Region.
Day two took us on a field trip to the Fosen Region to visit a recently developed Windfarm. The visit and conversations introduced us to the complexities of decisions facing local leadership and the types of information that could be useful for them in making such decisions.
The third, and final day, we returned to the campus of NTNU to make plans for the remainder of the project. This included a workshop led by Drs. Guangqing Chi and Yining Feng (who joined remotely) on the possibility of incorporating Big Data into the project.
Many thanks to the team at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology for hosting this meeting and making it such an enriching experience. We are looking forward to hosting the team next year.