Modeling Community Trust: A Collaborative Approach to Scoping Water Forecasting Needs and NOAA Product Use in Indigenous Communities of Northeast Oklahoma

This project is a collaborative effort between the University of Alabama, the National Tribal Geographic Information Support Center (Tribal GIS), University of Vermont, CUAHSI, Global Resilience Institute (GRI) at Northeastern University, and University of Kansas. It responds to the CIROH Request for White Papers for FY23 Funding Opportunity under the Decision Support and Community Resilience Research Theme.

The proposed project has 3 phases:

1. Establish effective communication strategies and relationships with tribal communities in the Northeast Oklahoma region to build decision making capacity and understanding around Indigenous perspectives of water and flood forecasting needs and products.
2. Explore new ways to work within the Indigenous community research space that can be exported into NOAA operations—as these communities require different ontological positioning and cross-cultural science communication techniques not currently employed by CIROH.
3. Co-develop actionable hydrologic decision-making pathways, and support social and governance, “ cultural pathways” with defined next steps toward NOAA product refinement and development.

Supporting CIROH

This project aids CIROH in reaching their goals by:

• Increasing the usability of hydroclimatic forecasts for a wider range of end users not previously engaged.
• Contributing to equitable tribal-centered hydrological model development, including more realistic and decision-relevant representations of regulated systems in the NWM.
• Better understanding the specific needs and concerns of Indigenous users in various policy and organizational settings.
• Providing individuals, tribal communities, and tribal governments with the required knowledge and greater capacity to adjust to rapidly changing weather worlds
• Ultimately, lessening or mitigating economic and tribal community losses given weather, seasonal climate, hazard, and water-related impacts through the operationalization of more culturally relevant NOAA data products that can be exported to larger Indigenous communities across the nation.