solutions journalism

After a half-year intermission, on Friday, Nov. 13, the University of Pittsburgh’s Mellon-Sawyer Seminar Information Ecosystems: Creating Data (and Absence) from the Quantitative to the Digital Age welcomed Melissa L. Finucane, senior social and behavioral scientist at the RAND Corporation in Pittsburgh. With a portfolio of work that includes studying human reaction to climate change and other disasters, such as the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Finucane is interested in how people perceive risk, and her discussion of “use-inspired science” in that context seemed especially relevant amid the Covid-19 pandemic. Finucane helped the participants of the Sawyer Seminar, who are faculty and students at the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie-Mellon University, to rethink the purpose of data’s creation. In this case, Finucane is interested in use-inspired science, which encourages input from communities and stakeholders when formulating research questions. Orienting research toward use-inspired science, Finucane explained, comes with thinking through research questions and outputs that can provide help to a specific population, whether that it’s in a context of policymaking or in responding to the needs of a community affected by disaster. Finucane’s work with the Consortium for Resilient Gulf Communities (CRGC) on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill fits that bill. The idea behind the CRGC is to find ways to build community resilience in the areas affected by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The consortium’s work is broken up into four interconnected activities: 1) respond to issues identified within the community; 2) support the community by engaging in dialogue and education; 3) generate data and ideas to Read More