Drought Interfaces

About

The Wright-Ingraham Institute invited us to propose a tool for drought in the Colorado River Basin. Treating the problem through the lens of domain-driven design, research into complex natural forces and political interests that shapes water in the region -- legal, economic, cultural, and ecological -- disparate systems were unpacked and integrated into a model demonstrating how water has been shaped through the confluence of natural forces and political interests.

The problem approached water scarcity by thoughtfully considering the process of abstraction. As different stakeholders were interviewed to enrich the domain understanding of the problem, the meaning behind water scarcity shifted with the their time horizons of interests: while water scarcity was conceived as an intermittent problem of drought to users, frequent droughts were part of an ongoing pattern of aridification and consequence of climate change to experts. By normalizing both the underlying data and its interpretative positions, the tool became piece of socio-technical infrastructure representative of the socio-technical problem of water scarcity, accounting rigorously for existing historical and existing conditions to construct a surface for testing different scenarios for allocating of water and water rights across the seven states who must collaborate in its management.

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Role

I led research and concepting for the project. Through the development of a research plan with mixed historical, systems, user, and data design research methods, I facilitated conversations with collaborators through dynamic prototyping and continuously checked viability by sourcing and processing geospatial and dam data. I conducted literature reviews on the basin and water budgeting to as well as semi-structured interviews with municipal city planners, a federal Bureau of Reclamation director, lawyers, farmers, and subject matter experts / academics to enrich the conceptual development of the interface.

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Collaborator

The Wright-Ingraham Institute

Starting with the paper written by The Wright-Ingraham Institute's research arm, StudyTank, as a driver, the domain of drought was initially conceived as the difference between allocated and actual water availability in the region.

The paper itself was an analysis of the insufficiencies of Colorado River Compact for water management.

These two documents and its positions undergirded the production of the interface.

Systems are large and nebulous. The first phase focused on setting the groundwork for the system for scoping downstream. The paper was deliberately used as boundary for the system. Gaps between concepts were identified for further research. Concepts were both structured and integrated into a rough system model.

The goal during this phase was to work from the domain all the way down to the data through the process of decomposition, and to develop through conversation a common understanding of the system. Diagrams facilitated these conversations and areas of interests were flagged for additional research.

Conceptual System View

Major concepts and research questions / areas in relation to water rights were identified for further research.

Logical Systems View

The domain concepts were translated into data and structured into areas of visualization. These venn diagrams transformed with each pass of looking at the same concepts through lenses of domain, visualization, and data to translate the domain concepts into data sources in an integrated manner.

Technical Systems View

Once data sources were identified, identifying them technically required another pass at decomposition. At this level, the various forms of water were identified and assessed for sourcing feasibility. Dams, reservoirs / lakes, and rivers were identified as the most feasible due to public availability.

Cultural Systems View

Conflicts around water center around social questions of culture as much as they center around technical questions of resource management. The ways that water has been managed represents a particular worldview. These different cultural lenses needed to be accounted for. In the case of water, the boundaries of indigenous tribes and how they intersect with federal and state geographies was brought in to represent the needs of different stakeholders. Conversations were had early on about the inclusion of all stakeholders.

Once the domain model was developed conceptually, logically, and technically, the process of visualization served to integrate and surface additional concepts and gaps.

The goal of visualization was not to duplicate the domain model in representational form but to focus on understanding the relational dynamics and flows between concepts that would otherwise pose a cognitive burden textually and diagrammatically.

In other words, these visualizations were a first pass at understanding how things moved.

As a part of this second pass translating static domain models into a dynamical system, a quantifiable concept of drought was developed around water budgeting. Borrowed from hydrologists, this quantitative model / algorithm served as the seed for functionally reducing the data space upon which a broader cultural interpretation of water could be developed.

GAN Patterns

Simplifying the network into patterns of beginning (input to hidden), middle (hidden to hidden), and end (hidden to output) to identify functions.

GAN Parts

Defining common part across patterns.