Description

Students are constantly affronted with data-driven environmental and political issues, with these issues constantly changing due to the ever fluctuating landscape of climate change. This module aims to equip students with the decision making skills necessary to be powerful influences in their communities and in the fight to make sustainability a global effort. This module introduces students to real-world, relevant data from recent flooding events in the greater-Houston area, and forces students to weave together disparate forms of data, including large, publicly-available numerical datasets on temperature, precipitation, and infiltration rates, spatial data representations in both ArcGIS and Google Earth, and introductory modeling platforms such as "Model My Watershed." Students will exercise key decision making skills as they formulate their own analytical inferences while also considering a variety of socioeconomic and political issues that exist at the local, state, and national levels.

Students will be able to formulate a 'community action plan' by: 1.) assessing the risk of future natural hazards and flooding events in the Houston area, 2.) quantifying the potential damage of future flooding incidents, 3.) evaluating current mitigation techniques and providing alternative, eco-friendly solutions, and 4.) identifying barriers to the implementation of their plan, as well as possible ways to overcome those barriers. Students can present their findings in a variety of formats, such as written or oral reports, poster presentations, Claim-Evidence-Reasoning (CER) gallery walks, etc.

Project EDDIE Environmental Data-Driven Inquiry & Exploration) is a community effort aimed at developing teaching resources and instructors that address quantitative reasoning and scientific concepts using open inquiry of publicly available data. Project EDDIE modules are designed with an A-B-C structure to make them flexible and adaptable to a range of student levels and course structures.

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