Discover and Design Defined
How might founders better incorporate empathy of those most impacted by the climate crisis into research and design processes? Inequities in infrastructure planning and implementation of emerging technologies have historically placed the heaviest burdens on the most vulnerable communities, including low-income residents, BIPOC, children, seniors, people with disabilities, etc.
The CTSSR framework equips climate technology founders, teams, operators, investors, practitioners, and potential partners with a blueprint for evaluating environmental equity and justice in the context of a broader lifecycle assessment defined through 4 key stages of growth. This Discovery and Design phase is the foundational knowledge and blueprint to begin a technical team’s path toward designing, developing, delivering, and employing technologies that contribute to the ecological, economic, and social stability of the communities they impact.
Users of this tool will be able to intentionally integrate community knowledge, introduce data-informed models to dive more meaningfully into environmental justice applications for the technology and create a tailored approach to its incorporation across a company’s journey and workflows.
Level Readiness Steps:
Basic Principles Observed: The stage where systems science (environmental justice, climate equity, and literacy) research begins. The principles underlying an incumbent industry and technology as well as those for potential climate innovation are observed and reported.
Systems Science Concept Formulated: Preliminary data related to the communities historically most impacted by previous inputs and outputs. A concept of environmental justice science begins to translate into basic principles applied to R&D, particularly around harm and benefits
Experimental Proof of Concept: Expand preliminary data of community impact as technology moves to experimental proof of concept. Begin estimating outputs and inputs required for experimental testing. Continual expansion of systems science research.
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Recommended Completion Time
10-15 hours over the course of a few days or you and your team can create a 2-3 week work plan integrating each prompt into an existing workflow that covers all of the milestones mentioned
Materials for Consideration
Prototype Design
Materials Inventory
*Vulnerable Population Scan Data Sets (provided in modules)
Participants
Founder(s)
Research team
Professor (if university-led)
Overview
Principles Observed
Guiding Questions Methodology and Data
Exercises
Monitoring & Evaluation Checklist
