This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Resources such as sea level rise viewers, heat maps and flood prediction services are crucial tools in a changing climate. NASA Earth Observations (NASA EO) datasets provide important information on these and other natural hazards, but many communities that may benefit from these tools face barriers to accessing them.
La Margarita, a community along Puerto Rico's southern coast, faces hazards including flooding, storm exposure, crumbling infrastructure and inadequate government investment. Residents of this historically underserved community contend with pollution from nearby power plants and an industrial sterilization facility. Hurricane Fiona exposed many of the region's vulnerabilities in 2022, after 30 inches (76 centimeters) of rain destroyed homes in low-lying areas and left residents without basic services.
Raub and team worked with La Margarita residents to learn about their environmental concerns and preferred solutions and to assess ways NASA EO datasets might address those concerns in a three-phase project over 9 months. The findings are published in the journal Community Science. In phase 1, one-on-one bilingual interviews with 16 local leaders and residents helped researchers determine participants' environmental justice concerns, as well as their familiarity with EO tools and possible barriers to using them.
In phase 2, a NASA representative showed community members how EO tools could be used, for example, to show patterns of power outages and project rates of sea level rise. For phase 3, researchers created a bilingual English-Spanish report summarizing the study participants' concerns and the available NASA EO resources. La Margarita community members were invited to provide feedback to ensure that the report accurately reflected their needs and concerns.
Key concerns identified by study participants were flooding (56%), land misuse from illegal development (63%), and air quality and accompanying health conditions (50%). Government inaction was participants' biggest concern (69%). Participants initially had little awareness of the EO tools but felt that flood mapping and air quality monitoring systems would be useful, especially if paired with support on how to use the tools.
Barriers to EO tools included spotty internet access, unfamiliarity with the technology, previous experiences with unhelpful authorities and language barriers. Study participants did not want solutions imposed on them by outside experts—they wanted collaboration with researchers and agencies that would listen to their concerns and work toward community-led decision-making. The study authors suggest that environmental justice means more than providing data: building trusting relationships among scientists, communities and agencies like NASA can ensure that important tools reach and are used by the people who need them most, the authors say.
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