Project Overview

ISeeChange is a climate data and engagement platform headquartered on one of America’s adaptation frontlines —the Gulf Coast—and informed by the communities we serve. We are a diverse team that includes a mix of journalists, user experience designers, engineers, data scientists, urban planners, and anthropologists.

ISeeChange began as a prototype and concept in Colorado from field interviews with drought-impacted farmers and ranchers. As we scaled our community globally, we started to see opportunities to grow insights generated through observation, communication, and education into direct impact and local solutions. After developing successful prototypes on urban heat and flooding in Harlem and New Orleans, we committed to using the community sourced data and stories to co-design climate solutions, not just identify problems. In 2018, we became a thriving social impact start-up with partners and clients across the United States and the globe.

ISeeChange partners with many coastal communities that are experiencing flooding, such as Miami, FL, Wilmington, NC, Ocean City, NJ, and New Orleans, LA (see hyperlinks for project information). Through photos, storytelling, and other data measurements, these communities provide invaluable flood event documentation. In real-time, this hyper-local information is shared among community members and aids in disaster response. Collecting this data over time reveals broader patterns and impacts of a changing climate. Because climate change is causing increased flooding in many urban coastal communities, ISeeChange is expanding its community partnerships across the U.S, and globally. To scale up their approach, ISeeChange seeks to use ancillary datasets that inform flood monitoring efforts in coastal urban areas across the country. Not only will these datasets supplement back-end analysis of community-collected data (e.g., fill in data gaps), they will also directly assist communities in local decision-making on flood monitoring.