Creating a Task Force for Resilience Resources

By:  Lea Le Rouzo, Nicholas Caton, Anh-Vy Pham, Sophia Bozone, Tory Coffin, and David Scolari. 

After a successful winter quarter, the SAR Resilience team looks forward to a promising spring. We are in the middle of our planning phase, but an exciting quarter awaits us. We completed our research and aggregated our data into an easily digestible spreadsheet. Now, we are currently working with our stakeholders, Nurit Katz and Arpen Shadkayman, to schedule our first task force meeting quarter. During this meeting, we will present our findings to five to six key people who are responsible for writing UCLA’s official Resilience Plan. Then, we will open it up for discussion, accept feedback, and be a continued resource for them throughout the report writing process. We hope to meet with the task force multiple times throughout spring quarter, so it is imperative that we get the wheels moving early and schedule the first meeting.

In an effort to create permanent infrastructure that educates the public on resilience, we are designing a large sign that describes the importance of the previous SAR team’s stormwater capture project. We have gathered all of the appropriate data to be included on the sign including: UCLA’s target of 36% potable water reduction per capita by 2025, a definition of resilience, a rendering of the initial drawing, and more. The sign will most likely be placed outside of parking lot 9–where the rainwater cistern tanks will be located–on the street of Westwood Plaza. We have scheduled a time to work on the layout with Scott Gruber, the Developer for IOES, using Adobe InDesign. We will be presenting our mock draft to the campus architect, then adjusting it to UCLA’s standards.

In terms of outreach events, spring quarter will be a busy time for the Resilience Team. At UCLA’s annual Earth Day Fair, the Resilience team will have attendees take a survey on what students perceive as “vulnerable populations.” We intend to give away mini first-aid kits and stickers as incentive. The results of our survey will provide the task force with the information they need to equitably address resilience at UCLA. Towards the end of spring quarter, the Resilience Team will also be organizing a ribbon cutting ceremony of the new rainwater cistern tanks. The educational component for our event will include TreePeople tabling on the benefits of utilizing stormwater capture systems as a strategy for resiliency.

A snapshot of our data (see above) will be presented to UCLA’s resilience task force during our first meeting this quarter.