Co-producing research and data visualization for environmental justice advocacy in climate change adaptation: The Milwaukee Flood-Health Vulnerability Assessment

Cities in the world are experiencing increases in the severity of extreme weather events, leading to significant threats for urban dwellers. Ensuring an equitable implementation of risk reduction interventions requires considering the uneven distributions of risk. However, adaptation planning often fails to adequately consider the distributional injustices of risk, potentially reproducing spatial inequalities. Current forms of engagement hinder the effective contribution of local stakeholders to the development of risk assessments for the design of interventions. Here, we present a co-production process in which place-based advocacy organizations and healthcare practitioners actively participate in the identification of flooding exposure and vulnerability priority areas. The process is applied in Milwaukee, WI, where we developed the Milwaukee Flood-Health Vulnerability Assessment (FHVA) to identify priority areas for implementing stormwater management strategies including nature-based solutions such as urban green infrastructure. We discuss the process underpinning the analysis and the development of dissemination tools that enable advocacy organizations, urban planners, and policy makers to make use of the FHVA. We find co-production to be a critical component of making vulnerability and exposure analyses useful both for policy makers and stakeholders in need of usable scientific information to support advocacy on equitable adaptation. • Integrating the needs of disadvantaged groups enables environmental justice advocacy. • We used a co-production approach to generate accessible risk knowledge. • Integrating healthcare and data visualization experts positively impacted the assessment. • A hierarchical vulnerability assessment was chosen over a single adimensional index. • Continued co-production processes are needed to evaluate and amplify their outcomes.