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Innovation in Technology and ECR Award


Posted: 6/2/2010

The U.S. Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution (the U.S. Institute) is pleased to announce the recipients of the first "Innovation in Technology and Environmental Conflict Resolution (ECR) Award." The award is designed to promote and recognize cutting-edge applications of new technologies within collaborative environmental processes. The award is in line with the Administration's Open Government Initiative, and the U.S. Institute's mission to increase the appropriate and effective use of ECR.

The award concept grew out of the Technology in ECR National Strategic Planning Workshop hosted by the U.S. Institute in May 2009. Close to 90 participants representing the federal government, academia, technology providers, and ECR practitioners participated in the 2009 strategic planning effort. The effort resulted in a series of suggestions including the development of best practices for integrating technologies into ECR processes, the establishment of an annual innovation award, and the creation of Technology and ECR Coordinating Committee.

Fourteen nominations were received for the 2010 award. The U.S. Institute partnered with the National Technology and ECR Coordinating Committee to review the nominated projects and select the 2010 award recipients. The review committee decided to recognize projects in three broad categories. They are:

Decision support technologies that help model complex systems, synthesize often incommensurate information, generate alternative scenarios, understand and integrate differing perspectives, and support stakeholders in analyzing the basis, assumptions, and implications of decisions.
Visioning technologies that help stakeholders think creatively and conceptualize project options to support shared solutions to environmental conflict and challenges.
Collaboration and communication technologies such as collaborative authoring, videoconferencing, and internet polling, that help stakeholder groups work together effectively in-person and remotely.

The 2010 awards were presented at the sixth national ECR conference hosted in Tucson, Arizona, on May 25 – 27, 2010.

In the decision-support category, the outstanding award was presented to:

MarineMap Consortium for
MarineMap: Web-based Decision Support for Marine Spatial Planning
William McClintock, MarineMap Director, University of California, Santa Barbara, and project participants: Satie Airame, Susan Ashcraft, Darci Connor, Evan Fox, Scott McCreary, Melissa Miller-Henson, Dominique Monie, Becky Ota, Eric Poncelet, Emily Saarman, Kelly Sayce, Public Outreach Coordinator Becky Tuden, Ken Wiseman, Mary Gleason, Chad Burt, Colin Ebert, Scott Fletcher, Jared Kibele, Chris MacDonald, Matt Merrifield, Chad Miller, Alexei Peters, Paulo Serpa, Charles Steinback, Ken Vollmer, Tim Welch, and Dennis Wuthrich.

In the collaboration and communication category, the outstanding award was presented to:

Group Solutions, Inc., for
Increasing the Effectiveness of Stakeholder Participation with Technology
in a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Mississippi Coastal Improvements Process
Brett Boston, Group Solutions, Inc.
Vern Herr, Group Solutions, Inc.

In the visioning category, the outstanding award was presented to:

Consensus Building Institute and Adroit Productions for
Stories from the Borderlands - In their Own Voices: A Podcast to Supplement an Issues Assessment on a Massachusetts River Restoration Land Use and Development in Two New England Towns
Patrick Field, The Consensus Building Institute
Noah Susskind, Adroit Productions, LLC

Click here for project briefings for each of the award winning and nominated projects. This material is provided as an informational resource. The exhibitor and product descriptions are based on materials that were submitted to the U.S. Institute. This does not imply endorsement of these exhibitors or products by the Udall Foundation or by the U.S. Institute.


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