Climate Adaptation Resources for Washington Intern

WASCO supports communities and decision makers in Washington State with training, resources, and research on climate. Specifically, the office tracks current and past climate information, provides training and capacity building, creates data and information resources, and pursues applied research on climate and its impacts.

Tasks and Activities:

This project will focus on creating a robust repository of climate adaptation case studies for the state of Washington. The intern will start with a small collection of case studies already on the Climate Adaptation Resources page and expand it to include more examples specific to Washington state. They will research case studies in existing repositories and through other research in the literature and create a database to house information about each case study and organize them into relevant categories based on climate adaptation practices. They will also revise a website to showcase the case studies and allow users to search for relevant information and resources.

Additional tasks include:

• Reading and sifting through existing repositories and information, conducting literature reviews
• Using qualitative analysis to categorize information about each case study to organize it in the database (likely in Excel which will require qualitative analysis skills which can be learned in the program)
• Do some web design work to ensure the information is easily accessible on a website, which may include revising an infographic on how to use case studies in climate adaptation work.

The intern in this position will collect and categorize the case studies, creating the database, and highlighted information that will be showcased on the website. This will be done with support from the supervisor. They will also do the work of determining how to display the information on the website in coordination with our communications staff. The tangible products resulting from the internship will be the database, the webpage, and the infographic displayed on the website.

Takeaways:

The intern will need to learn about and understand climate adaptation work, including:

• Building an understanding of what makes a project successful and what aspects of the work can be relevant to other projects.
• Conducting qualitative analysis to categorize projects for organization in the database and on the website.
• Learning some visual design skills to help communicate to others about what makes climate adaptation projects successful and how climate adaptation practitioners can leverage information from other projects to help them in their work.

The Candidate best suited for this position:

Required:

• Experience with excel to manage data
• Ability to communicate technical information and distill it for a broad audience, including literature review research
• Some experience with or interest in qualitative social science research methods, including categorizing information

Preferred:

• Taken coursework in climate and/or environmental science
• Has knowledge of social impacts of climate, social science, and/or climate adaptation
• Interest in design & communication of scientific information