She has a master’s degree in English and a Ph.D. She holds a PhD in Environmental Science from Oregon State University.

Ten years ago she moved to Flagstaff and found that what she loved most about her community was the places in and around the woods. Its position provided easy access to hiking, mountain biking and other activities that Grimm enjoyed.

Communities are also at risk of encountering wildfires on a regular basis.

Now a lecturer at Northern Arizona University, Grimm was perfectly positioned to apply his skills in environmental communication and interest in keeping communities safe during wildfires in a new research project funded in part by NASA.

NASA supports ground research through the Space Earth Science Research Opportunities (ROSES) program. A research project call was made through his ROSES, and Grimm and his colleagues came up with an idea that fit the bill perfectly. In this funding, NASA was particularly interested in projects that focused on equity and environmental justice.

Grimm wanted to learn more about how we talk about wildfires before, during and after big events. She also wanted to explore how people are being missed in key communication channels.

She collaborated with ecologist Rachel Mitchell, assistant professor of dryland ecosystems at Arizona State University, and Teki Sankey, an expert in informatics, computing, and cyber systems.

“[Sankey] I have a lot of experience with remote sensing and NASA data,” said Grimm. “We were really thinking about how to integrate the idea of ​​wildfire communication, the social science side of my experience, and the ecological side of Rachel’s experience.

For her part, the project’s principal investigator, Grimm, got to work create a survey To find out how people get information about wildfires and what information they lack.

“The purpose of this project is to truly understand the experiences of Flagstaff community members, the challenges they may have experienced with wildfire communications,” said Grimm.

She wants to find out what people have learned about activities such as fire mitigation, property defense, and evacuation preparation. Next, she wants to look at the communication during the event, the actual messages about evacuation and firefighting on site. Finally, she seeks to study the qualitative experiences of individuals after fires: how and whether people learned about flood risk, insurance, and the availability of funds.

“We want to see if people might have information at certain times and not at other times,” Grimm said.

The survey itself can be searched and completed online by anyone in the area, from Winona to Kendrick to Belmont. A random population sample will also receive a hard copy mailed survey.

Mr. Grimm reached out to key correspondents in the community before soliciting input from the public who are recipients of the WildFire correspondence. She interviewed more than 30 of her people involved in wildfire information planning and dissemination to understand how they work, what their challenges are, and what they lack.

Grimm’s team also cares about people they might miss with current advocacy and communication strategies.

“The goal is also to see if different regions and demographics have different experiences,” said Grimm. “For example, research shows that in some places information is only available in English, but not everyone in the community speaks English, or there may be inappropriate translations that don’t make sense. [communicators] And it helps to better inform the information you share by saying, “Hey, this demographic or neighborhood or Flagstaff as a whole doesn’t get this information or has this challenge or wants to get it this way.” “

To reach out to underserved communities for the Wildfire Experiential Study, Grimm enlisted the help of local leaders.

“I gave presentations and spoke to neighboring communities, such as the Sunnyside and Southside Community Associations, to see what their needs were as members of the community and what people in the group were saying was difficult.

Grimm also recognizes that having the leisure to share experiences with researchers is a matter of privilege, which is why historically underserved people have been left out of the conversation.

She hopes that leveraging multiple communication channels, including supporting community leaders, will help.

“There are certain demographics that emerge more. We are doing our best to reach as many people as possible. Part of that is working with some of the groups I mentioned and working with community representatives,” said Grimm. “We don’t want researchers to say, ‘Hey, can you do this?’ We want someone you can trust within the community. For example, if you look, Sunnyside has a lot of flooding.

Grimm said her team tried not to assume that everyone in Flagstaff had internet access, time to answer surveys or speak English as their first language.

“That’s the reality, isn’t it? They never go away,” she said. “Some people may think surveys are important to them, but there is another reality in life that takes time and some people have more time to take surveys. There is only so much we can do to mitigate this.”

The investigation itself can be done in parts.

Grimm said it will be submitted after a certain number of days, but progress will also be saved.

It’s by design. She hopes that people will be able to answer some questions when they have time and feel free to write them down and come back to them later.

Research is an important part of research, but it’s only part of the project.

To understand the effectiveness of communication, Mitchell’s team has specifically investigated how people use information about fire mitigation and how it translates into the field.

“They’re looking at fuel loads, tree densities, rough estimates of fires coming from neighborhoods, and comparing how that matches what people are getting and the concerns they might have. What are these different areas doing in terms of fire potential,” said Grimm.

The research project will take approximately 18 months.

Grimm said her team wants to keep the research part open for as long as possible to gather as many voices as possible. They try to assess data gaps periodically until the project is complete.

“We try to work with our community partners as much as we can to support the efforts that getting information to stay safe is important in Flagstaff. Hopefully, people will want to share their experiences and make it less difficult.

Ultimately, the data her team collects will be distributed to communicators in Flagstaff and Coconino County to help improve information sharing.

Grimm said some of the people he interviewed to get input on the study have become some of the biggest advocates when it comes to encouraging people to share their stories with researchers.

The Coconino County Sheriff’s Office is one such agency. The company shared a community survey flyer on wildfires and floods on its Facebook page, posting: This NASA-funded study, conducted by NAU researchers, seeks to reach as many community members as possible to understand the similarities and differences experienced by various neighborhoods, demographics, and homeowners (renters, primary homeowners, secondary homeowners, etc.). They will share their overall findings with those who create and share wildfire/flood information to aid in future communication and information sharing. “

Survey is available online.