Co-producing new knowledge systems for resilient and just coastal cities

Asset mapping in Santurce (San Juan), Puerto Rico. Credit: Feagan et al. 2025

The Climate Program Office’s Adaptation Sciences (AdSci) and Climate Adaptation Partnerships (CAP) programs provided support for a new paper titled “Co-producing new knowledge systems for resilient and just coastal cities: A social-ecological-technological systems framework for data visualization.” This paper discusses how changing knowledge systems through co-production can enhance capacity to diagnose, visualize, anticipate, and respond to changes in the future in coastal cities. The authors explain that co-produced knowledge systems are “more inclusive, connective, and anticipatory than conventional city knowledge systems.” Through case studies based in Miami, San Juan, and Baltimore, communities were able to co-design a data visualization platform prototype that connects expertise, knowledge, and ideas that “helps take co-production towards envisioning systemic and long-term transformation based on building relationships of trust.”