Challenges To Coordination: Understanding Intergovernmental Friction During Disasters (Pre Print), Daniel P. Aldrich
Dec 2019
Challenges To Coordination: Understanding Intergovernmental Friction During Disasters (Pre Print), Daniel P. Aldrich
Daniel P Aldrich
While idealized crisis response involves smooth coordination between relevant actors, friction between levels of government and between the state and civil society in responding to catastrophe may be more common. This article builds a theory of cross-level friction during and after crisis by analyzing the conditions when discord is most likely. With a medium-N dataset (N = 18) of disaster responses from, among other countries, Chile, Haiti, Japan, North America, the Philippines, and Somalia, I carry out quantitative and qualitative analysis of cases with a variety of levels of friction to investigate the conditions that lead to misalignment. Tobit regression, …
From Data To Decisions In Local Government, Michael P. Johnson Jr.
Jul 2019
From Data To Decisions In Local Government, Michael P. Johnson Jr.
Michael P. Johnson
Making good decisions is essential to enabling local government to deliver services that improve the lives of constituents. But what is a good decision, and what is necessary to make good decisions? In this presentation, given to fellows of the Lead for America program, I introduce the notion of decision and data analytics, specific to the needs of resource-constrained local governments, provide three examples of analytics & decision opportunities ranging from mostly-qualitative to mostly-quantitative data and analysis, and end with three case studies that I had the Lead for America fellows perform.
Changing Urban Form In A Shrinking City, Justin Hollander, Michael P. Johnson Jr., Rachel B. Drew
Jun 2019
Changing Urban Form In A Shrinking City, Justin Hollander, Michael P. Johnson Jr., Rachel B. Drew
Michael P. Johnson
This paper uses building footprint data in a shrinking city, Baltimore, MD, in 1972 and 2010 to achieve two primary research objectives. The first is to understand the historical patterns of housing construction and demolition in selected row house neighborhoods in Baltimore between 1972 and 2010. The second is to understand changes in housing footprints, and associations between these changes and physical and socio-economic characteristics in selected neighborhoods. We find that housing losses and associated changes in building footprints have shown substantial variation across our study area and exhibit clustering within our study area. Moreover, while housing loss is strongly …
Decision Science For Community Development And Social Change, Michael P. Johnson Jr.
Feb 2019
Decision Science For Community Development And Social Change, Michael P. Johnson Jr.
Michael P. Johnson
Operations research, also known as management science or decision science, is a mathematics-based discipline that draws from engineering, information systems, management, public policy and planning. OR enables individuals and organizations to make better decisions regarding manufacturing and logistics, service provision and strategy design. My particular interest in OR focuses on the needs of mission-driven and resource-constrained organizations that serve urban communities. In my talk I will describe how OR can use qualitative and quantitative analysis through meaningful engagement of communities to enable creative identification, formulation and solution of complex problems for local impact and social justice. Specific applications I'm currently …
Community-Focused Problem-Solving With Operations Research And Analytics, Michael P. Johnson Jr.
Jan 2019
Community-Focused Problem-Solving With Operations Research And Analytics, Michael P. Johnson Jr.
Michael P. Johnson
In these days of ‘analytics’, ‘big data’ and ‘smart cities’, many of us are aware of the importance of data and quantitative analytic methods for program design, implementation and evaluation. Less commonly-understood are specific tools and methods for community-based interventions in which the problem to be solved is unclear, and the ways in which data of many different kinds can be used to develop interventions that represent best-possible uses of organization and community resources. Moreover, it is also less commonly-understood how to put communities, and community members, near the center of problem-solving and decision-making.
Examples of challenging problems include: How …
Are Wide Streets Negligent?, Michael Lewyn
Dec 2018
Are Wide Streets Negligent?, Michael Lewyn
Michael E Lewyn
American commercial streets are typically designed to encourage rapid automobile traffic, thus making streets unsafe for pedestrians. In the 2016 case of Turturro v. City of New York, the New York Court of Appeals upheld a jury verdict against a city for failing to slow down such traffic. This article describes Turturro, but shows how limited its holding was: the Turturro court emphasized a city's failure to study traffic calming, so if a city studies its options adequately it can avoid liability even if its policies are unsuccessful.
Planetizen Blog Posts- First Half Of 2019, Michael Lewyn
Dec 2018
Planetizen Blog Posts- First Half Of 2019, Michael Lewyn
Michael E Lewyn
Op-ed length articles on various land use-related issues.
Course Syllabus, Upcd 620 Quantitative Analytic Methods For Urban Planning & Community Development, Michael P. Johnson Jr.
Dec 2018
Course Syllabus, Upcd 620 Quantitative Analytic Methods For Urban Planning & Community Development, Michael P. Johnson Jr.
Michael P. Johnson
This course provides students with an introduction to quantitative analytic methods appropriate to propose, support and evaluate localized and regional initiatives in planning and community development. Technical skills associated with these methods will be taught with a focus on the needs of community-based organizations which typically have limited time, human, financial and technical resources to perform detailed analyses in support of their programs and initiatives. This is a core, required course in the Urban Planning and Community Development master’s program. No previous university-level exposure to probability and statistics are necessary. Students will learn basic skills in analysis and interpretation of …
Animal Management And Population Control, What Progress Have We Made?, Alexandra K. Wilson, Andrew N. Rowan
Dec 2018
Animal Management And Population Control, What Progress Have We Made?, Alexandra K. Wilson, Andrew N. Rowan
Andrew N. Rowan, DPhil
Evaluations of animal population problems and their solutions by ten regional animal control and humane society shelters.
Strengthening The Profession Through Diversity And Inclusion-Related Research Within Or, Michael P. Johnson Jr.
Oct 2018
Strengthening The Profession Through Diversity And Inclusion-Related Research Within Or, Michael P. Johnson Jr.
Michael P. Johnson
Diversity, equity and inclusion are well-studied and widely-practiced areas in organization design, human resources and many areas of social sciences. However, the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) disciplines are somewhat newer to the notion of diversity, equity and inclusion as a way to improve professions and contribute to substantive research within component disciplines. This is especially true for operations research and the decision sciences. In this talk, given to an interdisciplinary audience of engineering professors, administrators and students, I provide an introduction to operations research, to diversity, equity and inclusion within STEM and OR specifically, ways that DEI might …
Community Operational Research: A Survey Of The Discipline, Michael P. Johnson Jr., Gerald Midgley, Jason D. Wright, George Chichirau
Sep 2018
Community Operational Research: A Survey Of The Discipline, Michael P. Johnson Jr., Gerald Midgley, Jason D. Wright, George Chichirau
Michael P. Johnson
Community operational research (COR) is an extension of multiple OR/MS traditions to support participatory research, localized impact and social change. It applies critical thinking, evidence-based policy analysis, community participation and decision modeling to local interventions. It emphasizes the needs, voices and values of disadvantaged and marginalized populations. It rests on a foundation of meaningful engagement with communities. This presentation summarizes a multi-year effort to assemble cutting-edge research in COR in a special issue of European Journal of Operational Research available August 2018. We review principles for community OR, describe the breadth and diversity of the field through the experience of …
Emerging Trends And New Frontiers In Community Operational Research, Michael P. Johnson Jr., Gerald Midgley, George Chichirau
Jul 2018
Emerging Trends And New Frontiers In Community Operational Research, Michael P. Johnson Jr., Gerald Midgley, George Chichirau
Michael P. Johnson
Community operational research (Community OR), and its disciplinary relation, community-based operations research, has an increasingly high profile within multiple domains that benefit from empirical and analytic approaches to problem solving. These domains are primarily concentrated within nonprofit services and local development. However, there are many other disciplinary and application areas for which novel applications and extensions of COR could generate valuable insights. This paper identifies a number of these, distinguishing between ‘emerging trends’ (mostly in well-studied areas of operations research, management science and analytics) and ‘new frontiers’, which can be found in traditions not commonly oriented towards empirical and analytic …
Community-Based Participatory Research Through The Lens Of Decision Science, Michael P. Johnson Jr.
Jun 2018
Community-Based Participatory Research Through The Lens Of Decision Science, Michael P. Johnson Jr.
Michael P. Johnson
This is a brief introduction to community-focused and community-engaged research through the perspective of the decision sciences. It is intended as a complement to similar approaches more generally situated in the social sciences.
Market Urbanism, Michael Lewyn
Apr 2018
Market Urbanism, Michael Lewyn
Michael E Lewyn
A speech comparing market urbanism and new urbanism.
Editorial: Special Issue: Community Operational Research: Innovations, Internationalization And Agenda-Setting Applications, Michael P. Johnson Jr., Gerald Midgley
Mar 2018
Editorial: Special Issue: Community Operational Research: Innovations, Internationalization And Agenda-Setting Applications, Michael P. Johnson Jr., Gerald Midgley
Michael P. Johnson
This is an editorial to a special issue of European Journal of Operational Research, titled "Special Issue: Community Operational Research: Innovations, Internationalization and Agenda-Setting Applications". This special issue is edited by Michael Johnson and Gerald Midgley. Editorial assistants are Jason Wright and George Chichirau. The anticipated publication date for the special issue is July 2018. The special issue is comprised of 31 papers, representing diverse application areas, methodologies, analytic methods and author countries of origin.
Engineering Standards In Highway Design Litigation, Michael Lewyn
Dec 2017
Engineering Standards In Highway Design Litigation, Michael Lewyn
Michael E Lewyn
Highway engineers sometimes believe that if they redesign streets to improve pedestrian safety (for example, by introducing traffic calming techniques) they might be successfully sued for negligent design by motorists. This chapter suggests that in such situations, governments are likely to be protected by discretionary function immunity. In addition, the chapter discusses a variety of technical issues.
Course Syllabus: Honors 490 Mayor's Symposium: Housing In A Changing City, Michael P. Johnson Jr.
Dec 2017
Course Syllabus: Honors 490 Mayor's Symposium: Housing In A Changing City, Michael P. Johnson Jr.
Michael P. Johnson
This course provides students with an introduction to project-based and community-engaged learning through the subject of urban housing policy. The theme of this course is stabilizing and revitalizing Boston’s neighborhoods by increasing access to decent and affordable housing for all, with a focus on reducing incidence of eviction and displacement arising from gentrification and neighborhood change. Through readings, lectures, discussions, site visits and conversations with practitioners, scholars and advocates, students will acquire a comprehensive perspective on urban housing, and develop innovative projects to address important needs of Mayor Martin J. Walsh and the Mayor’s Housing Innovation Lab (https://tinyurl.com/ycnqgx8q). Small teams …
What Is Community Operational Research?, Gerald Midgley, Michael P. Johnson Jr., George Chichirau
Dec 2017
What Is Community Operational Research?, Gerald Midgley, Michael P. Johnson Jr., George Chichirau
Michael P. Johnson
Community Operational Research (Community OR) has been an explicit sub-domain of OR for more than 30 years. In this paper, we tackle the controversial issue of how it can be differentiated from other forms of OR. While it has been persuasively argued that Community OR cannot be defined by its clients, practitioners or methods, we argue that the common concern of all Community OR practice is the meaningful engagement of communities, whatever form that may take – and the legitimacy of different forms of engagement may be open to debate. We then move on to discuss four other controversies that …
Community-Engaged Operations Research: Trends, New Frontiers And Current Applications, Michael P. Johnson Jr.
Nov 2017
Community-Engaged Operations Research: Trends, New Frontiers And Current Applications, Michael P. Johnson Jr.
Michael P. Johnson
Community-engaged operations research is an extension of multiple OR/MS traditions to support participatory scholarship, localized impact and social change. It applies critical thinking, evidence-based policy analysis, community participation and decision modeling to local interventions. It emphasizes the needs, voices and values of disadvantaged and marginalized populations. Through a survey of current scholarship in two complementary areas of inquiry, ‘community operational research’ (referring to work by primarily UK-based researchers) and ‘community-based operations research’ (referring to work by primarily US-based researchers), we develop principles for community-engaged OR, present critical questions that represent opportunities to expand the impact of this work, and discuss …
Improving Decision-Making Skills Of Nonprofit Professionals, Michael P. Johnson Jr., George Chichirau, Jason Wright
Oct 2017
Improving Decision-Making Skills Of Nonprofit Professionals, Michael P. Johnson Jr., George Chichirau, Jason Wright
Michael P. Johnson
Nonprofits face gaps in organizational capacity, including program design and evaluation, but previous research suggests that capacity-building exercises have a positive effect. We describe a data analytics training workshop with staff from Boston-area nonprofits reflecting a wide range of sectors. Through analysis of participant work on case studies provided by the instructor, we examine how participants made sense of training materials, the various strategies employed by participants to solve three case study problems, and participant feedback about the session. Our findings provide a basis for novel interventions in community based operations research.
Food Justice Youth Development: Using Photovoice To Study Urban School Food Systems, Krista Harper, Catherine Sands, Diego Angarita, Molly Totman, Monica Maitin, Jonell Sostre Rosado, Jazmin Colon, Nick Alger
Sep 2017
Food Justice Youth Development: Using Photovoice To Study Urban School Food Systems, Krista Harper, Catherine Sands, Diego Angarita, Molly Totman, Monica Maitin, Jonell Sostre Rosado, Jazmin Colon, Nick Alger
Catherine Sands
How do youth learn through participation in efforts to study and change the school food system? Through our participatory youth action research (YPAR) project, we move beyond the "youth as consumer" frame to a food justice youth development approach. We track how a group of youth learned about food and the public policy process through their efforts to transform their own school food systems by conducting a participatory evaluation of farm-to-school efforts in collaboration with university and community partners. We used the Photovoice research method, placing cameras in the hands of young people so that they themselves could document and …
Decision Modeling For Housing And Community Development: A Methodology For Evidence-Based Urban And Regional Planning, Michael P. Johnson Jr.
Aug 2017
Decision Modeling For Housing And Community Development: A Methodology For Evidence-Based Urban And Regional Planning, Michael P. Johnson Jr.
Michael P. Johnson
Urban community development corporations and other local institutions routinely face challenging problems in housing and economic development that require substantial expertise in data analytics and decision modeling. Recent research, inspired by local responses to the housing foreclosure crisis, and developed in cooperation with Boston-area CDCs, has resulted in a collection of applications that can assist CDCs and similar organizations to design local interventions for acquisition and redevelopment of housing. This paper describes these applications. The first of these is values and objective design, i.e. the process of identifying decision opportunities. The second of these is data analytics, or …
Environmental Advocacy: Insights From East Asia, Mary Alice Haddad
Jul 2017
Environmental Advocacy: Insights From East Asia, Mary Alice Haddad
Mary Alice Haddad
Environmental advocacy in East Asia takes place in a context where there are few well-funded professional advocacy organisations, no viable green parties, and governments that are highly pro-business. In this advocacy-hostile environment, what strategies are environmental organizations using to promote better environmental outcomes? Using an original database of environmental organizations and interviews with activists and officials throughout the region, this paper investigates which strategies are most common and compares them to the advocacy strategies found in the United States. It finds, perhaps surprisingly, that (a) environmental organizations across East Asia employ similar advocacy strategies even though they are operating in …
Ppol-G 746 Geographic Information Systems For Public Policy, Michael P. Johnson Jr.
Jun 2017
Ppol-G 746 Geographic Information Systems For Public Policy, Michael P. Johnson Jr.
Michael P. Johnson
The purpose of this course is to learn principles and applications of GIS to support doctoral-level research and master’s-level research and analysis in public policy and related disciplines, such as public management, gerontology and urban and regional planning. This course has a particular focus on spatial data collection and analysis for urbanized regions within the greater Boston area. We will address basic geographic and mapping concepts. These include: world coordinate system and projections, map topology, tiled and layered maps, standard computer map file formats, data processing and data analysis, including Web-enabled GIS. We will also study advanced methods suitable for …
Course Syllabus: Ppol-G 630 Research Methods I, Michael P. Johnson Jr.
Jun 2017
Course Syllabus: Ppol-G 630 Research Methods I, Michael P. Johnson Jr.
Michael P. Johnson
This course offers an introduction to research methods and design primarily from a social science perspective. The primary objective is to improve students’ ability to become better producers and consumers of public policy research by providing an introduction to an array of methodological issues and approaches to policy research. Within a social science framework, our discussions will include topics like: How do we find/develop research questions and testable hypotheses? What is the nature of “explanation” – or how do we know if we’ve found the “answer” to our research question/problem? What determines the method we choose to collect data to …
Super Roundtable, “From Data To Decisions At Your Nonprofit”: Event Description And Assessment, Michael P. Johnson Jr.
Jun 2017
Super Roundtable, “From Data To Decisions At Your Nonprofit”: Event Description And Assessment, Michael P. Johnson Jr.
Michael P. Johnson
On April 28, 2017, Tech Networks of Boston hosted an extended roundtable event to give nonprofit professionals an introduction to storytelling and decision-making with data, allowing the notion of ‘data’ (qualitative and quantitative), ‘storytelling’ (descriptive and explorative analysis through words, numbers and pictures) and ‘decision-making’ (identifying decision opportunities, quantifying values, generating alternatives and choosing most-preferred courses of action) to be understood as broadly as possible. This document summarizes the event, presents some event feedback and discusses next steps in the area of nonprofit and community data analytics and decision science.
I Share, Therefore It's Mine, Donald J. Kochan
Apr 2017
I Share, Therefore It's Mine, Donald J. Kochan
Donald J. Kochan
Uniquely interconnecting lessons from law, psychology, and economics, this article aims to provide a more enriched understanding of what it means to “share” property in the sharing economy. It explains that there is an “ownership prerequisite” to the sharing of property, drawing in part from the findings of research in the psychology of child development to show when and why children start to share. They do so only after developing what psychologists call “ownership understanding.” What the psychological research reveals, then, is that the property system is well suited to create recognizable and enforceable ownership norms that include the rights …
From Data To Decisions At Your Nonprofit, Michael P. Johnson Jr., George Chichirau, Jason Wright
Apr 2017
From Data To Decisions At Your Nonprofit, Michael P. Johnson Jr., George Chichirau, Jason Wright
Michael P. Johnson
In recent years, discussions about ‘data analytics,' ‘big data’ and ‘performance management’ have tended to focus on organizations’ needs to collect, store, analyze, and make productive use of mostly-quantitative data to ensure that their activities are best-aligned with their missions. Without minimizing the importance of training, software and hardware selection, and organization design, there is also a need for organizations to make the best decisions they can using all data that are available – including qualitative data that may be hard to capture in information systems.
The goal of this Super Roundtable is to enable organizations to improve their …
How Can School Districts In Shrinking Regions Remake Themselves To Support Their Communities? Policy And Operations Analysis For A Massachusetts School District, Michael P. Johnson Jr.
Feb 2017
How Can School Districts In Shrinking Regions Remake Themselves To Support Their Communities? Policy And Operations Analysis For A Massachusetts School District, Michael P. Johnson Jr.
Michael P. Johnson
School districts in towns and regions facing long-term demographic and financial challenges are under intense
pressure to make difficult decisions so that they may continue to provide a quality education and enhance the vitality of the communities they serve. Such decisions may address: funding sources, education and non-education expenditures, facility utilization and community engagement. A recent engagement with Massachusetts towns by the Collins Center for Public Management has generated a case study in small-town school district revitalization. In this talk I will present results of community conversations that have enabled analysts, working with school district stakeholders, to propose a range …
Jefferson Village Downtown District Plan, Wendy A. Kellogg, Kirby Date, Richard Klein, James Wyles, Alicia Dyer, Tim Kobie, Christine Zuniga
Jan 2017
Jefferson Village Downtown District Plan, Wendy A. Kellogg, Kirby Date, Richard Klein, James Wyles, Alicia Dyer, Tim Kobie, Christine Zuniga
James Wyles
Jefferson Village is an incorporated municipality in Northeastern Ohio, with a population in 2000 of about 4000 residents. Originally founded in 1803 and incorporated in 1836, the Village has been the county seat for Ashtabula County since 1807. The Village is centrally located in Ashtabula County, 10 miles south of Lake Erie, and 10 miles west of the Pennsylvania border. Interstate highway 90 runs parallel to the lake shore, about 6 miles north of the village; and State Route 11 is a major north-south connector located about 2 miles east of the village. The primary employment locations in the Village …
