Loss & Recovery Project

The Loss & Recovery Project: Telling the Story of Our Community’s Recovery

The Loss & Recovery Project is a mapping, storytelling, and community engagement effort that answers some of the lingering questions communities have after a disaster: How do neighborhoods recover? Where are the resource gaps? And finally: How do we involve the entire community in recovery from a disaster, while becoming better prepared for the next one?

The program uses geospatial information to visualize data, and is staffed by a small team of GIS technicians, researchers, academics and journalists. We want to empower a more collaborative relationship between the public, private, and nonprofit sectors to affect a more equitable recovery and create more effective community engagement and direct involvement in recovery and resiliency planning efforts. Through community-generated recovery data, survivor interviews, and robust public engagement using innovative new technologies, we invite affected communities to tell their own stories, with their own words and deeds, and help envision the future of our community.

We achieve our program goals through three primary pillars:

Interactive Mapping

As the first step in realizing our ambitious Loss & Recovery Project, FRC developed a visual, map-based portal of recovery information that could help our community navigate recovery on a neighborhood level. The Almeda Fire Loss & Recovery Dashboard uses geographic information systems (GIS) technology to organize layers of information into visualizations using maps, public permit data, and community surveys. The unique capabilities of GIS can reveal deeper insights into data—such as patterns, relationships, and situations—helping stakeholders make smarter recovery planning decisions. Right now, visitors to our Dashboard can explore targeted data and understand the unique situations of the neighborhoods affected by the Almeda Fire.

Data-Driven Storytelling

In 2022, we expanded the offerings of the Loss & Recovery Project to include data-driven StoryMaps. By integrating the tools and expertise of our GIS team with the community information collected from our boots-on-the-ground Zone Captains, we dove even further down to tell poignant stories of our community’s recovery, identify resource and funding gaps, and even show how we do the work we do.

Accessible & Robust Community Engagement

Firebrand has spent the last two years engaging our population in recovery and emergency planning efforts, meeting people where they are at using a variety of analog and digital tools to gather public input and vital community data. The Loss & Recovery Project, combined with the community reach of our Zone Captains, has supported a number of local and regional planning efforts. Our top priority is to ensure that survivors, and those most likely to be impacted by fire, always have a seat at the table when big decisions are being made.