USSEE Board members discuss measuring progress at Ohio workshop
USSEE Board members Rumi Shammin and Ken Bagstad recently presented at the Measuring Progress workshop on Dec. 2 at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. It was a stimulating discussion about best practices and the future of dashboard/indicator projects in Northeast Ohio (NEO) region – with a great group of practitioners, planning officials and academics from regional universities attending. The presentations at the workshop focused on big-picture issues and challenges, and updates of and ideas for specific initiatives for the region. There were four modules in the workshop:
- What Matters to Metros by the Fund for Our Economic Future (http://www.thefundneo.org/what-matters/what-matters-metros).
- Sustainable Cleveland Dashboard by Sustainable Cleveland 2019 (http://www.sustainablecleveland.org/about/dashboard/).
- Vibrant NEO Dashboard by the Northeast Ohio Sustainable Communities Consortium (http://vibrantneo.org/vibrantneo-2040/initiative-goals/).
- Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) for Northeast Ohio by ecological economists Rumi Shammin of Oberlin College and Ken Bagstad of the U.S. Geological Survey (http://genuineprogress.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/GPI-Ohio.pdf).
Drs. Shammin and Bagstad collaborated between 2008 and 2012 to develop the NEO regional GPI and published the resulting paper in Ecological Indicators. They are engaged in ongoing efforts to disseminate their work and support further research, application and policy development. Here is a link to a blog post by Marc Lefkowitz of the Green City Blue Lakes Institute at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History about the workshop and GPI presentation: http://www.gcbl.org/blog/2013/12/are-we-making-genuine-progress