In Northern Kentucky, neighbors are gathering around maps, markers in hand, to identify heat, flooding and pollution—then build solutions together.
The Climate Safe Neighborhoods program integrates various data layers, including environmental data on air quality, temperature, flood-prone areas and tree canopy cover, into geographic information systems.
The project combines social, economic and demographic data in the region.
“When you put all those data layers together, they’ve created an environmental justice indicator, a type of metric that kind of shows which neighborhoods are most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change,” said Northern Kentucky University Director of Environmental Science and Professor Kristy Hopfensperger.
Once the data is collected, Hopfensperger said they use this information to identify the most vulnerable neighborhoods, and then they go to the city and have workshops with the people who live there.
The Climate Safe Neighborhoods project in NKY began as a collaboration between Hopfensperger at NKU and Groundwork Ohio River Valley. Before that happened, Groundwork Ohio River Valley had instigated and led the Climate Safe Neighborhoods program in the region. Climate Safe Neighborhoods is a program of Groundwork USA, which is implemented through the National Park Service.
Hopfensperger, representing NKU, Green Umbrella, and Groundwork, got funding from the US Environmental Protection Agency to do this work in Northern Kentucky.
The Climate Safe Neighborhoods project in NKY focuses on the cities of Newport, Covington and Dayton.
She said the workshops are very hands-on. They ask residents questions like, “What impacts are you feeling?” “What are you living through, day to day?” “Where is it hot?” “Where are you lacking resources?” Then they will display big maps on tables or boards, and residents can mark where they’re feeling different impacts and talk through it all with the residents.
Newport resident and a member of the West Side Citizens Coalition, Josh Tunning, was present during a data presentation about West Newport to the neighborhood association. He said they discussed the maps, water runoff, pollution issues, and how the heat index is higher on the west side of Newport compared to the east side.
“We did get a $5,000 grant right around there to do environmental work based on the feedback from that time and presentation, and that was used for the tree planting project,” Tunning said. “It wasn’t specifically money to do trees. It was, ‘Here are funds to do some kind of environmental project, and we decided to do the trees.”
Newport lost a $1 million grant for tree planting earlier in the year. More information on that can be found here.
Then the program will display new, clean maps and ask residents, “Where can we find solutions?” “Where can we implement things?” Instead of those involved in the program going in and telling people what they need in their neighborhoods, Hopfensperger said they ask residents what they want to see.
“As an environmental scientist at NKU, I saw all this work they were doing, and they have these really cool storyboards, where they bring in narratives and the history of neighborhoods and photographs, and they make it so accessible,” she said.
When working to identify which cities the project would focus on, Hopfensperger said neighborhoods along the Ohio River are particularly vulnerable to flooding, especially during intense rainfall events due to their low-lying geography.
Other high-risk areas include neighborhoods with large amounts of impervious surfaces such as rooftops, roads, parking lots and concrete, which prevent water from soaking into the ground. This leads to faster runoff and increased flooding, and also contributes to higher temperatures, especially at night, due to the heat-retaining properties of the surfaces.
She noted that many marginalized communities often locate near highways, which can lead to higher pollution levels. In this context, tree canopy is a valuable tool used extensively in the region, as it involves assessing the availability of green spaces and identifying areas where additional trees could be beneficial.
Tunning said the tree planting in Newport is a volunteer effort that also helps bring neighbors together to better their community.
“Largely, what it is just to better the neighborhood, better our air quality, help with the flooding issues, give us some shade on a hot summer day, just neighbors coming together, building community, and doing something cool while meeting their neighbors,” Tunning said.
Hopfensperger teaches a science communication course through the environmental science program at NKU and wanted to involve students in the work.
Students got involved in two ways. One approach involved having NKU student interns collaborate with Groundwork staff to map the data layer and compile the data to identify the neighborhoods. The second approach involved training students in science communication and public engagement, followed by their assistance in developing project messaging and supporting workshops in each community.
For example, one of the neighborhoods identified in Covington that they worked with was predominantly Spanish-speaking. Hopfensperger said that because they had that specific information from the community organizations, Climate Safe Neighborhoods then brought in Spanish majors from NKU to translate all the material.
NKU graduate (December 2024) Zoe Robles was a geographic information systems intern for the Climate Safe Neighborhoods project. Roles worked on the project for a year and a half.
Robles worked with the main analyst on compiling data from federal, local and state resources to determine which neighborhoods were the most vulnerable in Northern Kentucky. She was also involved in creating presentations and presenting the data to residents in each neighborhood.
“Climate change is something that I’m personally really passionate about, and being able to be doing on-the-ground work with local communities relating to that was something that was really appealing to me,” Robles said.
She said her biggest takeaway from her time spent on the project was that change is possible in smaller ways than she previously thought.
“I feel like with climate change, it’s really easy to get caught up in like the negative news, and feeling like there’s nothing that individual people can do,” Robles said. “Being involved in a project where we got to see both other people that were really passionate about making a change in their communities, and then also kind of from start to finish, people going in and making those changes and having improvements in their communities, was kind of like, ‘Oh, it really does make a difference.’”
