The role of open government data in Boston's climate adaptation process

Abstract

This thesis asks the question, what is the role of open government data? Has the open aspect of open government data democratized participation to create more insightful, just, equitable, and inclusive action or research? Studying open government data use is important because more efforts can be made to replicate successes and bridge gaps between reality and perceived benefits. To examine this question, this thesis uses Boston, Massachusetts as a case study. The City of Boston is a leader in municipal climate adaptation, and has worked with a diverse set of private, public, non-governmental, and academic actors to create and implement resilience initiatives for their climate adaptation plan Climate Ready Boston. Boston's open data initiative and its context in the broader national open government data environment hints at potential influence of open government data on Climate Ready Boston. In this thesis, I study traces of open government data in Climate Ready Boston's ecosystem of actors to understand the role of open government data in climate adaptation. Two network maps were produced to identify the relationships and information exchanges in an attempt to trace the role and presence of open data. The results suggest current minimal usage of open government data in Climate Ready Boston, and that Boston climate adaptation could benefit from increased collaboration between academic institutions and local nonprofit organizations to create valuable insights from open government data..