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How will we stay connected amidst a climate crisis? Conditions associated with climate change, such as sea level rise and increasing extreme weather events, can destabilize already vulnerable network and digital infrastructures. While existing infrastructures are in dire need of maintenance, additional infrastructures are simultaneously being built to address imbalances in network access and distribution. My dissertation project attends to these intersecting precarities as a way to reconsider how digital infrastructures can be reworked to address overlapping questions of environmental and digital inequities. My research is situated within marginalized coastal communities in south Louisiana, where legacies of petrochemical extraction has led to deep socioeconomic and ecological disparities, while increased intensity of storms and floods have begun to impede and damage an already sparse network infrastructure. In my project, I use archival, ethnographic, and design research methods to examine longer histories of environmental degradation, investigate current practices of maintaining and developing network infrastructures, and develop approaches for researchers in HCI and related computing fields to re-envision just and equitable network infrastructures.
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Unpacking IntermittencyLiving with Infrastructures in Southeast Louisiana
Intermittent infrastructures are often described as infrastructures that are not always on or accessible. In the face of climate change, infrastructures are facing increased challenges regarding intermittency. As the LIMITS community shifts to investigating and designing transitional systems— computing systems centered around sustainability and climate justice—understanding intermittency and its relations to infrastructure is necessary. In this paper, I use the lens of intermittency to examine infrastructures across southeast Louisiana, where stronger and more frequent hurricanes, increased Clooding and coastal land loss can cause disruptions in infrastructures. Drawing on this case study and existing work in networking research, infrastructure studies, and the LIMITS community, I propose key dimensions to examine intermittency for future research within the LIMITS community.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2147052
- PAR ID:
- 10528166
- Publisher / Repository:
- LIMITS
- Date Published:
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Location:
- Virtual
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.21428/bf6fb269.80fa33f5
