This book is the seventh volume in a series covering best practices in community quality of life indicators. The case studies and analysis in this volume demonstrate how community indicators projects today operate within a need to amplify the voice of disadvantaged communities, seriously explore the increasing use of information technology, produce positive community change and sustain these efforts over time. The work presented here spans North American and Australian community work and demonstrates how the field of community indicators has undergone a rapid evolution in only a few decades. Today as in their original formulations, community indicators projects are designed to gauge the social, economic and physical health and well-being of communities.

This volume continues the tradition now established since 2006, of compiling excellent research into the practice and application of community indicators in a single source volume. It focuses on the theme of the Community Indicators Consortium 2020 Summit, as a significant venue for the advancement of the practice and theory of community indicators work. It covers the conference's theme of “community resilience”, which is the capacity of all of a community’s elements to survive, adapt, and grow no matter what kinds of chronic stresses and acute shocks they experience. In keeping with the practical, “best cases” emphasis of this book series, the editors incorporate a case-based approach to chapters discussing how specific indicators, indices or series of indicators can lead to better decisions and outcomes to help communities adapt and transform in the face of challenges, helping them prepare for both the expected and the unexpected to sustain and improve quality of life, including technology and open source approaches to data sharing and data-focussed collaboration; evolving approaches that use shared indicators to improve overall community well-being and quality of life; research related to community indicators and policy, application, research, and/or practice; and techniques and approaches to measure resilience. This volume is of interest to social scientists, management professionals, social workers and policy makers working on various aspects of community indicators of quality of life and well-being. Chapter “The Cost of Sea Level Rise for the Island Community of Vinalhaven, Maine: Spurring action through collaborative data analysis” is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). For further details see licence information in the chapters.

The proposed book is a sequel to volume 1-4 of Community Quality-of-Life Indicators: Best Cases. The first volume, Community Quality-of-Life Indicators: Best Cases was edited by M. Joseph Sirgy, Don Rahtz, and Dong-Jin Lee and published in 2004 by Kluwer Academic Publishers in the Social Indicators Research Book Series (volume 22). The second volume, Community Quality-of-Life Indicators: Best Cases II was edited by M. Joseph Sirgy, Don Rahtz, and David Swain and published in published in 2006 by Springer in the Social Indicators Research Book Series (volume 28). The third and fourth volumes, Community Quality-of-Life Indicators: Best Cases III and Community Quality-of-Life Indicators: Best Cases IV, were edited also by M. Joseph Sirgy, Rhonda Phillips, and Don Rahtz and published in 2009 by Springer in the ISQOLS Community Quality-of-Life Indicators Best Cases Book Series (volumes 1 and 2).

This training book is designed to help professionals enhance their knowledge of community quality-of-life indicators, and to develop viable community projects. Chapter 1 describes the theoretical concepts that guide the formulation of community indicator projects. Chapter 2 creates a sample community indicator project as a template of the entire process. Chapter 3 describes the planning process: how to identify sponsors, secure funding, develop an organizational structure, select a quality-of-life model, select indicators, and so on. Chapter 4 focuses on data collection. Finally, Chapter 5 describes efforts related to dissemination and promotion of community indicators projects. Written by a stalwart in the field of quality-of-life research, this book provides the tools of sound community project planning for quality-of-life researchers, social workers, social marketers, community research organizations, and policy-makers.

Community indicators projects are plentiful. These projects capture the quality of life in towns, cities, counties, metropolitan regions, and larger geographic regions. Community quality-of-life (QOL) indicators are increasingly being integrated into overallplanningandotherpublicpolicyactivities.Thecommunityindicatorsproject reports are used not only in monitoring and evaluation applications but also in the context of increasing citizen participation in guiding communities towards achieving desired goals. This is the fourth book in a series covering best practices in community QOL indicators. Each volume presents individual cases (chapters) of communities at the local or regional levels that have designed and implemented community indi- tors programs. In Volume IV, we present nine chapters from a variety of contexts: cities such as the City of Phoenix (Arizona, USA), Jacksonville (Florida, USA), and Bristol (UK), suburban communities areas such as Long Island (New York, USA) and Sydney (Australia), larger regions such as Vancouver (Canada), and townships such as Sobantu (South Africa).

Community quality-of-life (QOL) indicators continue to gain attention and interest in their use as many communities and regions design and apply them. Evolving from early use as data systems, indicators are increasingly being integrated into overall planning and other public policy activities. Their use is found not only in monitoring and evaluation applications, but also in the context of increasing citizen partici- tion in guiding communities towards achieving desired goals. Indeed, the emphasis in many indicator applications now includes linking actions to outcomes – making sure that the indicators are integrated, useful and effective in helping communities address QOL issues. The use of QOL indicators to consider a full spectrum of c- munity and regional well-being is exciting and the focus on integration is certain to bring new and innovative applications to the forefront. This is the third book in a series covering best practices in community QOL indicators. Each volume presents individual cases (chapters) of communities at the local or regional levels that have designed and implemented community indicators programs. In Volume I, we present eight chapters from a variety of contexts – from the county level in the U. S. , to the large megalopolis of Sao Paulo, to looking at a cross section of communities throughout Europe. Also included are three chapters from Canada, a leader in applying community indicator systems.

This book is the sixth in a series covering bet practices in community quality-of-life (QOL) indicators. The cases in this volume describe communities that have launched their own community indicators programs. Elements that are included in the descriptions are the history of the community indicators work within the target region, the planning of community indicators, the actual indicators that were selected, the data collection process, the reporting of the results, and the use of the indicators to guide community development decisions and public policy. ​

This volume presents North American best practices and perspectives on developing, managing and monitoring indicators to track development progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in local communities and cities. In 4 main sections, the book presents and frames the many ways in which community indicator programs are either integrating or retooling to integrate the SDGs into their existing frameworks, or how they are developing new programs to track and report progress on the SDGs. This is the first volume that focuses on SDG adoption within the context of North Americans cities and communities, and the unique issues and opportunities prevalent in these settings. The chapters are developed by experienced academics and practitioners of community planning and sustainable development, and will add broad perspective on public policy, organizational management, information management and data visualization. This volume presents a case-study approach to chapters, offering lessons that can be used by three main audiences: 1) teachers and researchers in areas of urban, regional, and environmental planning, urban development, and public policy; 2) professional planners, decision-makers, and urban managers; and 3) sustainability activists and interested groups.

This open access book explores ways to leverage information technology and machine learning to combat disease and promote health, especially in resource-constrained settings. It focuses on digital disease surveillance through the application of machine learning to non-traditional data sources. Developing countries are uniquely prone to large-scale emerging infectious disease outbreaks due to disruption of ecosystems, civil unrest, and poor healthcare infrastructure – and without comprehensive surveillance, delays in outbreak identification, resource deployment, and case management can be catastrophic. In combination with context-informed analytics, students will learn how non-traditional digital disease data sources – including news media, social media, Google Trends, and Google Street View – can fill critical knowledge gaps and help inform on-the-ground decision-making when formal surveillance systems are insufficient.

The book seeks to demonstrate the ways in which collective impact approaches have guided the development of literacy coalitions over time. Since community collaboration strategies developed to address social issues, coalitions have grown from small networking organizations to powerful forces for change. The history of literacy coalitions offers a timeline outlining the why, who, what, where, when and how of communities that were influenced by social and political changes and the ways coalitions responded and thrived. The lack of literacy has held back economic development in the US and coalitions shine a light on issues associated with illiteracy and low school achievement. Not all coalitions succeed and the book explores models of success, funding strategies, evaluation and impact. The goal is to assist those developing coalitions by providing not only lessons learned but a blueprint for success.