The Merrimack Valley Planning Commission has worked as the designated facilitator for the Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness Program in six of our fifteen member communities since the program’s inception. In Andover, Lawrence, Methuen, Merrimac, North Andover and now Rowley, MVPC has helped communities identify strengths, weaknesses, and priority actions to address resiliency issues concerning climate change.

Traditionally, the public engagement workshops required by the MVP planning process were conducted in person. However, when Rowley received a $15,000 MVP planning grant this past February, it was uncertain how the planning process would proceed given the coronavirus pandemic. MVPC’s GIS and Environment departments had been experimenting with Esri’s storymap technology as a way to increase engagement in the MVP planning process since Merrimac’s MVP work in 2019. It became clear that the storymap technology would be instrumental in the success of Rowley’s now completely remote MVP planning process at the height of the pandemic.

The Rowley MVP Storymap is an interactive platform on which documents, external links, surveys, images, and maps are compiled for participants to review, mark up, and annotate to share their thoughts virtually. The platform enables workshop participants to rank and vote on priority actions, which communities are then eligible to apply for funding to address.

Rowley’s experience was highlighted in the Resilience Works October Newsletter and illustrates best practices that the State of Massachusetts — in a new toolkit for remote and virtual meetings — recommends for other communities that face the dual challenge of eliciting input from community members and enforcing physical distancing. For more information about the storymap or MVPC’s facilitation of the MVP program, don’t hesitate to contact us!

Access the storymap with the link above, or visit our Interactive Maps page.