The Decision Center for a Desert City at Arizona State University—funded by the National Science Foundation since 2004—conducts research relevant to water resources and urban climate dynamics under multiple uncertainties. This report summarizes and synthesizes research findings and achievements of DCDC after almost a decade of research and science-policy interactions. Water resource decision-making is complicated by climate change and variability, population growth and economic development, diverse stakeholder interests and fragmented governance. While these factors generate various uncertainties and complexities for decision-makers, DCDC pursues research to create a more sustainable future. The DCDC contributes to water management and urban sustainability by conducting basic science and collaborating with policymakers and stakeholders to solve real-world problems. As detailed herein, DCDC research, education, and community outreach have made substantial contributions to improving water-resource governance and climate adaptation.

Prior to developing and approving new ordinances that would further regulate sex- offender distance restrictions and clustering, the Phoenix City Council approved a study to examine the nature and impact of sex-offender clustering. Their overall goal was to use the study to fill in some important knowledge gaps about the issue of sex-offender residential clustering in order to inform the development of effective policy. To examine this issue on behalf of the city council, we relied on a multi-methodological research design. We wanted to incorporate information from several different points of view, giving policy makers a more comprehensive perspective from which to inform their decision making. For this study, we relied on four resources: official police data, offender interview data, citizen survey data, and key stakeholder interview data.

The Phoenix, Arizona Early Head Start program is a family-centered program providing early, continuous, intensive, and comprehensive child development and family support services for low-income pregnant women and families with children ages birth to three. Analyses were conducted of program and participant data and program processes from Year 3, the second full year of implementation. The program components evaluated were: (1) child development, promoted through weekly home visits, site-based socialization activities, and weekly play groups; (2) family development services, provided by family support specialists to develop effective, supportive relationships, especially with fathers; (3) staff development, incorporating a multi-disciplinary approach reinforced by a relationship-based supervision model; and (4) community building and collaboration, including connections with Phoenix's program for young fathers and other family-focused initiatives.

Evaluation findings suggest that the program is on the right track. Among the program's successes are the launch of all planned child development activities, increased services by and access to the child development/disabilities specialists, and progress made through the male involvement component. The program continues to face challenges, including increasing staff skills in child development and parent-child relationships, helping young parents adjust to dealing with toddlers, reducing disruptive effects of staff turnover, and making the program and participants visible and vital to other family-centered community endeavors and to policy makers. Recommendations for future operations were derived from the evaluation findings. (Contains 49 references.)

The study reported here was designed to examine the impact of background meteorological conditions on the propagation of noise from urban freeways in the Phoenix area. The aim was to understand and predict how sound waves emanating from highways respond to the vertical profiles of atmospheric temperature gradients and velocity shear, so that sound measurements can be interpreted with regard to the environmental variability.