A Case Study of Community-Engaged Design: Creating Parametric Insurance to Meet the Safety Needs of Fisherfolk in the Caribbean

Abstract

The creation of the Caribbean Ocean and Aquaculture Sustainability faciliTy (COAST) is used as a case study of community-engaged design addressing safety needs. COAST is a parametric insurance product, sold to national governments, which was designed to meet the food and nutrition security of small- and medium-scale fisherfolk. The design of COAST is an example of convergence research, where the discipline of engineering was integrated with another discipline to solve pressing societal needs of Caribbean fisherfolk. This case study demonstrates that community-engaged design helps to (1) identify and include historically underrepresented stakeholders, (2) emphasize the importance of professional responsibility for project implementation, and (3) achieve long-term sustainability of the design (i.e., COAST has been renewed for a third policy year, 2021/2022).