Location
The Grove Arcade
One Page Avenue, Suite 116
Asheville, NC  28801
828-225-6575

Contact
Jim Fox, Director
828-301-2075
jfox at unca.edu

Susan Weatherford, Project Manager
828-250-3890

Overview
RENCI at UNC Asheville opened in 2007, expanding RENCI’s virtual organization into the western reaches of North Carolina. RENCI at UNC Asheville works closely with teams at the anchor site in Chapel Hill and with groups in western North Carolina, including the City of Asheville, Buncombe County, the Land of Sky Regional Council, NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center, the USDA Forest Service and the Forest Service’s Southern Research Station, and the Asheville Hub, a collaborative economic, cultural, community, sustainable development effort for Asheville and Buncombe County. The RENCI at UNC Asheville engagement center has a dual focus: 1) on disaster research, mitigation, and preparedness, taking advantage of Western North Carolina’s expertise in weather and climate modeling, visualization, and public outreach, and 2) spurring local economic development.

Although Asheville is hundreds of miles from the coast, hurricanes that move into the area from the Gulf Coast, as well as other severe storms, often bring torrential rains to this area. During the 2004 hurricane season, heavy rains caused severe flooding that overwhelmed local watersheds and infrastructure and resulted in seven deaths. Since then, community groups, UNC Asheville, NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center, and local businesses have organized to develop high-resolution, near real-time weather models that can be used to plan for, and respond to, future natural disasters.

RENCI at UNC Asheville leverages and accelerates these ongoing efforts and helps to foster economic development, especially in the environmental technology sector.

Partners
University of North Carolina at Asheville (UNC Asheville)
Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College (A-B Tech)
University of North Carolina at Charlotte (UNC Charlotte)
UNC Asheville’s National Environmental Modeling and Analysis Center (UNC Asheville’s NEMAC)
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Climatic Data Center (NOAA’s NCDC)

USDA Forest Service and Southern Research Station
North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR)
City of Asheville

Buncombe County

Town of Black Mountain
Economic Development Coalition of Asheville-Buncombe County
Land-of-Sky Regional Council
Asheville Hub
Media Arts Project
 (MAP)
North Carolina Center for Geographic Information and Analysis (NCCGIA)

Education and Research Consortium of the Western Carolinas (ERC)
 Broadband
Resource Data, Inc. (RDI)
Meet the Geeks (MTG)
Applied Visualization Lab (AVL)
The Elumenati
RiverLink
The North Carolina Arboretum
Colburn Earth Science Museum

Links
RENCI at University of North Carolina Asheville
University of North Carolina Asheville (UNCA)
UNC Asheville’s NEMAC