Kelly Smith

Contact Information

My Story

Hi, my name is Kelly Helm Smith, and I was one of the original employees of the National Drought Mitigation Center when it was established in 1995. I started my working life as a newspaper reporter, and then worked in corporate public relations for several years. The newly forming drought center needed a communications person, and I joined in that capacity. Working at the drought center, which focuses on planning, as well as my longstanding interest in mediation and conflict resolution, led me to a master’s degree in Community & Regional Planning. That led to a six-year hiatus from the drought center, during which time I worked with Lincoln’s African refugee and immigrant populations on behalf of various faith-based and non-profit organizations. I had the very good fortune to be able to return to the drought center in 2006, and soon thereafter began focusing on drought impacts. After several years of being challenged by physical scientists to get past “anecdotal” narrative accounts of drought impacts, I did a Ph.D. focused on quantitative methods to detect the effects of drought, separately examining West Nile Virus cases in Nebraska counties, tweets, and crowdsourced drought observations.

Now my research centers on drought impacts and the diverse ways in which people in different sectors experience, describe and quantify the effects of drought. I am responsible for the Drought Impacts Toolkit (droughtimpacts.unl.edu ), including developing new, continuously updated datasets from news stories, Twitter, and crowdsourcing, and providing them as maps. These maps contribute to interpretation of climate data for the U.S. Drought Monitor. I lead a nation-wide effort to crowdsource photos and observations related to drought, working with state and regional partners to balance the need for central coordination with individual states’ different needs and resources (go.unl.edu/CMOR_drought). I frequently wonder what would happen if we harnessed the power of social media algorithms to promote human and planetary well-being.

As communications coordinator for the National Drought Mitigation Center, I supervise a staff of three, working with others throughout the center to convey information on drought monitoring, impacts and solutions. NDMC communications contributes significantly to the national discourse around drought, providing a consistent weekly interpretation of the U.S. Drought Monitor, with Twitter followers now over 9,000. As assistant director, I work closely with the director to implement communication initiatives and special projects, to represent the center in an official capacity when the director needs backup, and to handle an array of miscellaneous duties.

Note on having three names: It’s three names, no hyphen. Helm counts as a middle name, so alphabetize by Smith. The "Helm" is generally silent in spoken speech, but useful in publishing to be distinguishable from all the other Smiths out there.

Selected Publications

Background

Education

Affiliations

• National Drought Mitigation Center

Professional Organizations

Websites

• National Drought Mitigation Center (NDMC)
• Drought Impacts Toolkit

SNR Program Areas

• Applied Climate and Spatial Science

Areas of Interest/Expertise

• Drought impacts
• Climate impacts
• Crowdsourcing
• Big Data
• Drought signal
• Automated text analysis

Grants

Currently this page only displays grants that were awarded on 1/1/ 2009 to the present. If a grant was awarded prior to 1/1/ 2009 and is still active, it will not be displayed on this page.

Advising