A $500,000 federal grant will allow a group at Delaware State University to explore the potential for economic development in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Michael Casson, the director of the university’s Center for Economic Development and International Trade, and his students will survey the Virgin Islands’ geography to take an inventory of key environmental and agricultural resources. He says mapping assets in the islands is the first step towards developing an economic strategy in the future.
“Asset mapping is pretty much the foundation for strategic economic development planning. So as you can imagine, a municipality, a state, a country, a region will want to get a sense for what their resources, what their capabilities are as they move forward into a new comprehensive strategic plan,” said Casson. "So the asset mapping is going to give the stakeholders of the Virgin Islands a better understanding of those assets and resources.”
The project also builds on Casson’s previous work in analyzing economic potential in Kent and Sussex counties.
"There are some aspects of the economy [in the Virgin Islands] we can draw some comparisons to [with Delaware]. There's the potential for agriculture and they also have the tourism industry, but they have a lot of other potential resources out there as well that may not align as much with the resources here in the state," said Casson. "But I think in terms of focus and approach and methodology the work we do will be consistent there will be consistent with what we've done here."
The grant from the U.S. Commerce Economic Development Administration will fund the Virgin Islands project for three years, and Casson hopes to work on economic development there beyond that initial mapping phase.
