Making Climate Resilience Real
Moving beyond “did you know?” to “what can we do about it?”
By Jim Fox, Director
When we started NEMAC over 12 years ago, we asked ourselves, “What data about climate and environmental issues are end users interested in, and how can we provide it in easy-to-access formats?” Our end users told us that the data we provide — no matter the kind or how it’s delivered — doesn’t really hold value unless it’s used in the right context. Listening to end users’ needs became a key element of our business strategy, and helped us formulate our mission statement:
Helping people understand — and reach decisions in — a complex and changing world.
Along the way, we found out that basic communication and education was necessary to answer questions like—
- How is climate different than weather?
- How do I know the climate is changing?
- Why should I care if it is changing — will it impact things I care about?
We also found out that people are interested in making decisions related to these questions, but it’s difficult to answer them unless and until we link the climate data and other pertinent information to a risk analysis framework.
Our decision analysis journey started under the leadership of Dr. Danny Lee, Director of the U.S. Forest Service’s Eastern Forest Environmental Threat Assessment Center, with the CRAFT (Comparative Risk Analysis Framework and Tools) framework.
Our work evolved through the development of sustainability metrics, interacting with sustainability officers to understand how end users really want to consume information.
It continued via our close collaboration with NOAA’s Climate Program Office in developing and managing the U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit.
We’ve continued to work with municipalities and regional councils of government, and last year formed a public-private partnership with the private firm FernLeaf Interactive to more fully move from analysis to action.
Today, more than ever, we think we’re on the right track. We have a growing number of clients and partners interested in taking action to build resilience across many scales.
At the landscape level, we continue to work with the Forest Service on a tool called LandDAT, and we’re starting exciting new work in partnership with the New England Landscape Futures Project.
Locally and regionally, we’re working with communities across the Southeast, starting here at home in Asheville and expanding to North Carolina’s Triangle region (including Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill/Cary) and down into Florida, working with West Palm Beach and Tallahassee.
Nationally, we’re expanding our work with the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, examining threats, assets, and exposure for all of the nation’s coastal watersheds.
Look for upcoming posts on all of these projects.
At NEMAC, it’s really important to us that the tools we build actually help end users do their jobs. To that end, we want to ensure that our products and services meet the three U’s:
- Is the application useful?
- Is the interface and interaction usable?
- Most importantly, is the final product used?
Why? Because that’s the best way to make sure that we are, in fact, helping people understand — and reach decisions in — a complex and changing world.
