NOAA Promotes Climate Mapping Tool for Better Resiliency Planning - Engineering News-Record

NOAA Promotes Climate Mapping Tool for Better Resiliency Planning | Engineering News-Record

Dr. Richard Spinrad, administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration hopes building owners, insurers, local officials and other federal agency heads use NOAA's Climate Mapping for Resilience and Adaptation website at resilience.climate.gov to make decisions about climate related to their building and infrastructure projects.

Available since September, CMRA links hundreds of Esri basemaps with NOAA and other federal government data about climate risks across the U.S. such as heat hazards, sea level rise predictions and tools for site and community assessments that users can run their own plans through. Spinrad offered an in-depth presentation of what the tool can do at the Esri User Conference in San Diego July 11.

The U.K. Met Office's Chief Technology Richard Beverly also was on hand to show off a similar web portal the U.K. government has made available.

"Ultimately, it’s our job to boil the information down to decision support. We’re really in the business of solution support," Spinrad said at the press conference.

While NOAA is a part of the U.S. Department of Commerce, Spinrad said the entire federal government is being encouraged to use CMRA for construction decisions. The site was developed by GIS technology giant Esri through a contract with NOAA using funds from 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Data for the site comes from sources including the National Weather Service, NOAA's climate models and drought.gov website as well as from FEMA.

Information on past, present, and projected future climate conditions will be regularly updated with the latest data, Spinrad said. NOAA is also working to make the CMRA information available in format that's focused on the insurance and reinsurance industries.

The U.K. Met Office web portal went online in late June, and Beverly said the agency is already seeing engagement with U.K. decision makers.

"It brings together standard predictions with impact predictions," he said. "The way we help people make those decisions is good data and updating it."

Spinrad echoed that sentiment and said NOAA would strive to keep the data behind CMRA as up-to-date as possible even with changing scientific predictions. Both NOAA and the Department of Commerce, he said, are big believers in open data but Spinrad said NOAA would make sure the data is rigorous enough to keep CMRA relevant would continue to be maintained by the agency.

"We know things change, it’s a moving projection, you’re going to see a lot increased capabilities in the social sciences piece," he said. “If we’re doing this right, [users] are not necessarily using the data, they’re using the information and intelligence that comes from the data.”

Esri President and Founder Jack Dangermond said there are 350,000 Esri customers that make decisions related to development of one type or another in government, insurance and construction ownership and need accurate climate data. He compared the ease of using CMRA to the Johns Hopkins COVID-19 map portal, which was also an Esri ArcGIS basemap.

"The scale of granularity most need is there, it goes down to the census tract level," he said. “People are using CMRA in these communities, it’s going to be really relevant."