Taking an Equity-Grounded Approach to National Engagement though NCEI Projects

Climate change is impacting every sector of the economy and is threatening the prosperity of the United States. Industries are working to adapt and build resilience, from how they source and move their goods to how they plan their infrastructure investments and operations and support climate vulnerable communities across the country. NOAA plays a crucial role in rapidly connecting industry to accessible, contextualized, and useful data to support its decision-making and protect billions of dollars in investment in the United States.

Through funding provided by the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) is leading the Industry Proving Grounds (IPG), a multi-million dollar effort to radically improve the delivery and industry uptake of climate data. Through the IPG, NOAA is helping key sectors of the U.S. economy–architecture and engineering, re/insurance, and retail–make climate-smart investments and build resilience. By integrating users at every stage of the service delivery model, from identifying user needs to rapidly prototyping and launching new products, the IPG is iteratively co-developing capabilities industry is asking for.

Through both the IPG and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) funding, NCEI is taking targeted action to build authentic relationships and use equitable engagement strategies to empower climate vulnerable communities. The authoritative, free datasets and products NOAA provides are a crucial resource to underserved communities across the country who have limited resources to invest in climate resilience. However, many of these toolsets are designed for technical end-users and are not easily accessible to the general public and the communities that could benefit most from using them. The IPG is taking a customer-first approach that focuses on creating a seamless experience for technical and non-technical users alike who want to access and use NOAA data. Concurrently, the Supporting Climate Resilience Planning and Innovation (SCRPI) project led by NCEI’s Regional Climate Services program is piloting a regional strategy to understand the most pressing concerns underserved communities have about extreme precipitation, and incorporate that input into the development of next generation products. This talk will explore how the IPG and SCRPI project are approaching engaging with underserved communities to ensure NOAA data is useful, usable, and used.