Report: NASA/NOAA/OSTP Climate data user study | 25.4.2016

Many groups — including federal agencies, state and municipal governments, private-sector organizations, and educational groups — should use climate-change information in their planning and long-range decision making. In January of 2016 and building on the work of several federal studies on climate information, 18F was commissioned to investigate the behaviors and patterns of climate-change planning and make recommendations for how the federal government could make its climate-change data easier to use and act upon.

18F conducted interviews and prototype tests with municipal analysts, science translators, and private-sector planners. 18F identified ways the federal government could encourage them to incorporate climate change data into their planning processes.

They found:

1. Most analysts’ processes contain the same four stages: the motivating event, considering whether to partner with a science translator, either working with a science translator or making do with other resources, and taking action.

2. Most analysts we observed planning for climate change don’t rely on federal government data or resources.

3. Analysts need climate-change data tailored to their location and context.

4. Science translators are interested in tools that help them meet the tailored needs of municipal managers.

5. Analysts need a diversity of data sets (and tools to view them), but finding the right one for their needs is hard.

18F recommend, first and foremost, to focus on providing locally relevant data sets (and basic tools for accessing them). They also encourage agencies to pursue an ecosystem approach: make climate-data websites interoperable to enable audience-specific finding aids and improve search engine results. They conclude that we should only consider building a single portal for climate data after creating locally relevant tools and enabling data interchange.

Download the report from here.