At CODE, we believe that climate change is the critical global issue of our time. While there is an increasing amount of data to show how our climate is changing, how it will impact the natural environment, and where it will put human lives at risk, we see a need for more and better data at the local and global levels to help communities build resilience and adapt to increasingly intense climate hazards. In 2015 we called climate change
“the ultimate data challenge.” We still believe that to be true. In recent years CODE has accelerated our efforts to identify and apply data to build climate adaptation and resilience.
In 2022 we began to address the “local data problem” in climate action. We believe that data for climate action must go beyond global measures of temperature change, sea level rise, or carbon emissions to include information on local infrastructure, socioeconomic disparities, and many other factors. In early 2023, CODE’s President Joel Gurin laid out our belief in the need for better climate-relevant data and our vision for a new knowledge network that would help countries apply local data using comparable strategies, resources, and tools.
We are now focused on projects to improve climate data across sectors, levels of government, and data types, while helping governments and organizations around the world share knowledge and best practices to build adaptation and resilience. We work on this issue both in the U.S. and internationally. We are also exploring the use of AI to develop new data sources and make climate-relevant data more accessible and applicable.
