To better build climate resilience, we must give data a voice 

The world is experiencing unprecedented economic impacts at the hands of weather- and climate-related disasters. Between 2010 and 2019, global losses from these disasters reached over $1.4 trillion. Our country has not been spared either: in the first half of 2023, the U.S. suffered 15 weather- and climate-related disasters that have individually inflicted $1 billion in losses. 

While our government continues to fulfill its obligation to help American communities respond to and recover from increasingly frequent and intense disasters, the ability to handle them is gradually stressed, to the point where federal agencies are running out of funding. 

The status quo is unsustainable, leading our country down a path toward empty coffers and rising seas. Fortunately, government agencies recognize the multi-sectoral impacts of these disasters and are shifting to more proactive approaches by building climate resilience, preparing to meet these challenges and recovering to the same state of well-being or better after the disasters. 

Our nation’s most efficient and effective way to approach climate resilience entails government agencies and other stakeholders working collaboratively to unlock the power of data and embed climate intelligence into daily operations via intuitive products. 

It is not just government agencies exhausting their resources to stay ahead of impacts of climate change. A recent examination of American households concluded that “climate hazards can cause income loss, increase expenses, and place additional burdens on American households’ savings, credit, and insurance coverage.” These impacts will be felt most keenly by the more vulnerable Americans, such as those living in low-income households or with access or functional needs. As climate challenges worsen and government resources are overtaxed, these populations will suffer the most. 

The good news is that federal agencies have an underutilized tool to build community resilience: increasingly abundant data sets and data products.  

Correctly deployed, these solutions can help citizens, developers, financial institutions and others understand the climate-related disaster risks to their property and to the infrastructure they use every day. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) clearly recognizes the power of data. In its 2023-2027 FEMA Data Strategy, FEMA expresses a need to transform its organization from a predominantly “reactive” analytical footing to a more “insightful organization” that uses its data to make future-forward decisions. 

However, as FEMA (and the federal government at large) grow their analytical capacities, they must not fall into the common trap of believing that “data speaks for itself.” 

We see this at work within the Climate Risk & Resilience Portal (CLIMRR), an excellent tool that provides users with local climate projections and presents them alongside key resilience factors such as age and income inequality metrics. While this tool is useful, it asks the user to bridge the gap between the resilience metrics and the various climate projections they provide. For technical audiences versed in climate science this is a safe assumption. However, for non-technical audiences, it’s less likely they can make the necessary connections between climate data (e.g., heat indices) and the potential effects (e.g., impact of heat to elderly in their community). Without these connections, even the most accurate, comprehensive data products fail to produce the ultimate mission outcomes. 

Ultimately, while more Americans than ever acknowledge the impacts of climate change, they need help understanding how it affects them. Unlocking data can create innovative ecosystems that go beyond agencies to other stakeholders, such as everyday citizens, and strengthen our collective approach to climate resilience. 

To adequately translate climate risk data for climate resilience action, data-driven solutions must possess three critical principles. 

Solutions must respect lived experience 

The greatest challenge to climate resilience may be “translating” climate risk information to resonate with audiences across the spectrum of the American experience. Communities are finding themselves exposed to increasingly severe — and, in some cases, new and fast evolving — natural hazards, and therefore cannot rely on their lived experiences or those of their neighbors to make the right decisions. In a world of uncertainty and greater skepticism of government institutions, providing climate information to communities in ways that respect their reality is critical to spurring action.  

Data-based approaches can also help agencies better understand the communities they’re trying to reach, providing insights that can inform everything from communication strategies to the identification of best-fit tools to support local climate resilience efforts. Data can help agencies act and share climate risks proactively, consistently and accurately — even if that communicates uncertainty about a given scenario — bringing more communities into the fold, and ultimately helping to foster climate resilience across the nation. 

Solutions must have a local context 

Climate change is often presented as a “big” problem. While this framing is used to convey the enormity of the issue, it makes it difficult for communities to grasp how it translates to the local level and what the localized consequences are. Leveraging and combining the many disparate federal datasets and building predictive models for forecasting local impacts can help make things “real” for the public.  

Being able to use analytics to transform broad statements like “highways in floodplains will be washed out” into “Route 10 between New Orleans and Baton Rouge has a 90 percent probability of being heavily damaged within next five years given current projections” will help communities contextualize the risk. The ability to provide this kind of information across multiple climate threat vectors, as some pilot programs are doing, will allow the communities to understand, prioritize and utilize their limited budgets effectively to plot their next steps toward resilience. 

Solutions must use the voice of data to lead to action 

Even after someone understands their risk, they may still be at a loss of what they should do next. Climate change has altered the range, frequency and intensity of natural hazards across the nation, and so it can be difficult to understand how best to prepare for them. In this case, the agencies may wish to pursue the use of advanced analytics, digital twins and AI-driven scenario planning tools to identify the optimal options. An example of this approach is developing community’s livability, workability scores and future projections by leveraging large volumes of data on weather, critical infrastructure and climate disaster risk.   

Climate change is here and now, and the challenges it presents are multiplying by the day. By developing comprehensive, localized data solutions that are engaging and equitable, government agencies can help craft a more effective approach to climate resilience. It’s crucial that we not only give data a voice but do it in a way that fosters a deeper understanding and spurs meaningful action. 

Prachi Sukhatankar, B.S., M.S., is vice president of climate and infrastructure at Booz Allen Hamilton. Gregg Bowser, B.A., M.A., Ph.D., is lead scientist at Booz Allen Hamilton.