Enhancing Interoperability Across Information Service Providers

ASAP connects and supports climate adaptation professionals, to advance innovation in the field of climate change adaptation. Through ASAP's website, affinity groups, webinars and meetings climate adaptation leaders interact, share what's working, collaborate with their colleagues and build essential climate resilience for communities across the country. As the lead-PI of the Resilience Ecosystem Interoperability Project, it is ASAP's role facilitate connections between information service providers and ensure the way that information portals are presented to practitioners and interact with each other benefits practitioners in the field.

To ensure a climate-resilient future, effective decision making is needed in every sector and at every scale. Key to effective decision making is actionable, relevant, and appropriate information. EcoAdapt's Climate Adaptation Knowledge Exchange (CAKE), Georgetown Climate Center's (GCC) Adaptation Clearinghouse, and the federal government's Climate Resilience Toolkit (CRT) are the adaptation field's key knowledge brokers. These web portals act as toolboxes for the diverse members of the resilience ecosystem (RE) by providing curated access to a wide range of resources and information. This project aims to examine these three platforms to identify key similarities and differences, build collaboration, and develop a plan for platform interoperability.

Adaptation professionals are often strapped for time, and ensuring they can quickly access the best available information is paramount. This project and its outcomes support the RE by providing clarity on the utility on the field's core platforms and enhancing discoverability of the best available information via platform linkages. In addition to helping the information seekers in the field, this project will also benefit the field's core knowledge brokers, allowing us to fine-tune our niches, work together to fill gaps, and cross-walk our services to reduce duplicative actions.

This presentation will highlight the initial findings of how these knowledge brokers interact, the draft resource matrix, and next steps needed for both short-term and long-term successful interoperability.