Projects

Openclimate.org uses projects as a mechanism to advance the community. Many of the charter members of the community have worked in project-driven development of scientific software and scientific research. They have served as project managers. The use of projects as a strategic element recognizes the value of applied research; that is, product-driven versus discovery-driven research. The projects support the goal to solve actionable problems on an accelerated time scale.

There are two distinct types of projects. There are projects that focus on the development of infrastructure to support efficient integrated research. There are projects that focus on scientific research. Openclimate.org recognizes that software development and community based climate science are intertwined. The new actors coming into the climate change community include businesses, resource managers, researchers, educators, students, and scientists. Indeed, given the reach of climate science through all of society, all from the informed citizen to the highest levels of corporations and government have a need for climate knowledge. Scenarios of these new types of problems provide concrete examples of how these problems differ from the customary problems of climate science. It is crucial for the data and methods used in these problems to be documented and available to the public. It is essential that the performance of the tools and results of the research be validated and this validation to be documented. We anticipate the need for development of environments that support development of infrastructure and the execution of research.

Human Heat-Health Warning Systems

We are developing new methods to use environmental data to diagnose and predict heat events that are a danger to human health. This environmental information will then be combined with data that represents the built environment (that is, the cityscape) and the vulnerability of people to heat stress (see Figure). The goal is to combine these three sources of information to develop an optimal, verifiable system for heat wave warnings that can be widely and transparently implemented.

We seek to bridge the fields of public health, meteorology, and climate prediction. We aim to contribute to development of policy and strategies to adapt to extremes of environmental heat and mitigate the public health impact of that heat. (more on Heat Wave Project)