The Vanuatu Climate Futures Portal is a Climate Information Services (CIS) portal, established to facilitate the development, dissemination and application of CIS among users in agriculture, infrastructure, fisheries, tourism and water sectors in Vanuatu.
The Challenge
Vanuatu’s climate is changing rapidly due to human-induced climate change, and it is already seeing the impacts through rising sea-levels, increasingly severe cyclones, extreme rainfall, and marine heatwaves. Easy access to climate data, information, decision support tools and associated knowledge products, in the form of Climate Information Services, is required in Vanuatu to raise climate awareness and guide decision-making for a range of key stakeholders in Vanuatu.
Partners
This project was a CSIRO Climate Science Centre (CSC) led consortium of CSIRO, NGIS and FrontierSI, and has developed the Vanuatu Climate Futures Portal as part of the project entitled Climate Information Services for Resilient Development in Vanuatu (Van KIRAP). The Van KIRAP project is funded by the Green Climate Fund (GCF) and administered by the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Program (SPREP).
The Solution
The Vanuatu Climate Futures Portal delivers comprehensive climate and non-climate related data and resources in the form of interactive geospatial mapping tools, technical reports and step by step hazard-based impact assessment guides. These resources are designed to provide the highest quality information needed to ensure Vanuatu is ready for a changing climate and has the adaptive capacity needed to protect communities and priority sectors, including agriculture, fisheries, water, infrastructure and tourism.
This portal helps planners and decision-makers to identify, generate and use climate information appropriate to their adaptation planning needs. To do this, the portal provides:
- Customised data mapping tools to explore future changes in climate and their potential impact on sectors.
- Case studies that summarise the key findings of the climate hazard-based impact assessment undertaken for selected sectors and topics.
- An 8-step guide to undertaking an impact assessment.
- Factsheets and explainers which explain the underlying climate driver, definitions and methods used for the climate hazard-based impact assessment.
- A series of explainer Videos for the case studies, step-by-step guide, portal navigation and other topics.
Impact
Vanuatu Government planners and decision-makers now have a comprehensive set of tools for visualising and planning for the future impacts of climate change, a first for the Pacific Islands region. Planning for the future, for activities like infrastructure projects, crop plantings and new tourism accommodation, can now factor in the impact of climate change from up to date climate models and information resources.
Contact
Please contact us at contact@frontiersi.com.au or connect with the Project Manager, Gavin Kennedy, at gkennedy@frontiersi.com.au.