Climate Change and Disaster Resilience

The biggest threat facing Earth’s diverse inhabitants continues to increase. The changes to Earth’s climate - wrought through over consumption and the continued burning of fossil fuels - are now resulting in frequent extreme events and disasters.

OGC and Climate Change

From hurricanes and floods to wildfires and droughts, the disruption of the equilibrium of Earth’s complex systems has moved the climate emergency from the realm of abstract warnings to real-world consequences.

The transition away from dirty energy sources remains frustratingly slow. As such, our strategy for survival has moved away from impact minimization to impact resilience. Such resilience will require simultaneously: a severe reduction of carbon output and removal of existing carbon from the atmosphere; the creation and adoption of data-driven strategies for survival that are informed by predictive models and current observations of the changing climate, weather patterns, water and food abundance, and the many conditions required for life.

While only a few of us are in a position to address the first prong, OGC is perfectly positioned to support the second: any piece of data concerning the climate can be tied to a location – whether it’s Sensor Data monitoring e.g. soil moisture, Earth Observation (EO) data from satellites in space, meteorological data, data concerning energy consumption, etc. – all of it concerns a place in space and time. Location data standards allow the easy integration of data about a specified place and time, no matter its source.

OGC is currently working on FAIR Climate standards, APIs, best practices, and guides that aim to make climate data Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable while utilizing the latest technologies, such as federated clouds, Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI), Climate Intelligence (CLINT), data cubes, and Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning (AI/ML).

CLIMOS

CLIMOS aims to assist mitigation of climate- and climate change-induced emergence, transmission and spread of vector-borne and zoonotic pathogens based on Eco-health and One Health approaches. This will be achieved by quantifying climate and environmental-related drivers of sand fly vector populations and the sand fly-borne diseases (SFBDs) across Europe. The project will provide an Early Warning System (EWS) and decision support frameworks for more accurate climate and health modelling, prognosis of infection risk and range expansions, and adaptation options. Socio-economic analysis and risk assessments will inform decision support providing social and cost-benefit evaluations. Towards these goals, an open access interactive CLIMOS online platform will be developed containing data on vector and SFBD species geography and up-to-date monitoring, climate, environment, and mathematical algorithms. The accompanying educational platform will enable evidence-based mitigation decision-making by social, environmental and financial stakeholders, public bodies and policy makers.

CLINT – Climate Intelligence

The main objective of CLINT is the development of an Artificial Intelligence framework (Climate Intelligence) composed of Machine Learning techniques and algorithms to process big climate datasets for improving Climate Science in the detection, causation and attribution of Extreme Events, including tropical cyclones, heatwaves and warm nights, and extreme droughts, along with compound events and concurrent extremes (see Box 1). The CLINT AI framework will also cover the quantification of the EE impacts on a variety of socio-economic sectors under historical, forecasted and projected climate conditions, and across different spatial scales, from the whole European to the local scale, ultimately developing innovative and sectorial AI-enhanced Climate Services. Finally, these services will be operationalized into Web Processing Services, according to most advanced open data and software standards by Climate Services Information Systems, and into a Demonstrator to facilitate the uptake of project results by public and private entities for research and Climate Services development.

DEMETER

The DEMETER Project is a large-scale deployment of farmer centric interoperable smart farming-IoT based platforms delivered through a series of 20 pilots across 18 countries (15 States in the EU). OGC’s role in DEMETER is to coordinate the pilots and facilitate the communication between pilots and work packages. DEMETER is funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 857202

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OGC and Disaster Resilience

Alongside Climate Change is the ever-present threat of disasters across the globe. Flooding, wildfires, mudslides, earthquakes, and other disasters are happening with greater frequency and impact. OGC stands ready for this challenge working with stakeholders across North America.

Learn about OGC Climate and Disaster Resilience

In the United States, OGC is also working with The US DoD, NGA, NSGIC, NOAH, NASA, NRCan, and industry experts to combat disasters through better preparedness and awareness. OGC Disaster Resilience sits at the center of this new approach that aims to enable first responders, operators, and other stakeholders to help improve the lives and safety of the continent through key technologies and interoperable standards.

Climate Resilience Pilot

The objective of this pilot is to accelerate our collective readiness for accessing, fusing and analyzing data from the climate change modeling community with earth observation and social science data to contribute to the global push for achieving climate resilience. Our goal is to develop a reliable foundation for decision ready data services for climate change adaptation actions. For this purpose, OGC members engaged in this pilot will develop a series of demonstrators that show the integration and combined exploitation of climate data, EO data, and data from the social sciences.

Disaster Pilot 2023

OGC Disaster Pilot: Apply spatial data sharing standards together with Web technologies and cloud computing so that the responsible stakeholders can work together wherever they are located, use relevant data wherever they are stored, and manage every phase of a disaster at any scale wherever it threatens. In a global, cloud-scale disaster information ecosystem, awareness of threats, vulnerabilities, and impacts can be fostered and shared through joint development of workflow recipes that integrate and transform analysis-ready observation and prediction data (ARD) into decision ready indicators (DRI). Indicator workflows, ready to run and adaptable to each situation, provide the guidance that the right people at the right time in the right place need to make decisions, take actions, and improve disaster outcomes.

Federated Marine SDI Phase 3

The third phase of the Federated Marine SDI Demonstration Pilot focuses on land/sea use cases. It extends the use cases developed in the second phase to add the Arctic region as a new location to the demonstration scenarios. Its overreaching scenario will demonstrate the technology and data used with OGC, IHO, and other community standards in response to a grounding event and the evacuation of a cruise ship or research vessel in the Arctic.

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To learn more about FAIR climate