Abstract
The third National Climate Assessment (NCA3) included goals for becoming a more timely, inclusive, rigorous, and sustained process, and for serving a wider variety of decision makers. In order to accomplish these goals, it was necessary to deliberately design an information management strategy that could serve multiple stakeholders and manage different types of information - from highly mature government-supported climate science data, to isolated practitioner-generated case study information - and to do so in ways that are consistent and appropriate for a highly influential assessment. Meeting the information management challenge for NCA3 meant balancing relevance and authority, complexity and accessibility, inclusivity and rigor. Increasing traceability of data behind figures and graphics, designing a public-facing website, managing hundreds of technical inputs to the NCA, and producing guidance for over 300 participants on meeting the Information Quality Act were all aspects of a deliberate, multi-faceted, and strategic information management approach that nonetheless attempted to be practical and usable for a variety of participants and stakeholders.
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Notes
Legal reference: Global Change Research Act of 1990, 15 U.S.C. §§ 2921–2961: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/USCODE-2011-title15/html/USCODE-2011-title15-chap56A.htm
In lieu of a consolidated NCS, regional climate services have increased extensively in several USGCRP agencies
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Acknowledgments
This paper is an assessment of the information management process associated with the NCA, however the Global Change Information System project included many key contributors and a wide variety of input. While it is not possible to name all of the GCIS contributors, those who played critical roles include: Anna Pinheiro Privette, April Sides, Steve Aulenbach, Andrew Buddenberg, Glynis Lough, Robert Wolfe, Brian Duggan, Justin Goldstein, Angel Li, RPI Tetherless World Constellation staff, NEMAC, Habitat Seven, the GCIS Interagency Working Group, the NCADAC, and the staff of both the NOAA Technical Support Unit and the USGCRP Coordination Office.
This work was partially supported by NOAA through the Cooperative Institute for Climate and Satellites — North Carolina under Cooperative Agreement NA14NES432003.
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This article is part of a special issue on “The National Climate Assessment: Innovations in Science and Engagement” edited by Katharine Jacobs, Susanne Moser, and James Buizer.
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Waple, A.M., Champion, S.M., Kunkel, K.E. et al. Innovations in information management and access for assessments. Climatic Change 135, 69–83 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-015-1588-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-015-1588-7