The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy has launched the Partnership for Resilience and Preparedness (PReP) initiative, a new public-private collaboration which aims to increase the accessibility of climate data that can help communities and businesses to successfully adapt to climate change. Seventeen organizations are part of this collaboration, including: NASA, NOAA, DOI, ESRI, Amazon, Google, IBM, WRI, FutureEarth, and ESRI. The PReP initiative was launched on September 22^nd, 2016 at a kickoff event co-sponsored by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, U.S. Department of State, and World Resources Institute. The event highlighted how the new era of data availability will make actionable information more accessible for climate resilience planning.

PReP recognizes that the limited availability and accessibility of climate data have constrained the ability of decision makers across the public and private sectors to understand and effectively plan for climate change. Even when data are available, visualizing and translating these data into actionable information remains difficult. PReP is intended to bridge this gap between data and decisions.

The beta version of the PReP data portal features a dashboard with data from the Climate Impacts Group’s (CIG) report State of Knowledge: Climate Change in Puget Sound. The CIG dashboard’s interactive graphs illustrate the projected regional changes in precipitation, air temperature, and streamflow. These data have been used by local, state, and national agencies and organizations to increase the capacity to adapt to climate change. More information can be found in the report. In the next developmental phase of PReP users will be able to create and share their own dashboards, which can include collections of locally relevant data and graphs.

In addition to the dashboards, the PReP data portal also includes a data visualization tool which enables users to interact with and share many different Federal datasets. Users are able to compare, combine, and upload data on a wide variety of topics ranging from coasts to transportation to energy. This tool also enables users to develop graphs and maps specific to their own geographic area of interest. The hope is that this portal will leverage existing tools and facilitate climate data sharing across sectors and spatial scales.

The Climate Impacts Group will continue to monitor PReP as it transitions from the beta version into the pilot phase of the program. Over time, we hope that the PReP tool will help CIG share our data more broadly.