During New York Climate Action Week, CrisisReady at the Harvard Data Science Initiative and NYU GovLab co-hosted Global Digital Public Goods for the Climate Crisis at 444 Madison Avenue in Manhattan. NYU’s Center for Urban Science + Progress joined as a co-organizer. Speakers were Dr. Satchit Balsari, Andrew Schroeder and Stefaan Verhulst.
Hurricanes, floods and heat waves keep taking lives, damaging infrastructure, displacing families and threatening livelihoods. Communities now have more data on these risks than ever, from satellites, sensors, crowdsourcing, AI weather forecasting and earth-science models. But better technology on its own doesn’t lead to better decisions or more resilient communities.
The first half of the session covered lessons from building digital public goods, with the teams behind FloodNet, the HeatReady API and ReadyMapper. Speakers talked about how remote sensing, crowdsourcing and AI can help communities identify climate risks, anticipate hazards and assess the resilience of the built environment. They also covered what has worked, what is still hard, and how global datasets can complement local knowledge.
The second half turned to closing the gap between data and action. It looked at the funding, governance, stewardship and decision frameworks digital public goods need to drive public action, along with accountability, access, sustainability, local capacity and social legitimacy.
The guiding question: how can institutions and governance structures help digital public goods lead to better decisions and, ultimately, better and more equitable climate outcomes?
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