NGIS, FrontierSI and the CSIRO are among the organiations behind the Vanuatu Climate Futures Portal, designed to deliver information for managing climate change risk.

Built on Google Cloud Platform, the platform was unveiled in November 2023 as part of the Climate Information Services For Resilient Development In Vanuatu by CSIRO and the Secretariate Pacific Regional Environment Programme.

NGIS published an article about the platform in late December 2023.

The Green Climate Fund and the South Pacific Regional Environment Programme are also behind the portal.

The portal provides customised data mapping tools to explore future changes in climate and their potential impact on sectors.

A visualisation tool allows users to select climate variables, greenhouse gas emissions pathways, time periods and locations to generate customised maps and datasets.

It includes data about air temperature, rainfall, marine heatwaves, sea level rise and coastal inundation.

The portal's include global and regional climate projections (at varying spatial scales) for multiple climate hazards including rainfall, temperature, sea level rise, tropical cyclones (including extreme winds), marine heatwaves and ocean acidification, CSIRO announced in November.

The information will help inform adaptation, planning and support decision making for agricultural, infrastructure, fisheries, tourism and water industries.

The goal is to make “critical climate information readily accessible to decision-makers in government, industry and local communities” to “help inform adaptation planning and support decision-making for agriculture, infrastructure, fisheries, tourism, and water industries”, according to NGIS.

For example, the agriculture sector can use the portal to explore future scenario that account for uncertainty in future greenhouse gas emissions and natural climate variability, and interact with climate variables separately.

The coastal inundation mapping tool aims to make it easier for engineers to assess risks for existing and proposed roads to inform maintenance and planning, the NGIS announcement stated.

The tool can provide “high-resolution sea-level models for climate change compliance assessments on new and existing road infrastructure.”