Led by the Urban Informatics Lab at IIHS, our goal in this work component is to synthesize existing secondary and pubic data on climate hazards in our fourteen cities, and see how this data can be spatially read against forms of vulnerability.

Three questions drive our work:

(a) what does it mean to layer data on heat or floods, for example, with indicators of economic, social and spatial vulnerability?

(b) how can this data – at such a “big” scale usually – talk to people about their neighbourhoods, or their part of the city, rather than feel distant? What can we say about climate and health data at settlement and neighbourhood level, at the local instead of the planetary?

(c) how can risk and vulnerability data translate from the technical to the everyday language and common understanding? How can the data shift public discourse rather than remain a product of expertise and experts?