Robust Information Working Group
Background
The aim of the Robust Information Working Group (RIWG) and its associated task teams is to establish what it means for a scientific product to be “robust”, i.e., context specific regional climate information that is fit for informing decision-making; and what processes could look like to generate and apply robust information to produce “robust” decisions.
The Working Group is tasked to:
- Identify attributes of robustness of information
- Identify processes to generate and apply robust information
- Produce recommendations in the form of publications, community resources and presentations about what we need to change in our communities of practice, institutions and structures to allow for the achievement of robust climate change information geared towards context-specific decisions.
- Organize stakeholder and community engagement workshops, webinar series and trainings to advocate for robust information.
The work of the Working Group is underpinned by task teams to address a range of topics identified as in urgent need of deeper attention. The Working Group coordinates work across the task teams to synthesize the task team results and to liaise with the RIfS SSG as well as other relevant activities.
Task Team 1: Robust Information in Context
Robust regional climate information, that is fit-for-purpose for decision makers, needs to come from a mutual understanding of both the decision context, as well as the scientific context, and thus close collaboration between stakeholders and scientists is crucial. This task team focuses on improving the interaction between scientists and stakeholders in the context of providing climate information, and exploring methods for generating climate information in context. The aim is to improve our understanding of the collaboration process, develop new means of co-creation and build a community of practice to develop guidelines and standards towards integrity and utility of climate information, bridging the gap between for decision makers and climate scientists.
The expected outcomes of this task team are as follows:
- Identify potential case studies of decision contexts where climate information is valuable, which can be used to explore the process of co-creation and generating robust information in context
- Identify stakeholders who would be interested to contribute to exploring these themes, including climate service providers
- Organise and facilitate a stakeholder forum to explore methods for co-creating robust information for case studies
- Develop research methods (for example surveys) to capture data from this workshop
- Document insights for co-creating robust information in context
- Consider products that could support co-creation of information in context, for example a protocol for (informal or formal) conversations/engagements
Task Team 2: Attributes of Robust Information
The aim of this task team is to identify attributes for characterizing the robustness and fitness of climate information in various decision contexts, and to develop guidelines and recommendations for both the construction of such information as well as the assessment of the robustness of information by potential users. The attributes will consider not only epistemic attributes such as the reproduction of observed climatologies and trends or the representation of key processes, but also aspects related to stakeholder involvement, consideration of the decision context, ethics and transparency. The task team will therefore closely collaborate with the other task teams of the working group. The results of the task team are intended to be mainstreamed into the generation of climate information and climate services. To this end, the task team will, via the working group, liaise with relevant international and national activities. The expected outcomes of this task team are as follows:
|
Task Team 3: Ethics, Values, and Transparency
The task team may address questions of procedural ethics in this domain, the meaning of “transparency” and working with the Attributes Task Team to include markers of transparency among others, the incorporation of user-values into scientific methods, and to identify potential case studies on ethical oversight around adaptation actions.
Working Group Participants
Douglas Maraun | Co-chair | University of Graz, Wegener Center for Climate and Global Change |
Genito Maure | Co-chair | Eduardo Mondlane University |
| Monica Morrison | Co-chair | NCAR |
| Ana Maria Durán Quesada | Member | University of Costa Rica |
Elma Montaña | Member | Scientific & Technological National Research Council (CONICET) |
| Hideki Kanamaru | Member | Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) |
| Lucy Mtilatila | Member | Malawi Department of Climate Change and Meteorological Services |
| Pratik Kad | Member | Norwegian Research Center (NORCE) |
Rachel James | Member | University of Bristol |
Richard Jones | Member | UK Met Office Hadley Centre |
| Tiffany Shaw | Member | University of Chicago |
| Vaileth Masaba | Member | Tanzania Meteorological Authority |
| Alessandro Dosio | Liaison to RIfS SSG | European Commission Joint Research Centre |
| Dragana Bojovic | Liaison to RIfS SSG | Barcelona Supercomputing Centre |
| Wendy Sharples | Liaison to RIfS SSG | Australian Bureau of Meteorology |
| Bruce Hewitson | Ex-officio Member (and RIfS SSG co-chair) | University of Cape Town |
Please direct your questions to any Working Group member, or the RIfS IPO: admin@wcrp-rifs.org
The RIWG is preceded by an Interim Working Group that was established following an expert meeting on Robustness of Climate Change Information for Decisions in April 2024 [read more here].