From Climate Risk to Readiness: Activating Environmental Data
As climate change makes extreme weather events more frequent and severe, communities need to understand and respond to changing risks. For government and community leaders, this means access to critical meteorological, scientific, and environmental justice data about what the threats are, and who is most affected. The Public Environmental Data Partners (PEDP) and The New York Climate Exchange are hosting a half-day workshop on Monday, September 21, 2026, during Climate Week NYC, focused on improving environmental data access for emergency preparedness in a changing climate.
At this interactive, envisioning workshop, participants will explore how we might improve public access to environmental data and tools with the goal of powering more effective and equitable emergency preparedness and response, and helping communities build climate resilience. We'll gather input from experts in disaster response, state and local planners, environmental justice organizations, researchers, environmental health practitioners, technologists, risk analysts, and others on their data and data infrastructure needs.
Since early 2025, PEDP and The Exchange have been working to safeguard and improve access to federal environmental data. This includes PEDP’s collaboration with data users to re-design critical tools like EJScreen, the Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool (CEJST), and the Homeland Infrastructure Field-Level Data (HIFLD Next). At the same time, The Exchange has been working to identify and improve access to large climate datasets critical across sectors including research, finance, and public and community planning.
With environmental emergency planning and climate resilience as our lens, conversations will focus on:
what public environmental data is available today;
how different groups are accessing and using this data to make decisions;
what gaps exist;
what improvements could be made; and
how public data systems might be better stewarded to support sustainability and usability.
Insights from this workshop will inform tool building and future data infrastructure work by PEDP, The Exchange, and partner organizations.
Participant stipends and limited support for participant travel is available on an as-needed basis. Capacity is limited and participation will be capped at approximately 40 attendees. We welcome any suggestions for additional participants or perspectives that should be included in the conversation.