Citizen Data & Digital Public Infrastructure for Climate Adaptation
About the Session
Climate change is experienced personally but responded to publicly.
A family navigates a flood. A farmer responds to drought. A neighborhood experiences extreme heat. A young person documents what is changing in their community. Through these experiences, people generate enormous amounts of knowledge about climate risk: what is happening, who is affected, which services are working, and where systems are failing.
Too often, that knowledge never meaningfully enters the systems making decisions about those same communities. Governments, funders, researchers, and technology companies may collect and analyze community data, while citizens themselves have little influence over how it is interpreted or used. Citizen-generated data offers a different possibility: communities become active producers of climate intelligence rather than simply subjects being measured.
But citizen data becomes far more powerful when public systems can actually use it. Climate adaptation requires governments to connect information across weather, disasters, health, demographics, infrastructure, land use, public finance, and lived experience. Today, those systems are often fragmented, inaccessible, or unable to communicate with one another.
Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) can provide the connective tissue. Open standards, interoperable data systems, geospatial intelligence, digital public goods, and carefully governed AI can help turn many different sources of information into better planning, financing, preparedness, and early action. The opportunity is to build infrastructure that connects what people know with what public institutions can do.
That creates important questions about power and sovereignty. Who owns citizen-generated data? Who determines what counts as evidence? Can communities see how their information influences decisions? And as AI becomes layered onto public data systems, can governments independently assess whether those tools serve citizens, set their own standards, and remain accountable when systems fail?
This session will explore what it takes to build climate intelligence from the community up: connecting citizen-generated knowledge with locally governed digital public infrastructure so that people, public institutions, and technology can work together to anticipate and respond to climate risk.
Discussion Group Leaders
Amy Coughenour Betancourt is CEO at Cadasta Foundation, advancing land and resource rights by equipping frontline organizations and communities with geospatial technology, tools, and training.
Charlene Migwe is Deputy Regional Director, East and Southern Africa at IDinsight, strengthening regional partnerships and evidence-driven approaches across development, technology, and financial inclusion.
Katrina Seidel is Chief Growth Officer at Vera Solutions, advancing technology solutions that help impact-driven organizations operate more effectively and efficiently.
Steve Ollis is Director, Data and Innovation at WEEMA International, advancing data-driven innovation that strengthens locally led development and community impact.
Mitali (Tali) Ayyangar is Director, Global Communities Program at DataKind, advancing practical uses of data and emerging technologies that help organizations and communities achieve more equitable development outcomes.
ElsaMarie DSilva is Founder at Red Dot Foundation, advancing safer and more inclusive communities by using data, AI, policy, and youth leadership to prevent gender-based violence.
Natalia Carfi is Executive Director at ODC, advancing open data, public innovation, and inclusive approaches to data governance.
What to Expect
A practical conversation moving between the person, the public system, and the climate challenge. Participants will explore how citizen-generated data and community intelligence can become part of the digital infrastructure governments use to understand risk and make decisions.
Perspectives from Asia-Pacific and across the Global South will ground a wider discussion about climate adaptation, community participation, interoperability, open standards, data and AI sovereignty, and how to build shared public infrastructure rather than another collection of disconnected technology projects.
Who This Is For
This session is for governments, community and civic organizations, climate and adaptation practitioners, development institutions, funders, technologists, citizen-data practitioners, youth organizations, digital public infrastructure leaders, and others working to improve how climate knowledge becomes public action.
What You Will Get Out of It
A framework connecting citizen-generated data with Digital Public Infrastructure for climate adaptation
Approaches to bringing community knowledge and lived experience into public climate decision-making
Ideas for connecting climate, disaster, health, demographic, geospatial, and public finance data
Perspectives on community data governance, data sovereignty, and AI sovereignty
Practical lessons for building open, interoperable, and locally governed digital systems that turn climate intelligence into action