Topic 7: Integration and coherence across CAPs

Background: The KE4CAP Synthesis Report

This topic page forms a chapter of the KE4CAP Synthesis Report, which brings together learning from across all KE4CAP’s activities (see Further Resources for links to relevant pages). The KE4CAP project is providing a global forum for developers and operators of climate adaptation knowledge platforms (CAPs) to come together to share knowledge and best practices, and to work together to address common and emerging challenges.

Introduction: Integration and coherence

Increasing integration and coherence across CAPs can help achieve greater individual and collective impact as platforms can focus on activities and content that complement and enhance activities rather than duplicate effort. Integrating CAPs to link relevant knowledge and data helps users to find the various resources, services, and support they are looking for more easily which is especially important for enabling (peer) learning across boundaries and geographies. Working closely together also provides opportunities for consolidation, validation and innovation.

Lessons Learnt

Current practices

Enhancing integration and coherence is taking place in various directions:

• Vertical integration. There are a number of examples of connecting national platforms to regional and local platforms domestically, and an increasing awareness of the value of working together at the transnational level by connecting national CAPs to international platforms.
• Horizontal integration when integrating across societal sectors, for instance when connections are established with knowledge infrastructure for health or with the financial sector, or, increasingly, when connecting with platforms in other domains, e.g., DRR.
• Content integration through targeted sharing of specific data and tools.

Selected innovations

The Dutch platform exhibits vertical (alignment with regional and local platforms), horizontal (multi-sector, inter-ministerial approach) and content integration (incorporation of the national climate impact atlas). The national climate impact atlas is also used as a common basis for developing subsidiary (connected) custom-made platforms for sector and government organisations.

A new feature of Climate-ADAPT is the European Climate Data Explorer which is an interface connecting to the EU Copernicus Climate Change Programme and allows users to select data based on relevant climate indices, time frames, regions etc.

The weADAPT team has developed a taxonomy for tagging knowledge on CCA and DRR, and a search and discovery tool – the Connectivity Hub – that demonstrates how such a tagging system can be used to connect related knowledge across multiple platforms.

Shared challenges

• Developing the networks of people critical to establishing platform connections. This is especially true for connections across regions and scales. Networks of people also underlie efforts to standardize information, further deepening connections across platforms.
• Recognizing and working across the diversity of platforms in terms of the differing levels of development, national interests, politics, cultures, and languages e.g, in the Asia-Pacific region, in Europe, and even within the borders for some countries. New or enhanced governance arrangements may be needed.
• Improving data interoperability.
• Enhancing integration and coherence in a coordinated way including establishing overarching coordination processes and allocating the resources required. Comprehensively evaluating datasets for instance takes skill and is time-consuming.

Explore other topics in the KE4CAP Synthesis Report

• Topic 1: Co-evaluation, learning and capacity development to drive platform improvement
• Topic 2: Supporting and Working with Local Users
• Topic 3: The role of CAPs in supporting monitoring, reporting, and evaluation of progress in adaptation
• Topic 4: Communications, knowledge brokering and stewardship to stimulate and enable action
• Topic 5: Integration of cultural knowledge, capacities and needs into CAPs
• Topic 6: Retaining relevance of CAPs in a fast-moving world
• Topic 7: Integration and coherence across CAPs
• Topic 8: Business models and value propositions for financing CAPs
• Topic 9: Quality assurance, credibility and usability of CAPs
• Topic 10: Platform architecture and technical development
• Topic 11: Governance of CAPs
• Topic 12: Social justice and equity

Return to the KE4CAP Synthesis Report homepage >