Improving data and information exchange in the chain of climate research, impact research, to policy making

It is all too often difficult for a stakeholder to obtain an overview of available climate and impact data, judge their quality and the assumptions behind or how uncertainties are taken into account. This implies a serious limitation in the sense that stakeholders risk to miss crucial information, misinterpret what they obtain and base complex decisions on non-consistent data.
As part of the Knowledge for Climate programme a project was initiated in which we attempt to integrate information and data on climate change and its impacts in a similar way for a number of sectors (climate, hydrology, ecosystems, agriculture, land use) among others through a web portal and integrated data sets on climate change and its impacts for the Netherlands. An important research question is “How can this data and information be made consistent across location, disciplines and applications?”
The approach followed includes among others the following aspects: 1) stakeholder consulta-tions, 2) generation of data on climate change and impacts for a predefined and limited num-ber of combinations of climate scenarios and spatial scenarios and time horizons, 3) overview of interactions, exchange of data, inconsistencies, ways of handling uncertainties, etc. for the various disciplines.