PLACARD Connectivity Hub

PLACARD Connectivity Hub, a research and discovery tool that helps users find relevant knowledge and organizations working on climate change adaptation (CCA) and disaster risk reduction (DRR) issues. The Connectivity Hub aims to be a testbed for the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning techniques to produce new, policy-relevant insights. The Hub is designed to help planners, decision-makers, researchers, policymakers, students, and interested citizens who are trying to find information, organisations and people relevant to their work in CCA and DRR.

PLACARD, (the PLAtform for Climate Adaptation and Risk reDuction) created the Connectivity Hub, which is designed and led by the Stockholm Environment Institute. The Hub links data from several European and global CCA and DRR platforms, including:

• GRP’s Resilience Platform;
• Climate-ADAPT, the European Climate Adaptation Platform;
• PreventionWeb, the knowledge-sharing program of the United Nations Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR);
• Eldis, a knowledge-sharing platform on development issues, and BRIDGE, a specialized gender and development research and information service, both hosted by the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex; and
• weADAPT, the global climate adaptation platform and network of the Stockholm Environment Institute.

Despite the overwhelming wealth of information available in the Information Age, a significant gap remains between research, policy, and action. We continue to see many, separate and unlinked activities taking place in parallel and in silos that do not connect with one another. This lack of connection leads to wasted talent, energy, and opportunities. The Connectivity Hub has been created to generate synergies, open dialogues, and to foster collaboration and learning. The Hub is not a garden-variety search engine. Its design provides a highly visual, interactive, and comprehensive overview of knowledge on CCA and DRR, and links to the people producing this knowledge. Its searches rely on terminology and keywords that are carefully curated for CCA and DRR communities. Making these fine-tuned searches possible is a new PLACARD glossary that includes definitions of commonly used terms, which will inform new taxonomies for CCA and DRR. The glossary supports the discovery of new projects, organizations and individuals with key expertise. Thus, the Hub provides:

• Dynamic and interactive visualizations of organizations, activities, and information that bridge topic-specific CCA and DRR knowledge networks.
• Content (including articles, projects, and organizations) to help users find relevant evidence, expertise, peers, tools, methods, and good practice insights.