A Global Public Good to Eliminate Data Poverty
The IRI Data Library is a vital global public good that serves as a springboard for users worldwide to incorporate science-based approaches for climate conscious planning and decision making. The Data Library serves as a point of access and means of understanding vital climate and social science metrics for our continually changing world.
The Data Library offers free access to hundreds of high-value datasets and provides the tools and training to perform analysis and inform decisions. Gaining access to accurate and actionable data in planning, research, and governance empowers users to harness the information within data. It can revolutionize the way individuals and organizations approach their work. The Data Library compiles raw climate, geophysical, health and agriculture data from numerous providers and formats into a common framework that makes powerful cross-disciplinary research and analysis possible.
The climate, socio-economic, and geophysical datasets from the Data Library represent a compilation of sources and scales, available at different resolutions. Climate data includes historical and projected precipitation levels, sea, surface and air temperatures, and models, forecasts and simulations. Physical datasets include information on ice, hydrology, topography and oceanography. Socio-economic datasets feature information on population, disease incidence, food security, crop yields and energy use. Map Room mapping tools allow users to select and manipulate certain variables to create custom spatial visualizations of regions, timeframes, and subjects of interest.
The Data Library is unique in the breadth and depth of its data, as well as for its flexibility to serve as a platform for users to build up their own services and programs. Its underlying technology is being adopted by more countries every year as a platform to make their own information public and usable as agencies across the globe tailor new tools for analysis and visualization of data according to their needs and area of focus. From the analysis tools, to the Map Rooms, to the tutorials on the site, to its open nature upon which new platforms can be built, the Data Library tools make it easy for users to tailor information to meet the needs of their target clients, be they meteorologists, resource managers, farmers, government ministries or humanitarian agencies.