Using open data thesauri to connect climate platforms

Climate change is the greatest challenge of our time, spanning countries and continents, societies and generations, sectors and disciplines. Yet data and information on climate issues are still too often amassed in closed silos, restricting the development of crucial knowledge for climate decision makers. A group of more than 150 knowledge brokers have responded to this challenge by joining forces to start linking their climate platforms via a.) forming a Community of Practice (the "Climate Knowledge Brokers Group" and b.) developing tools based on open data to make it simple to connect the content of individual platforms. One of these tools is the "Climate Tagger", a tool utilizing Linked Open Data Thesauri (such as an expansive Climate Thesaurus developed by experts in fields ranging from climate mitigation and adaptation to economy and green growth) to scan, sort, categorize and enrich climate and development-related data, improving efficiency and performance of knowledge management systems.

We strongly believe that semantic technologies and open data (ie. in the form of open data thesauri and ontologies) are key factors to connect information and knowledge in the climate sector. Using open data to increase consistency in language and allow links between related documents (across languages and platforms) provides those who are affected by climate change as well as decision makers in the field of sustainable development access to accurate and timely knowledge on climate related issues.