A new ‘Environment Data Exchange’ is being launched to help businesses prepare for climate change.

Developed by The Digital Catapult, a national centre to aims to 'accelerate the UK’s best digital ideas', and environmental data organisation AMEE (Avoidance of Mass Extinctions Engine), the Environmental Data Exchange will launch on 20 March to provide businesses, researchers and members of the public with information on climate change in the hopes of enabling them to prepare for the future.

The online portal will pull together environmental data from sources including the World Bank, the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra), and the Department of Energy & Climate Change (DECC) to help people understand the risks that climate change can have on their organisations, and ‘unlock innovation and technological approaches that can address environmental issues and opportunities’.

By registering with the Environmental Data Exchange, users will be able to download and use the data as well as upload data sources and their metadata, and rate the datasets and comment on them.

‘Understanding the challenge is absolutely fundamental to driving innovation’

Tyler Christie, CEO at AMEE, explained: “There is a lot of pressure on the government, business community and the public, to reduce the UK’s environmental impact.

“Technology can make a huge difference – whether that is smart technology to reduce energy consumption or electric charging points to reduce our vehicle emissions. But if such innovations are really going to make an impact, the people and businesses developing them need to be able to access, analyse and draw from all environmental data.

“Understanding the challenge we are facing is absolutely fundamental to driving innovation and we are proud to be working with the Digital Catapult to help address this.”

Neil Crockett, CEO of Digital Catapult, added: “This platform will enable users to easily access, assess and utilise environmental data while collaborating with others. This could be an absolutely pivotal moment in the UK’s drive to reduce its environmental impact.

“When we formed the Digital Catapult, we made a public promise to help foster collaboration between all data stakeholders across all industries in order to unlock data challenges and accelerate great ideas to market. We believe the Environmental Data Exchange will do exactly this.”

The Environmental Data Exchange will launch at a ‘hackathon’ event ‘to empower developers to unlock innovation, value and new business approaches using environmental data’. The ‘hack weekend’ is being held at the Digital Catapult Centre from 20-22 March 2015.

This event aims to bring together a community of business officials, entrepreneurs and developers that will use the exchange’s datasets to develop ideas that can benefit business, such as understanding the effect weather can have on physical structures.

Futures Centre

This is the second such platform to launch in recent weeks, following on from the launch earlier this month of Forum for the Future’s online ‘Futures Centre’, a tool for collecting and ‘stimulating conversation’ about information regarding the potential business impacts of long-term trends, such as climate change and resource scarcity.

It is hoped that this platform will also allow business leaders to track trends, share resources and spot opportunities for sustainable innovation and collaboration.

Find out more about the Environmental Data Exchange.