Dr Nandini Ramesh

Dr Nandini Ramesh (CSIRO Data61) received her PhD in Ocean and Climate Physics from Columbia University and previously held positions at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Sydney. She studies large-scale tropical climate phenomena, including El Niño/La Niña events and monsoons, using data-driven and process-based modelling techniques.

Innovation Title:

The Agrifood Systems Climate Explorer (ASCE) for Samoa: An Interdisciplinary Platform for Climate Resilient Food System Planning

Abstract:

Food production has always been heavily dependent on climatic factors, and a changing climate poses significant challenges to nations’ ability to sustain food security. Policymakers working in the agrifood system context require relevant data from a variety of disciplines, presented in accessible and usable forms, in order to design and implement interventions that meet these multifaceted challenges.

Through a human-centric design process, we developed a model for data integration across a range of sources including climate projections, demographic census data, and agricultural information to support evidence-based decision-making in the context of agrifood systems. The result is ASCE: a lightweight, customizable, web platform for visualizing geospatial patterns of climate risk tailored to the food systems of the Pacific region. This project pilot has been co-developed with the government of Samoa, taking into account the unique characteristics of the local climate, governance, and food system. The core features of ASCE can be adapted to support policy planning across a variety of contexts to bolster climate resilience.

The ASCE was developed by CSIRO, the Australian National University, and the Samoan Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, with the support of the Pacific Community (SPC) and the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT).