The sheer volume and richness of information and knowledge about climate change adaptation (CCA) and disaster risk reduction (DRR) are astounding. However, this knowledge is useful only if people can find the information they need – and if they can find information when they need it.
Significant knowledge gaps that remain do not necessarily represent a lack of knowledge, but a lack of the ability to find relevant knowledge. This situation impedes collaboration, creates redundancies, and leaves many people unsure about who is working where, and on what.
The Information Age transformed the potential for knowledge-sharing. Nevertheless, in practice, knowledge languishes across many Internet locations for example, research databases, institutional websites, waiting to be discovered. What can rectify this?
We argue the answers lie in how we communicate with one another, and how we use the technologies now at our disposal to connect work on these important issues. To that end, this brief advances the case for more considered knowledge-sharing practices, so that the information we have can be used to its full potential. This philosophy underpins two PLACARD outputs: the extension of the Climate Tagger thesaurus, to support knowledge sharing across the two communities; and the development of the PLACARD Connectivity Hub, which will link knowledge across key CCA and DRR platforms in a robust way.
