Our Work

Baseline information on climate change and its impacts are sorely lacking for the Toronto-area, as well as Ontario more broadly. Through projects like Marble, we are scaling up to address critical data gaps and provide better information and tools for data scientists, decision-makers, and the public. We are also developing tools such as the Flood Data Equity Project to catalog and assess current information availability in order to help guide future research. 

Through collaboration with the City of Toronto, Balance for Blind Adults, stand.earth, and the Canadian Red Cross, the Toronto Climate Observatory’s network of scholars and experts undertakes targeted and on-demand research projects to address specific needs of our communities. We draw on our participation in global research networks to bring best practices and emerging approaches, such as ensuring social equity in climate risk modeling, to bear on the most important climate challenges facing the Greater Toronto Area. 

We are creating the necessary relationships and technologies to involve the public in co-production of climate change knowledge. Our work is informed by practices as diverse as human-centered design, citizen science, oral history, and the arts. We prioritize understanding and meeting the diverse information needs of people who are often left out of climate change planning, such as grassroots activists, people with disabilities, mobility justice organizers, and tenant organizations. 

The impact we seek to have on the Greater Toronto Area and the field of climate informatics overall requires building new relationships and training the next generations of scholars and practitioners. Through courses like the Toronto Climate Summer School and events like the Toronto Climate Researcher’s Meeting and the Ontario Climate Risk Workshop, we are helping to create a new community of practice needed to support our region navigate a path towards a just climate transition.