About weADAPT
Launched by SEI in 2007, weADAPT has become one of the world’s leading and longest-running user-led platforms and networks for climate change adaptation. Uniting over 7,000 users and nearly 5,000 organizations globally, it fosters learning, collaboration, and knowledge exchange in adaptation research, policy, and practice.
On January 22, 2024, weADAPT unveiled a cutting-edge version, enhancing co-learning, sharing, and connectivity within the adaptation community. The fresh look, innovative technological features, and new eco-design empower users to utilize weADAPT in bigger, better, and greener ways.
The upgrade is part of weADAPT’s efforts to continue to co-develop the platform to ensure that it is an up-to-date and dynamic space to help accelerate urgently needed action on climate change adaptation, while remaining inclusive of multiple voices and knowledge types. The longstanding mission of weADAPT to be a ‘go-to’ source of information on adaptation remains unchanged. But the new technologies allow us to better respond to evolving user needs, create more connections, and provide access to more people and organizations around the world.
weADAPT Today
weADAPT aims to build a professional community for research and practice on adaptation issues while creating policy-relevant tools and guidance for decision-making in adaptation planning. Currently the platform offers a plethora of resources divided in three main directions depending on what the user seeks:
Learn: Visitors on weADAPT can access the whole platform for free to learn about key climate-adaptation related issues. They will find articles, blogs, events and courses. The Maps of Case Studies allows users to explore who is doing what and where in the realm of adaptation to climate variability and change.
weADAPT is designed to bring information to its users in an intelligent and personalized way, organising information under themes, networks, categories, and using linked tags (or keywords) to integrate our collective knowledge in meaningful ways. The upgraded site improves weADAPT’s responsiveness to users’ needs and interests. They can now also access trending topics, bookmark content to read later and access it in their language of choice (out of over 100 to choose from).
Share: Registering on weADAPT is free and easy. Once registered, users can add and share information about their organization, latest project, reports, open access journal articles, case studies, upcoming events, blogs, courses and other relevant information. The content uploaded will be co-developed with weADAPT’s knowledge management team into digestible syntheses and then reviewed by our network of editors to ensure relevance, clarity and quality.
Connect: Based on users’ profile description, interests, and the work they publish, weADAPT links them with new knowledge and other climate adaptation professionals, helping them to find and connect to people doing similar work. They can follow and send direct message to other users, post comments and use forums to ask or answer questions, share announcements and reflections within the weADAPT community.
Green and low internet connectivity settings
weADAPT and its microsites are eco-conscious in their approach to web design. The aim is to reduce energy consumption across the site, while also providing benefits for users in remote locations who require a lower bandwidth digital experience.
For example, a central feature of the upgraded site includes the option for users to select the ‘dark mode’ and ‘low quality image options’.
Other components of our sustainable web design include reviewing the choice of assets and media on the site, such as images, to ensure they are optimized and add value, and reducing all unnecessary characters to improve processing time.
Vision for the future
As both a local and a global issue, the urgency of climate change adaptation efforts requires collaboration and learning across different geographies and scales of planning and implementation. weADAPT is pivotal in building adaptation knowledge, empowering connections, and fostering collaboration among individuals and organizations worldwide. Continued growth, investment, and funding are imperative to ensure the expansion and influence of knowledge sharing on adaptation.
Going forward, weADAPT aims to become the world’s main online space for learning about climate adaptation, supporting actors around the world – big and small – in their mission to accelerate policy and action on climate adaptation. We are continually exploring news ways to innovatively connect the climate change adaptation knowledge landscape and bring these cutting-edge approaches to our users. We hope the platform’s new features, developed as part of the upgraded site, will offer even more opportunities for learning, sharing, and connecting across sectors and geographies.
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You can download the full Platform’s Story here.