Future Risk Index tool has been rebuilt, but won’t be able to collect new data that may be vital to understanding impacts of climate change
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Back in January, a tool was silently removed from the US government’s website. Known as the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) Future Risk Index tool – a critical means of identifying impacts of climate change – the Trump administration wiped it away, with no official prior warning.
Such a move could have spelled the end for vital sources of data from multiple federal agencies such as NOAA, NASA and the ESA. But it didn’t.
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Thanks to a tip-off, two individuals – Rajan Desai and Jeremy Herzog, both employees at consulting firm Fulton Ring – were able to collect important screenshots and download data from the tool before it was shut down. According to Desai, the pair believed ‘this could be one tangible way to actively fight the destruction that’s happening at the federal level right now.’
The Future Risk Index included data on the effects of climate change, and how those hazards could increase in severity and frequency over time – up to the mid-century. In some of its predictions, the tool suggested sea levels could rise by more than 8 feet, and global temperatures could be 3 degrees Celsius hotter on average.
Now, this data – and more – is available to access for free on their Github, but with one drawback: while data is now preserved that the government already gathered, there is no ability to update it as new evidence emerges or changes.
On top of this, the ability to discover new data remains hampered through even more cut backs from the Trump administration. Since January, more than 200 Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) have lost their jobs, and it is expected up to 1,000 NOAA staff could face the same fate. As such, concerns are now being raised over the private sector – including individuals such as Desai and Herzog – taking on the workload that was once being performed by these individuals.
Despite their work, Desai and Herzog say that a lot of data has still been lost, including details on methodology. As well as this, some information was even censored as they tried to access it – and that’s not even including the wealth of knowledge that now-fired employees could once share.
‘Even the best efforts that people are doing to archive this data, there’s so much information that’s lost,’ said Desai. ‘There’s more information that’s in people’s heads that is just not documented, and we’re never going to know what that information loss looks like.’
As well as trying to preserve the Future Risk Index, other individuals have also taken it upon themselves to ensure other data sets, web pages and tools from government websites are not entirely removed in the wake of particular information being taken down by the Trump administration. This includes a tool known as a EJScreen – which measures air quality in South Memphis – that allowed scientists to monitor air pollution in neighbourhoods.
