General Approach
The Pileus Project focuses on the potential impacts of climate variability and change, and ways to make the most recent climate science operationally useful for stakeholders.
Over the course of the Project, industry leaders have pooled their expertise, shared data, and provided continuous feedback to help researchers to specify what climate information impacts their busineses, and refine the models so that can be translated into effective and useful climate information.
The general method integrates an end-to-end assessment strategy (diagram above).
Historical and projected future climate scenarios are sequentially linked to ecological, economic, and decision-making models. The individual models operate on a local spatial scale, but the economic simulations also take into account regional patterns and competing geographic areas via trade.
An important component of the methodology is the explicit estimation of the uncertainty surrounding the individual components of the assessment process. Output from the models is being incorporated into web-based risk management tools that will assist stakeholders in making climate-dependent decisions related to their industries.