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The Climate Connectivity Taxonomy helps people find climate and disaster-risk knowledge across platforms without treating different communities’ terms as interchangeable. It links concepts and content while preserving context about how adaptation and disaster-risk reduction practitioners may use related words differently.
What the Climate Connectivity Taxonomy does
The Climate Connectivity Taxonomy is a collection of climate-change and disaster-risk terms, definitions, synonyms, scope notes and relationships. It powers the Climate Connectivity Hub, a search-and-discovery tool intended to connect research, projects, organizations, expertise, tools and methods across climate adaptation, mitigation and disaster-risk reduction.
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The problem it addresses is fragmentation: useful work is spread across platforms and may be described with different keywords. By mapping terms and content, the Hub aims to make related knowledge easier to discover and support interoperability between platforms. These are intended contributions, not evidence that the tool has measurably improved climate outcomes.
The distinction matters because adaptation and disaster-risk reduction can operate in separate policy spheres, institutions and funding systems, with different technical languages. Finding a relationship between two terms does not mean their meanings are identical, or that every member of a field uses the same vocabulary.
#1 Best Overall
How it preserves differences in meaning
The taxonomy links related concepts and provides definitions and scope notes to help users interpret them in context. For example, “adaptive capacity,” “coping capacity” and “preparedness” are related terms, but they are not interchangeable; they can reflect different perspectives and approaches to climate and disaster risk. Notes about usage help users follow those connections without flattening the distinctions.
This is useful when someone searches across fields: a term that appears familiar may carry a narrower or different emphasis in another discipline. The taxonomy’s purpose is not to force everyone onto one vocabulary, but to make connections visible while showing where meanings diverge.
How the taxonomy was built
The development approach combined established terminology, review of existing knowledge structures, computational assistance and expert input. The seed taxonomy drew on the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report glossary and the UNDRR–International Science Council Hazard Information Profiles. The team assessed climate- and environment-related knowledge structures, mapped their terms and metadata, used automated methods to suggest and connect terms, and had experts review candidate terms and mappings. Where definitions overlapped, the paper says the team preferred IPCC definitions.
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1Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitches2Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errors3Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteThe study reports the scale of this workflow: Bharwani, Williamson and Wangrat assessed more than 35 climate- and environment-related knowledge structures, selected 15 for further analysis and mapping, and processed 35,891 projects and articles using language-model tools. These are counts of sources and material handled in the described workflow—not counts of taxonomy entries, users or demonstrated benefits. The peer-reviewed paper describes the methods and their limits.
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What changed in the 2026 update
A TIB announcement dated 7 October 2026 says the Hub’s August 2026 update added concepts addressing gaps in data, communication and governance. It also added scope notes for cases where actors or disciplines use the same term differently. The announcement described a “submit new concept” feature as planned; it does not establish that the feature has launched.
The open-access API for version 1 was released in June 2025, according to the TIB announcement. The peer-reviewed paper describes the taxonomy as a resource intended to evolve through later releases.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Who may find the Hub useful
The Hub is aimed at people looking for useful work across climate mitigation, climate adaptation and disaster-risk reduction—especially when relevant information is difficult to find because it sits on different platforms or uses different terminology. The Stockholm Environment Institute frames the central questions as how practitioners can find information to understand which measures do or do not work, and how they can learn from one another across disciplines and geographies. Its project overview explains the Hub’s purpose.
For a reader comparing knowledge platforms or vocabularies, useful criteria include the provenance of terms, whether definitions and scope notes are provided, how experts review machine-assisted suggestions, whether an API is available, and whether the vocabulary accounts for differences between disciplines. The taxonomy’s approach combines these elements, but continuing work is needed on accuracy, relevance, diverse-language interpretation, richer relationships and gaps in domain coverage.
Best Value
As Sukaina Bharwani, Senior Research Fellow at the Stockholm Environment Institute’s Oxford Centre and lead author of the study, put it: “Supporting interoperability between platforms is a step towards building on existing knowledge, instead of reinventing the wheel, enhancing peer-to-peer learning and accelerating climate action,”
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