Introduction

What is the Cal-Adapt: Analytics Engine?

The Cal-Adapt: Analytics Engine is an open-source, publicly accessible data platform developed by a team of academic, technical, and policy experts to provide California’s energy sector and other users with tailored analytics and metrics for actionable decision-making. The Analytics Engine outputs support vulnerability and risk assessments, infrastructure design specifications, California’s Climate Change Assessment and other data-driven processes.

The Innovative Approach

The Analytics Engine team co-develops industry-specific climate data and decision-support tools tailored to the electricity sector. Through curated conversations and working groups with users and decision-makers, the team ensures that the data and tools are directly applicable to real-world challenges. This co-development process leverages an interdisciplinary team with expertise in climate science, data management, and electricity sector engagement, brought together through a public-private partnership including Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, UCLA Center for Climate Science, Geospatial Innovation Facility, Spatial Informatics Group, Energy and Environmental Economics, Inc., and Eagle Rock Analytics.

Developing the Cal-Adapt: Analytics Engine

The Cal-Adapt: Analytics Engine enhances the use of climate data for climate resilience planning in the electricity sector and supports California’s Climate Change Assessment research. The development approach for the AE includes:

1. Creation of an open and transparent data platform architecture,
2. Deployment of a computing sandbox for the co-generation of resilience analytics, and
3. Provision of guidance and learning opportunities for users to encourage widespread platform adoption.

Ultimately, the platform continues to generate downscaled climate model data at 3km, 9km, and 45km spatial resolutions and hourly and daily temporal resolutions to facilitate more effective analytical applications in the electricity sector.

Project Benefits

• Actionable climate data that supports decision-making for resilience planning.
• Collaboration and coordination among electric utility staff, researchers, scientists, practitioners, and platform developers.
• Comprehensive projections and metrics with broad potential applications.
• Flexible analytical tools allowing users to conduct nuanced analyses of climate data for specific sectoral decision-making processes.
• Tailored guidance to help users find the most relevant data and analysis for their needs.
• An open platform offering reliable and trustworthy data and tools, curated by multidisciplinary experts.
• Opportunities for users to contribute to the development of the platform.
• Opportunities for electric utilities to integrate Analytics Engine outputs with existing and past sector research.