The Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) yes­ter­day launched a new on­line plat­form called the Cli­mate Adap­ta­tion and Re­silience Por­tal (CARP), which aims to keep cit­i­zens abreast of cli­mate-dri­ven changes im­pact­ing T&T.

In a news re­lease yes­ter­day, the NGC said CARP was de­vel­oped with the sup­port of Coastal Dy­nam­ics Ltd, and us­es Ge­o­graph­ic In­for­ma­tion Ser­vices (GIS), ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence and pre­dic­tive mod­el­ling to map and chart cli­mate-re­lat­ed risks such as sea lev­el rise, coastal ero­sion and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and mar­itime alerts. The por­tal al­so al­lows users to track tem­per­a­ture and pre­cip­i­ta­tion, tidal in­for­ma­tion, air qual­i­ty, de­for­esta­tion, and even ac­tive ad­verse weath­er alerts.

Oth­er fea­tures such as best prac­tices for adap­ta­tion from around the world, me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal of­fice fore­casts, a cli­mate adap­ta­tion and re­silience news feed, and link­ages to oth­er GIS sys­tems show­ing glob­al trends, make CARP a com­pre­hen­sive re­source for cli­mate in­for­ma­tion and de­ci­sion sup­port, the NGC said.

Speak­ing at the launch func­tion at the Hilton Trinidad and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre, NGC pres­i­dent Mark Lo­quan, said he was proud at the launch of this por­tal.

“Even as we push for mit­iga­tive cli­mate ac­tion, we need to recog­nise there are some im­pacts of cli­mate change that we may not be able to avoid. We there­fore need to be­gin con­ver­sa­tions around adap­ta­tion and re­silience. CARP will al­low us to ig­nite and fu­el such con­ver­sa­tions.

“It is not enough to ad­vise cit­i­zens of how our world is chang­ing—we need to en­cour­age and equip them to proac­tive­ly pre­pare for that fu­ture. Our longterm sus­tain­abil­i­ty is ul­ti­mate­ly a func­tion of how well we can ac­com­mo­date change,” said Lo­quan.