The project Smarter Climate Information (SKI) aims to contribute to better knowledge and increased ability to adapt to climate change. SKI is a cooperation project of the Swedish Agency for Marine and Water Management and the Swedish Forest Agency, which has been funded with special funds for climate change adaptation from SMHI in 2018. The project has been based on the Swedish Forest Agency's existing satellite data management infrastructure. SKI has contributed to further development of the infrastructure with new functions for analysis and display of satellite data and made the infrastructure available to a larger group of Swedish authorities.
The project has also developed a new tool so that data from the infrastructure can be reached with QGIS, an open source geographic information system. This facilitates the use of data from the Swedish Forest Agency’s infrastructure or similar image servers for more users. It will also be easy for users to combine satellite data from the Swedish Forest Agency with other data sources, such as users' local data.
The experience from the project shows that access to an infrastructure such as the one used in the project is of great practical importance for many, perhaps most, of the users of the large amounts of data that are already provided by, among other, the European Earth observation program Copernicus. The report shows a number of examples of how these data can be used together with the SKI project's infrastructure to support climate adaptation and sustainable water and forest management.
A key in the project has been collaboration. The project teams at the Swedish Agency for Marine and Water Management and the Swedish Forest Agency have been supported by many colleagues who participated in internal steering and reference groups. An external reference group with experts from other Swedish authorities has contributed with user needs, ideas and suggestion for further developments. The SKI project has been driven by user needs. More long-term needs beyond the possibilities of the project have also been documented in a list that can be used by any continuation projects.