Cal-Adapt: Data Explorer - Supporting California’s Ambitious Energy Transformation
Project Update
This agreement held its kick-off meeting on January 14, 2026. Steps are being made to set up the Technical Advisory Committee and to examine the needs for updated and novelly innovated visualizations and tools.
The Issue
Prior EPIC funding built a powerful foundation that aligns data architecture with extensive data developed to support energy sector resilience. Based on this foundation, new visualizations and tools will be developed in order to bridge the gap between user data literacy and the technical capacity analysis on the Cal-Adapt: Data Explorer. This evolution focuses on an integrated design philosophy that connects intuitive visual tools with advanced analytics, seeking to provide accessibility for both new and expert users. By streamlining user engagement and co-producing scientific tools with key stakeholders, the project aims to help users interpret climate outcomes in a manner that is relevant to California’s electricity system.
Key updates will include a user interaction/ user experience (UI/UX) overhaul and the ability to export underlying code for reproducible, "open-source" research. Ultimately, these enhancements seek to prepare California’s climate infrastructure for emerging technologies such as AI while providing the actionable data needed for critical energy and policy planning.
Project Innovation
Project Goals
Project Benefits
Through co-production with energy-sector partners, researchers, and policymakers, development will be responsive to emerging science and evolving resilience challenges. By enhancing transparency, interoperability, and preparing Cal-Adapt for future integration with AI and machine learning workflows, this project will enable California’s energy planners and communities to access actionable, high-quality climate information, directly supporting the state’s statutory energy and climate adaptation goals.
Consumer Appeal
The new tools and visualizations provide clear, easy to use insights into multiple, overlapping climate hazards all in one place—making it simpler to understand risks and plan confidently. A more intuitive design and flexible, modular build helps turn feedback into new features faster, ensuring that the tools remain both scientifically robust and effortless to apply in real-world decisions and into existing modeling and planning tools.
Environmental Sustainability
Providing open access to climate-information projections, visualizations, and tools empowers utilities, individuals, communities, and organizations to utilize the best available science to inform decision-making on public health policy affected by climate. The data provided through this project could be leveraged for further understanding of fire weather mitigation, heat awareness for workers, smoke inhalation, and more.
Reliability
By providing tools and visualizations that utilities need for their planning processes, this project supports understanding of how the energy sector, including renewable energy, is affected by climate and the potential of co-occurring events and thus supports utility policy decisions to ensure ratepayers maintain reliable energy for the foreseeable future.
Key Project Members
Subrecipients
Match Partners
