The South West Climate Change Portal is a collaborative project between a regional university, two catchment management authorities and 10 municipalities in south west Victoria, Australia. This internet portal provides access to relevant and unique climate change-related information to support knowledge sharing among communities, agencies and regional organisations.

The portal has been developed with several key principles in mind: ease of access, intuitive navigation, novel visualisation of climate data, enabling ‘citizen science’ and community engagement, and interoperability (dynamically combining data from multiple sources). The portal combines both a spatial element, allowing geographic searching and filtering of data, and a thematic element, including climate change documentation and imagery.

Spatial information is provided as raster and vector layers representing the climate change impact on, and vulnerability of natural assets (e.g. waterways and soils). Simple layer comparisons and sliders are used to illustrate spatial and temporal variability of these assets across four timeframes (2030, 2050, 2070 and 2090) and two greenhouse gas concentration trajectories (RCP 4.5 and 8.0). Complementary spatial data (e.g. current 1 in 100 year flood mapping, administrative boundaries and infrastructure assets) are simultaneously visualised to provide insights for adaptation and mitigation planning and reporting. Thematic information includes single-source publishing of planning documents for addressing climate change.

Tools for crowd-sourcing data, imagery and other information, to encourage citizen science and build a community knowledge base to inform future planning and policy development are also incorporated.