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| 30 Jul 2026 | |
| Data For the People (Podcast) |
By Lisa Le, Summer 2026 Digital Communications Intern, Data Foundation
When helping communities decide where and what to build in an era of evolving environmental risks, decision-makers need data they can trust. But as climate conditions change, the data used to understand and respond to those risks must evolve as well. As Emily Dhingra, Senior Project Manager for Climate Resilience and Adaptation at AECOM, noted during the 2026 Data Summit, “data that's even five years old can sometimes feel a little outdated” as communities face accelerating climate impacts.
From infrastructure design and permitting to insurance and investment, environmental and hazard data increasingly shape decisions about where risks exist, how those risks may change, and what investments can reduce future losses.
At the 2026 Data Summit, Leanne Spaulding, Resilience and Data Lead at the Environmental Policy Innovation Center, moderated a conversation on how better data can support resilience, environmental risk management, and growth with:
Together, they explored some of the biggest challenges and opportunities in using environmental data today:
Their discussion highlighted a central challenge: better data is essential, but data alone is not enough. Communities also need the tools, resources, and partnerships to turn information into action.
Their conversation has been edited and produced as an episode of Data for the People!, a podcast from the Data Foundation.
Data-driven resilience cannot only benefit communities with extensive staff and technical resources. Dello described North Carolina's Flood Resilience Blueprint as an effort to give communities across the state a shared foundation for making decisions.
North Carolina includes hundreds of incorporated and unincorporated communities with vastly different needs and capacities. Some communities have dedicated resilience teams; others may have a single emergency manager responsible for a wide range of responsibilities.
The Flood Resilience Blueprint aims to bring information about flood risks, critical infrastructure, and potential avoided losses into one place.
“We need to give all of those communities the same shot at a resilient future that the expensive, well-resourced communities have,” Dello said.
But data alone is not enough. Communities also need help translating information into action. Dello emphasized that many local leaders already understand their risks and are actively pursuing solutions.
“We need to dive in a little bit deeper with them,” she said. “We need to meet people where they are.”
That can mean engaging residents at community events rather than asking them to attend another formal resilience meeting. It can also mean supporting professionals who help communities navigate data, identify priorities, and move projects forward.
Giving every community access to resilience planning is only part of the equation. Communities also need reliable, up-to-date information to make informed decisions—and that is becoming increasingly challenging as environmental conditions evolve.
For Dhingra, one of the biggest challenges in using environmental data is that conditions—and the data used to measure them—are constantly changing.
Engineers and resilience professionals may need to consider data on everything from groundwater and geotechnical conditions to flooding, stormwater, air quality, and wind speeds. But that information may not be available at the right scale or may no longer reflect current conditions.
“You might have data that… is kilometers away or even more, and trying to figure out how to interpret that for something that's nearby,” Dhingra explained. “And as we see the climate changing and things accelerating, you know, data that's even five years old sometimes can feel a little outdated.”
That uncertainty can have real consequences for infrastructure projects. Dhingra described a coastal project involving an outfall pipe that had become increasingly blocked by shifting sand. When engineers revisited the original design, they discovered that newer wave data and updated FEMA modeling significantly changed the risk picture.
The project, initially expected to be a relatively simple extension, suddenly required additional analysis and a revised approach. The lesson was clear: using the best available data can introduce new complexity, but it is essential to building infrastructure that will last.
For Pagniez, data is central to understanding risk—and to making the financial case for resilience.
The insurance and reinsurance industry uses data to assess probabilities and quantify potential losses. Increasingly, that means combining historical information with climate data to develop a more comprehensive view of how risks are changing.
“Quantification is everything, especially when you wanna make a case for capital allocations,” Pagniez said. “Show me the money and the return on the money.”
Better data can help communities demonstrate how resilience investments may reduce future losses, support risk management, and potentially unlock capital. It can also help make environmental risks more understandable to individuals and communities.
Pagniez also highlighted the growing role of parametric insurance, which can provide rapid financial support when a predefined weather or climate event occurs. These products depend on transparent, independent data to function.
“Without that open public data, we wouldn't be able to design and to implement these products,” she said.
Across the panel, the message was consistent: better data is only valuable when it helps people make better decisions.
Dhingra emphasized the importance of tools that make data accessible and usable. Dello called for more funding to help communities move from data to implementation. Pagniez urged organizations already investing in climate risk data to make sure that information informs their insurance and risk management programs.
The future of resilience will depend on more than producing new datasets. It will require updating old information, improving access, supporting communities with limited capacity, and building the connections that help data move from analysis to action.
As Dhingra put it, working with environmental data is ultimately “a cooperative application of… the people and the data.” And as risks continue to evolve, that partnership will become increasingly important for building resilient communities and infrastructure.
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Want to watch other panel sessions or presentations from the 2026 Data Summit? Video recordings are available on the Data Summit event page.
If you enjoyed this conversation from our 2026 Data Summit, then you won’t want to miss our next big event: govDATAx, on September 15th at George Washington University. govDATAx brings together government leaders, data practitioners, policymakers, technologists, and researchers to advance the use of data for more effective, transparent, and accountable government. Learn more and register.
