Reflexive climate service infrastructure relations

Abstract

Exploring existing climate knowledge infrastructures as the important backbone of service endeavours, the authors analysed how climate knowledge infrastructures are organised, how (far) they take into account the 'end user', and how processes of data infrastructure governance function. Following these themes, we first catalogued and mapped relationships of organisations involved in the climate data infrastructure value chain and conducted interviews with representatives of some of the mapped organisations in order to corroborate the literature research and obtain additional insights. We suggest viewing climate service infrastructure in the four dimensions of instrumentation, information, communication, and service infrastructures. We argue that success or failure of climate services will be determined, firstly, by the ability to view and practically embed users as integral partners in the co-construction of climate services rather than treating them as 'external factors' (cross-boundary reflexivity). Secondly, we argue that it will be crucial for the growth of the climate service market, and therefore wider societal resilience to pay more attention to communication and service infrastructures intersecting. This may take in multiple ways with instrumentation and information infrastructures (infrastructural reflexivity) in the sense of a "value network" (not simply a value chain) given all the fluidity of the service infrastructure.