About CLIMsystems
CLIMsystems designs, develops and markets advanced, user-friendly software systems for assessing impacts and adaptation to climate variability and change. CLIMsystems offers software licenses, training, services and customised model developments to a range of national and local governments, planners, educators, students, international agencies, private consultants and companies in order to meet their needs for addressing climate risks. We strive to provide reliable, user-friendly products and services that remain at the forefront of developments in the field.
We achieve our goals through world-class research and an ever expanding array of strategic alliances. We seek to build alliances and engage in joint ventures with organisations that are concerned with climate change and which can expand their horizons and ours through collaboration. We are currently working with a range of clients, including for example, CH2M Hill, AECOM, SKM, Manidis Roberts, Danish Hydraulic Institute, Climate Planning Pty, and an array of Universities around the world. Contact us at management@cimsystems.com if you would like to discuss collaborative ventures and opportunities for linking your software products with one of the world's most powerful climate change risk and adaptation assessment software packages - SimCLIM.
History
CLIMsystems was incorporated on 14 April 2003. The Directors of the Company are: Richard Warrick (Chairman of the Board); Peter Urich, Wei Ye, Thomas McClunie and Subramanyan Kanakasabapathy.
CLIMsystems and the SimCLIM software system have evolved from a research-based program called CLIMPACTS that began at the University of Waikato in Hamilton, New Zealand.
1993 to 1995
The CLIMPACTS program began in 1993, with funding from the New Zealand Government, and continued for 14 years. The program was led by the International Global Change Institute (IGCI) at the University of Waikato and involved collaboration with other research organizations based in New Zealand. From the outset, the focus of the program was on the development of the CLIMPACTS model system, designed to examine, in a spatial and temporal context, the sensitivity of the managed environment to climate change and variability.
In developing CLIMPACTS, the 'game plan' was to gain confidence in the ability to assess biophysical effects of climate change and variability on agriculture, and then to turn attention to other sectors and the human dimensions of change.
One of the main aims of the CLIMPACTS program during the 1990s was to develop the capacity for multi-scale spatial and temporal analyses both nationally and sub-nationally, and at individual sites. As envisioned, this capacity would extend to the functions for generating scenarios of climate change, as well as to impact and adaptation analyses based on those scenarios. These functions provided the foundation for later models. For example, with the spatial mode, one is able to generate 'time-slice' comparisons of spatial changes in climate means (yearly, seasonally, or monthly). With the site specific mode, one is able to generate projections of changes in climate variables or perturb existing time-series data (monthly, daily, or hourly).
Through the 1990s a complementary regional-scale capacity for spatial analysis was subsequently developed within CLIMPACTS for New Zealand applications. Detailed land data and vector files (e.g., roads and property boundaries) could also be imported into the system for spatial overlays which are important for impact assessment and planning. The spatial resolution, currently at a 100 m grid, is much finer than that of the national-scale model, but the range of modeling capabilities is similar.
A site-specific modeling capacity was also developed within the early CLIMPACTS system. While non-spatial, this capacity allows for the inclusion of time-series data and more in-depth analyses, especially as regards variability and extremes, both in terms of climate itself and its present and future impacts.
An extreme event analyzer was also developed that allows the user to fit a generalized extreme value (GEV) distribution to observed (and perturbed) extreme values from daily or hourly time-series data. This function allows the user to estimate the return periods of extreme events and their exceedance probabilities. The extreme event tool is especially valuable for supporting risk-based assessments of impacts and adaptation.
1995 to 2001
Over the period 1995-2001 the CLIMPACTS model structure was "cloned" for other problems and to other geographical settings and countries. The relatively simple, end-to-end structure was especially appealing for the purpose of developing, in the first instance, a platform for assessing the first-order, biophysical impacts of climate variability and change upon which more sophisticated tools could be added. Some examples of these extensions include: the model OzCLIM, developed for Australia in collaboration with the CSIRO Division of Atmospheric Research; BDCLIM, developed for examining climate change and flooding in Bangladesh, with funding from the Ford Foundation; and VANDACLIM, a training tool developed initially for the United Nations Institute of Training and Research. These and some other "clones" that were built on the core framework of the CLIMPACTS system.
2002 to Today
The original CLIMPACTS model was envisaged as a tool for bridging science, policy, and planning. Evolution of the model system should thus be driven by end-user needs as well as by science, and should be created in a manner accessible to planners and policy makers. With these principles in mind, steps were taken, beginning around the year 2002, to create the "next-generation" model. The aim was to build on the existing functionality of CLIMPACTS and to nudge it into being an active support tool for evaluating options for adapting to climate variability and change.
In order to increase the flexibility and the accessibility of the system to a wider range of users, a generic "open-framework" structure was developed. The new system was re-named SimCLIM. The open structure of SimCLIM and its interfaces allow users to define geographical boundaries and spatial resolution, enter spatial data and downscaled GCM patterns, import timeseries climate data for sites, and attach "SimCLIM-compatible" impact models. In effect, with the open-framework structure SimCLIM has made significant strides in providing a modifiable system that can be put in the hands of analysts, planners, educators, and decision makers, and customized to meet user needs.
Improvements were thus made to allowthe incorporation of geo-referenced demographic, land-use, and infrastructural data, and to explicitly link them to biophysical impacts arising from climate and sea-level variability and change.
Sea Level Rise
In many parts of the world, like the Asia-Pacific region with many small islandstates and heavily populated coastlines, issues of sea-level variations and change are a major concern. For scenarios of change, the vast majority of coastal impact and adaptation assessments conducted within such regions have simply used the global-mean values of future sea-level rise. Regional variations in the rate of rise (due to regional differences in the rates of oceanic thermal expansion and dynamic atmospheric and oceanic effects on sea level, as projected by coupled atmosphere-ocean GCMs (AOGCMs)), as well as local factors such as vertical land movements as they affect relative sea level, were excluded. Generally, there has been a lack of methods for generating locally relevant scenarios of future sea-level change. To fill this gap, a sea-level scenario generator was developed for SimCLIM that takes account of all three components of sea-level change - global, regional, and local.
Impact Model Linkages
Improvements were made in SimCLIM to expand the capacity to attach or link various models that are forced by climate variables for the purposes of impact and adaptation assessment. For example, collaboration with DHI has led to a DHI-compatible version of SimCLIM that interfaces directly with DHI data files. This development allows the suite of DHI hydrologic and hydraulic models to be run under scenarios of climate change in a seamless manner. Similarly, there is a new DSSAT-compatible version of SimCLIM that allows DSSAT crop models to be run under SimCLIMgenerated scenarios. Optional 'plug-in' models can be installed and registered by users depending on their requirements; for example, there are plug-in models for coastal shoreline change, domestic water tank systems, degree-day calculations, and atmospheric water balance. The concept is to provide SimCLIM as a core system that can be expanded and customized by end-users.
Conclusion and the Future
CLIMPACTS has over nearly 20 years evolved into SimCLIM and has much more open structure; like a GIS, it can be customized and maintained by the user. Other software models can now be linked to the system. Images and data layers can be exported to, or imported from, GIS systems. The scenario generating capacity has been expanded to include a unique sea-level scenario generator. There is an enhanced capacity for local-scale modeling of impacts and adaptation, including the incorporation of environmental, social, and economic data. Functions to assess extreme events and risks have been improved. Initial developments of economic impact and evaluation tools have been introduced. Overall, with such modifications SimCLIM has become accessible to end-user groups, such as regional councils, environmental consultants, and universities, and has recently been made available to them. The Research and Development Division of CLIMsystems continues to make important breakthroughs in critical areas of climate change science with the development of new methods of extreme event analysis using daily general circulation models and multiple day event analysis. new impact models are being developed for drought and livestock stress and other sectors as required. A research program is maintained and staff do publish in peer reviewed journals. See our list of publications!