Helping local authorities plan for climate change in the UK
This case study belongs to a compendium of good practices and success stories in disaster risk reduction shared during the 2025 Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction (GP2025). These stories reflect the real-world progress being made by governments, communities, and organizations around the world to reduce risk and build resilience.
In October 2024, the UK Met Office launched the Local Authority Climate Service, a powerful new tool designed to give local authorities easy access to tailored, place-specific climate information. Developed in partnership with Esri UK - the UK arm of Environmental Systems Research Institute, a global leader in mapping and Geographic Information System (GIS) technology - the service helps councils visualise climate challenges, explore future climate projections, and communicate a clear, localised “climate story” to their communities.
By providing critical, easy-to-interpret climate data, the service supports local resilience and adaptation planning—enabling decision-makers to create more informed, targeted, and resilient strategies. It also helps authorities meet statutory requirements while working to reduce the social and economic costs of climate impacts.
Built on Esri’s mapping technology, the platform allows users to view and analyse Met Office climate data on interactive maps. Authorities can overlay this information with other open datasets—or their own local data—using ArcGIS Online, providing a richer picture of how climate change could affect their region.
The Local Authority Climate Service builds on the Met Office Climate Data Portal, which enables businesses and public bodies to integrate open climate data with operational data. This combined insight can reveal potential future impacts of hazards such as heatwaves, floods, or droughts, and guide risk reduction measures.
Source: Shared in Thematic Session 3-4 by Mr. Gerard Howe, the Government of the United Kingdom