The International Development Research Centre (IDRC) in partnership with the Centre for Development Informatics (CDI) released a report entitled, Building the Evidence Base for Strategic Action on Climate Change: Mexico City’s Virtual Climate Change Centre. The report critiques the development and execution of Virtual Center for Climate Change in Mexico City (CVCCCM).

Mexico City has experienced heat waves, heavy rainfall, flooding, and reduced water availability due to severe droughts in its supply catchment basin. The city government has voiced strategic adaptive actions that should be taken including hydro-meteorological, micro-basin, epidemiological, energy, and waste monitoring.

When considering possible task forces, it was decided that the creation of a new research institution would create political frictions and draw staff away from existing institutions. Instead, a virtual center would allow researchers to contribute when convenient, acting upon issues such as climate change, water, air, ground resources, the health sector, public services, and land use planning management. Besides being a forum for researchers and policy-makers, the website has connected with society at large through ICT-based networks such as web-seminars, Youtube, and Twitter.

The Virtual Centre is deemed successful for various reasons, including its involvement of many stakeholders and centralization of accessible data. The report criticizes the need to use ICTs to create a broader dialogue outside of scientific institutions and policy-makers to build civil society, writing that “essentially the scientific community has focused on production and presentation of their results, but has not sought – whether via ICTs or other means – to engage others, or to engage with the formulation and implementation of the strategic actions which their work points to.” The report suggests customized ICTs to different sets of audiences, the addition of short briefings, interactive demonstrations, GIS/map-based graphics, audio and visual presentations will strengthen appeal.