Supporting a Resilience Observatory to Climate Risks in French Polynesia: From Valorization of Preexisting Data to Low-Cost Data Acquisition

Climate change has an ever-increasing impact on island territories. Whether it is due to rising sea levels or the increase in recurrence and intensity of extreme events, island territories are increasingly vulnerable. These impacts are expected to affect marine and terrestrial biodiversity, human occupation (infrastructure) and other activities such as agriculture and tourism, the two economic pillars of French Polynesia. While the current and future impacts of climate change on island territories are generally accepted, data acquisition, modeling, and projections of climate change are more complex to obtain and limitedly cover the island territories of the Pacific region. This article aims to develop methodologies for the acquisition and exploitation of data on current and future climate risks and their impacts in French Polynesia. This work of acquisition and valorization is part of a research project for the development of an observatory of resilience to climate risks in the perspective of building a spatial decision support system.