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Press Release

October 26, 2021

Probable Futures and Mapbox Team Up to Help Mapbox Users Illustrate Climate Impacts

Custom Mapping Tools Designed to Inspire Climate Action

BOSTON  Probable Futures, a digital climate literacy experience that launched last month, has announced a partnership with the industry-leading map platform Mapbox. Together, these partners provide access to maps and data visualizations to help people explore and internalize the urgent and growing challenges posed by climate instability.

“By using the power of the maps, we can illustrate how the climate crisis knows no geographic or political border,” said Alison Smart, Executive Director of Probable Futures. “As the community of courageous leaders who are motivated to take action on climate instability grows, our partnership with Mapbox will help us expand access to climate datasets and support efforts to connect climate trends with social and economic risks now and in the future. When you combine best-in-class visualization tools with high-quality data, the science comes alive, helping more people around the world understand and internalize what the future may hold, and ultimately change course.”

Mikel Maron, who leads the Mapbox Community team, agrees that some potential applications of these shared technologies haven’t even been imagined yet. Inspiring new ways of thinking about and applying map tools is a key part of Mapbox’s approach. They launched their Maptober initiative for the month of October as a way to encourage users to work with existing Mapbox vector tiles and develop their own maps in creative ways. 

“When data is accessible and useful, it has the power to push our thinking and change the way we navigate the world. That commitment to providing data for the public good inspires our work at Mapbox, and it’s why we are so excited to join forces with Probable Futures,” Maron said. “When there is widespread access to climate data and mapping tools, our community can draw a clearer picture of how climate instability impacts all elements of our lives and our planet.”

As part of the Mapbober initiative, Probable Futures released tilesets for three maps of heat, giving all Mapbox users the ability to explore and build upon the maps in their own ways. 

The first use case to come out of the tools and data that this partnership made possible is an easy-to-navigate map of The 50 Hottest Places in U.S. Politics. Here, Mapbox customer Azavea has combined Probable Futures’s well-established climate data with Cicero, their database of elected officials to show how heat is intensifying throughout the U.S. Users can then drill down into locations of interest for an overview of future temperature trends and to access contact information for local elected officials. In another use case, geospatial data and real-time risk management solutions provider Kontur integrated PF data into their disaster-preparedness product Disaster Ninja.  

Probable Futures is excited to reach the nearly 3 million developers registered with Mapbox, allowing them to leverage data in creative ways to spread the message of the climate crisis and call for reflection, courage, and imagination to change the course of the future.

“Through our maps of heat, and soon through additional maps on drought and precipitation, Probable Futures aims to vivify the local, regional, and systemic consequences of climate change. By working with partners like Mapbox, everyone can have the opportunity to tell stories in resonant and illuminating ways, empowering people all over the world to further internalize the threat that climate instability poses to civilization,” said Spencer Glendon, the founder of Probable Futures.

To learn more about Probable Futures and explore the maps, visit www.probablefutures.org. If your organization, community, or classroom would like to use Probable Futures’s data and tools in ways that go beyond this public platform, please reach out at hello@probablefutures.org.