• Codesign and collaboration are vital to the NARCliM project.
• Each generation of NARCliM is informed by feedback from stakeholders and end-users, who are consulted throughout the entire NARCliM process.
• NARCliM’s project team, stakeholders and end-users have expanded, and new partnerships have formed, since NARCliM was first established  in 2011.

NARCliM is led by the NSW Government’s Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (DCCEEW) with support from the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), South Australia, Victoria and Western Australia governments, as well as National Computational Infrastructure (NCI) Australia, the University of New South Wales (UNSW) and Murdoch University. 

Each generation of NARCliM is informed by feedback from stakeholders and end-users, who are consulted throughout the entire NARCliM process. These insights help the NARCliM project team to design and deliver regional climate projections that are relevant to all stakeholders, and to ensure that NARCliM provides data on the climate variables and time periods that best support planning and decision-making. The information needs of end-users (for example, visitors to the AdaptNSW website) are also considered during initial project design to inform both the approach and the supporting products. 

After the release of NARCliM1.0 in 2014, the NARCliM project team held end-user needs workshops, face-to-face meetings and developed surveys for key stakeholders to obtain feedback on the usability and accessibility of the data. This stakeholder engagement was accompanied by an independent evaluation of the NARCliM1.0 project technical approach and experimental design; and independent reviews and recommendations for enhanced data delivery services and software and computing infrastructure. The subsequent generation, NARCliM1.5, was then designed based on the feedback collected, and the resulting data released addressed the majority of this feedback.

The latest generation of NARCliM data, NARCliM2.0, was again informed by stakeholder and end-user needs, with core NARCliM partners participating in the following aspects of the codesign process. 

Since its establishment, the NARCliM project has consulted with a range of end-users and stakeholders, including:

• Data-users, who directly work with NARCliM data. Such users include data analysts, and researchers and technical consultants across academia, as well as people from natural resource management, risk management and local government, consultancy, finance, infrastructure and industry. These end-users need local-scale climate data for their analyses and research. They help identify the climate variables, time periods and products for each generation of NARCliM.
• Product-users, who directly benefit from NARCliM products . These end-users include government agencies and businesses who use NARCliM products to inform planning and decisions. For example, water managers used information from a data analysis including NARCliM climate projections to underpin the Greater Sydney Water Strategy.
• Climate change and policy makers from NSW government agencies are part of the codesign process to ensure NARCliM data aligns with, and supports, key climate change programs, policies and strategies. NARCliM is included in the NSW Government’s Common Planning Assumptions.

The NARCliM project team sits within DCCEEW. This team is responsible for project management and providing technical expertise in climate science, data and modelling. The team also facilitates engagement with stakeholders and end-users to identify their needs for data and information products.

DCCEEW’s climate scientists are supported by other experts.

Partnering with NSW are the ACT, South Australia, Victoria and Western Australia governments. These partnerships support the NARCliM project (financially and in-kind) and offer a cross-jurisdictional community of practice to explore the creation of consistent regional climate projections for Australia.

The NARCliM Technical Working Group consists of technical experts (from DCCEEW and externally). The working group helps  to analyse model outputs before public release, and coordinates the dissemination of scientific results. More recently, members supported NARCliM design and testing.

The NARCliM Steering Committee brings together representatives from NSW, the ACT, Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia to help coordinate jurisdictional input and information sharing.

The NCI hosts the vast amount of data produced by the NARCliM project.

Research collaborators contribute their expertise to the development of NARCliM data. 

Key collaborators include:

• UNSW Climate Change Research Centre which contributed to model design and modelling
• Murdoch University, under the direction of DCCEEW, which helps to conduct global climate model and regional climate model simulations.
• Western Australian Government's Department of Water and Environmental Regulation Climate Science Initiative, which provides research and advisory services on dynamical downscaling simulations.

Additional expertise is provided by:

• external experts such as Sydney Water, Water NSW, Climate Risk, the CSIRO and the UNSW, which contribute to NARCliM design and testing.
• the Cross-jurisdictional Community of Practice for Climate Science, which shares ideas and expertise on the future of regional climate projections in Australia.