MERIDIAN

MERIDIAN is a climate intelligence platform that aggregates environmental data from satellites, sensors, and research models into a single decision-making interface for policy teams.

Climate data is overwhelmingly complex — thousands of variables, multiple time horizons, and no standard way to compare scenarios. Policy teams were making decisions based on spreadsheets and PDFs.

We saw that the gap wasn't in the data — it was in the interface between data and decision. Teams didn't need more variables; they needed a way to see trade-offs, compare scenarios, and communicate findings to non-technical stakeholders.

Design a scenario comparison engine: side-by-side climate projections with interactive variables, annotated exportable reports, and a "decision view" that distills complex data into clear recommendations.

We built the data visualization system from scratch — custom chart components for temperature, precipitation, sea level, and biodiversity metrics. The interface uses a layered information model: overview, detail, and decision views.

Every visualization shares a common grammar: the same color scales, the same time axes, the same interaction patterns. This means a user who learns one chart can read all of them — and can assemble custom reports by dragging components into a canvas.

MERIDIAN was adopted by two national environmental agencies and a UN-affiliated research body. It reduced report preparation time from weeks to hours and was credited in a major climate adaptation policy framework.

Information design is decision design. When you make data legible, you change what decisions are possible. The "decision view" — a single screen that summarizes everything — became the most used feature, and we should have built it first.