The second step focuses on conducting a comprehensive risk assessment. This step is crucial for understanding the various climate-related risks that a city faces, both currently and in the future. By analyzing past and present climate impacts, understanding future climate projections, and identifying vulnerable urban sectors, municipalities can develop targeted adaptation strategies. This step also involves conducting thorough risk and vulnerability assessments, understanding the role of surrounding areas, and identifying main adaptation concerns and objectives. Each of these elements ensures a holistic approach to managing climate risks and building resilience.
Recognizing past and present climate impacts is vital for gaining insights into current vulnerabilities and potential future challenges. This involves analyzing historical data on extreme weather events to understand their frequency, intensity, and impacts. Understanding climate projections and future impacts is equally important, as it allows for planning based on anticipated changes in climate conditions, such as more frequent extreme weather events and new hazards like sea level rise or water scarcity.
Identifying vulnerable urban sectors helps prioritize adaptation efforts by focusing on areas with higher susceptibility or lower adaptive capacity. This includes assessing the ability of different sectors to cope with climate impacts based on factors like technology, infrastructure, and social equity. Conducting risk and vulnerability assessments combines knowledge of climate hazards and vulnerable sectors to create a comprehensive picture of a city’s climate risks.
Understanding the role of surrounding areas in adaptation highlights the interconnectedness between urban centers and their surrounding regions. Cities and communities rely on these areas for essential services and resources, making it crucial to consider regional impacts and collaborate with neighboring administrations. Identifying main adaptation concerns and defining objectives sets a strategic direction for adaptation planning, ensuring that efforts are focused on the most immediate and severe risks, and leveraging existing strategies and resources.
This step ensures that cities and communities have a thorough understanding of their climate risks and vulnerabilities, enabling them to develop effective adaptation strategies and build resilience.
For the successful implementation of this step, the following activities should be undertaken:
2.1 Recognizing past and current climate impacts
2.2 Analyzing climate projections and anticipating future impacts
2.3 Identifying sectors with heightened vulnerability
2.4 Conducting comprehensive risk and vulnerability assessments
2.5 Considering the influence of surrounding areas on adaptation
2.6 Defining primary adaptation concerns and setting objectives
2.7 Assessing climate change risks and vulnerabilities: Self-evaluation
How to move ahead
The MISSION CE CLIMATE partners have developed a methodology for implementing a comprehensive Risk and Vulnerability Assessment. It can be downloaded from the project’s website (www.interreg-central.eu/projects/mission-ce-climate/) as well as from the www.climatehub.si platform.
Further useful tools are:
The Risk Systemicity Questionnaire from the Smart Mature Resilience project (https://rsq.smr-project.eu/) and the Quick Risk Estimation tool from the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (https://www.unisdr.org/campaign/resilientcities/toolkit/article/quick-risk-estimation-qre.html)
The Urban Adaptation Map Viewer (https://climate-adapt.eea.europa.eu/en/knowledge/tools/urban-adaptation) from the European Environment Agency
The Adaptation Dashboard (https://climate-adapt.eea.europa.eu/en/mission/knowledge-and-data/data-dashboards) from the European Environment Agency provides insights in the climate hazards identified by many European regions and cities.
