The third step focuses on identifying and selecting the most effective adaptation measures to address the specific climate risks faced by urban areas. This step involves creating a comprehensive catalogue of relevant adaptation options, finding examples of successful adaptation practices from other cities and communities, and conducting a self-assessment to ensure the chosen measures are well-suited to the local context. By systematically exploring various adaptation strategies, municipalities can develop tailored approaches that enhance urban resilience and address specific climate hazards.
Creating a catalogue of relevant adaptation options is essential as urban areas often face multiple climate hazards simultaneously. This involves compiling a broad range of adaptation measures that cover technological, informational, organizational, behavioral, ecosystem-based, and socio-economic aspects across various governance levels and sectors. The catalogue should include measures aimed at accepting climate impacts, offsetting losses, reducing exposure and vulnerability, and exploiting new opportunities.
Finding examples of good adaptation practices is also critical. By identifying cases and examples from other cities and communities that have successfully implemented adaptation actions, municipalities can learn from their experiences and apply proven strategies to their own context. Observing successful adaptation measures elsewhere provides additional credibility and valuable insights for developing effective strategies.
This step ensures that the chosen adaptation measures are appropriate and effective for the specific urban context of each city.
For the successful implementation of this step, the following activities should be undertaken:
3.1 Creating a list of successful adaptation options
3.2 Finding and analyzing examples of successful adaptation practices
3.3 Conducting a self-assessment to evaluate and refine compiled adaptation options
How to move ahead
Several web-based platforms provide access to good examples of adaptations measures already implemented in cities.
The Climate ADAPT platform https://climate-adapt.eea.europa.eu/en/mission/solutions) from the European Environment Agency provides insights in the adaptation policies and actions identified by many European regions and cities. The platform also provides an overview of potential adaptation options (https://climate-adapt.eea.europa.eu/en/knowledge/adaptation-information/adaptation-options) categorised according to the IPCC-Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change system.
The Resilience Maturity Model (https://smr-project.eu/tools/maturity-model-guide/resilience-maturity-model/) from the Smart Mature Resilience project provides a comprehensive overview of relevant policies in the areas Leadership and Governance, Preparedness, Infrastructure and Resources, Cooperation.
Also, the MCR2030 platform form the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (https://mcr2030.undrr.org/) provides examples of adaptation measures from all over the world. It requires registration and membership is limited to local governments (cities).
The MISSION CE CLIMATE partners have developed a methodology for developing local Community Climate Resilience Action Plans. It can be downloaded from the project’s website (https://www.interreg-central.eu/projects/mission-ce-climate/) as well as from the www.climatehub.si platform. The platform www.climatehub.si equally aims to display relevant examples of successful adaptation examples.
