Developing risk treatment and adaptation strategies for extreme weather events

Much work has already been done on climate adaptation, so as a first step, a portfolio of adaptation measures was compiled from previous studies (e.g. PREPARED and CARPATHIAN CC) and shared with the research sites. At the same time, a first round of workshops was held in which, at each research sites, Communities of Practices were formed.

Successful adaptation depends to a large extent to the policy and governance situation at the research sites. A first assessment of the policy and governance situation was obtained by a round of interviews with key stakeholders, policy makers and policy experts. These interviews were collected and analysed by the research partners and recommendations for improvement were made.

In the second round of workshops these recommendations were discussed with local stakeholders and a first selection of adaptation measures suitable to the local situation was made from the portfolio. In this workshop, the stakeholders also developed shared future visions of successful adaptation (dream scenario) and failed adaptation (nightmare scenario). These scenarios were useful to get a shared understanding of the impact of action and inaction. The reports of the first two rounds of interviews were compiled and analysed in a report.

With this first selection of measures, additional analyses can be made to support decision making on which measures to implement. A Multi-Criteria-Analysis (MCA) was conducted to evaluate options (such as measures) using a broad range of indicators, related to socio-economic or other (e.g. environmental) factors. In this way, the wider socio-economic effects and side effects of adaptation measures could be assessed to a broader extent than looking only at costs and the direct effect on risk reduction. In some sites, a more detailed Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA) was made.

To perform the MCA, stakeholders first selected relevant criteria to score the measures on and then scored the measures on these criteria. In this way, the measures could be compared to each other on their overall score and the score on specific criteria. The CBA provided a more detailed assessment of the cost of implementing the measures and the potential benefits of risk reduction (as well as side benefits) and the cost of inaction. Since cost and benefits of adaptation are often unequally distributed, a social justice analysis was performed to assess the effects of the adaptation measures on different groups in society and existing inequalities.

The selected measures were also analysed with regards to their governance needs. The framework that was used to assess the policy and governance situation was now applied to the individual measures. Local stakeholders were asked to identify what was needed to implement the measures (such as knowledge, administrative resources, legal resources, communication etc.) and whether or not these needs were sufficiently met at the research sites. Based on this analysis, recommendations were made with regard to the implementation of the different measures and overall improvement of the policy and governance situation .

The work in BINGO was conducted at six research sites, and the question is to what extent the knowledge developed in BINGO is transferable to other sites as well. Therefore we made an analysis of the types of results developed in BINGO and the extent to which this knowledge is transferable. This was partly done based on a theoretical framework on knowledge transferability and partly based on experiences practical examples from local stakeholders. A distinction was made between transferability of the BINGO methodology and transferability of site specific outcomes.