Community resilience increases a place-based community’s capacity to respond and adapt to life-changing environmental dynamics like climate change and natural disasters. Timely access to environmental data is an important factor for community resilience. Most Earth science information is created for a particular science community for a specific scientific purpose, without much thought to who else could benefit from it and how they might use it. New approaches are needed to facilitate better data production and integration for community use.

In this session, we present the findings of a paper published by ESIP’s (Earth Science Information Partners) Community Resilience Cluster. As a convening space for over 150 member organizations across different sectors, ESIP’s biannual meetings, conference calls, and topic-driven clusters provided the infrastructure and expertise to support the Community Resilience cluster’s examination of the role of Earth science data for community resilience. This presentation highlights the challenges communities face when applying Earth science data to their efforts:

• Inequity in the scientific process,

• Gaps in data ethics and governance,

• A mismatch of scale and focus, and

• Lack of actionable information for communities.

Recommendations are made as starting points to address the challenges, along with examples of good practices from across the Earth science community. Given ESIP’s data stewardship efforts with large organizations and across domains, the recommendations are applicable at scale. We offer actionable steps for the Earth science community to help them produce data to better support community resilience.

How to cite: Modekurty, S., Virapongse, A., Gupta, R., Robbins, Z. J., Blythe, J., and Duerr, R. E.: Next Steps for Earth Science Contributions to Community Resilience, EGU General Assembly 2023, Vienna, Austria, 23–28 Apr 2023, EGU23-17453, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-17453, 2023.

In October 2021, the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute launched a novel national system for impact-based weather warnings, moving from the traditional format for meteorological, hydrological, and oceanographic warnings towards an assessment process that includes collaboration and consultation with regional stakeholders on the impacts that certain weather events would have for a specific geographic area and time frame. As part of this new system, local and regional administrative efforts are made to create assessment-support documentation drawing on local knowledge and providing support ahead of and during extreme weather events.

We present initial results from the ongoing research project ‘AI4ClimateAdaptation’ (https://liu.se/en/research/ai4climateadaptation), which explores the potential of employing AI-based image and text analysis to support the process and evaluate the precision of impact-based weather warnings. The project collects image and text data appropriate for subsequent use in AI-based analysis from citizen science campaigns and social media. The presentation focuses on the concept of integrating AI-based text and image analysis with the processes of the warning system, as well as the barriers and enablers that are identified by local, regional, and national stakeholders related to the role of AI in weather warning systems. We further discuss to what extent data and knowledge on historical extreme weather events can be integrated with local and regional climate adaptation efforts, and whether these efforts could bridge the divide between long-term adaptation strategies and short-term response measures related to extreme weather events. The results of this study are expected to contribute to the national system for impact-based weather warnings and to increase resilience to extreme climate-related weather events.

How to cite: Neset, T.-S., Vrotsou, K., Navarra, C., Schück, F., Greve Villaro, C., Mateo Edström, M., and Rydholm, C.: AI for Climate Adaptation?, EGU General Assembly 2023, Vienna, Austria, 23–28 Apr 2023, EGU23-11023, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-11023, 2023.

Increasingly the financial sector is interested in understanding their risk to the impacts of climate change. This is driven both by governmental regulation that requires financial services to declare their risks due to climate change, as well as a desire to mitigate risks to profits that climate change poses.

To generate useful and accurate risks assessments users need access to high quality data of the projected changes to hazard due to climate change. However, there is typically a gap between scientific research and what our clients need to understand their risk. Many of the most damaging hazards, such as flooding and subsidence, are not directly modelled by climate models and require specialist hazard knowledge and well as climate data to assess. Scientific studies often focus on large scale changes or small regional studies, whereas clients need consistent high-resolution data across multiple regions. Additionally, a risk portfolio covers a wide range of climate related hazards, which all must be considered when understanding and attempting to mitigate risk. Users will often not have the inhouse knowledge to use data generated by the scientific community directly or the expertise to assess how this relates to the risks posed by different hazards. Therefore, the financial sector is turning to external data providers for this information, such as Climate X.

This talk will cover how at Climate X we make reliable and robust risk assessments of climate hazards that are presented in a way that is usable and useful for the financial sector as well as various other decision makers. The focus will be on how we use open-source climate model data to generate our heat risk metric. This will cover the definition of the metric, how it is calculated and how we how we present the data to users including accuracy and uncertainty. I will also present overview of the other hazards that we provide and the need for an interdisciplinary team to cover the broad range of physical hazards related to climate change.

How to cite: Woodhouse, S., Burke, C., Leach, N., Brennan, J., Reveley, G., Ramsamy, L., and Mitchell, H.: Climate X: Making climate risk data useful and usable for the financial sector, EGU General Assembly 2023, Vienna, Austria, 23–28 Apr 2023, EGU23-8097, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-8097, 2023.

Climate impacts have been studied intensively and our understanding of changes in climate impacts due to anthropogenic activity is impressive (see IPCC AR6). There is, however, a gap between the physical understanding of changes in climate impacts and availability of information that could directly be used by adaptation planners. We argue that this gap is to a large extent a result of the usual modeling chain that is based on a handful of representative emission scenarios.

Most climate change studies take a small, predefined set of emission scenarios (SSP2-45, SSP1-26, SSP5-85 etc.) and calculate the global and regional climate impacts resulting from these. Focusing on a limited set of emission scenarios allows us to compare results from different modeling groups and lets us run detailed climate models on each scenario. However, this modeling approach does not align with relevant research questions such as: “How much can be emitted to avoid a certain impact?” Or “what are the emission constraints to limit the probability of experiencing a certain event until 2050 to 10%?”

The presented reversal of the impact chain would help to answer these questions. The idea is to start from a clearly defined impact and evolve uncertainties backwards into the emission space. Doing so, we take the perspective of practitioners who know very well what impacts are of relevance and would like to know how these impacts are related to greenhouse gas emissions.

How to cite: Pfleiderer, P., Sillmann, J., Lamboll, R., Rogelj, J., and Schleussner, C.-F.: Reversing the impact chain, EGU General Assembly 2023, Vienna, Austria, 23–28 Apr 2023, EGU23-14166, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-14166, 2023.

Managing flood risk and adapting to climate change is complex where multiple actors need to work together across sectoral and disciplinary boundaries to capture synergies and manage trade-offs. A selection of governance mechanisms were found to influence actors’ capacity to work in partnership, break down silos and unlock opportunities.

Results from research conducted within the SYSTEM-RISK project identifies boundary spanning roles as governance mechanisms facilitating integrated flood risk management in England and Serbia (Cumiskey, 2020). Among other characteristics, the ‘reticulist’ was found to utlise networks and diplomacy to access funding, ‘entrepreneurs’ acted creatively to capture funding and test the flexibility of rules, ‘interpreters’ built interpersonal relationships and interpreted different professional languages, ‘organisers’ managed actor partnerships and ‘specialists’ were willing to engage and try new approaches. The availability of rules and resources influenced capacities to hire, train and sustain such boundary spanning staff.  Results highlighting the dynamic interdependencies between such roles and the governance system will be shared.

Place-based adaptation partnerships were found as another governance mechanism, strengthening collaboration, knowledge exchange and joint action across boundaries. The Climate Adaptation Partnership Framework¹ was developed through the TalX project (Transboundary Adaptation Learning Exchange) to collate learning from applications in Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales and provide guidance for stakeholders interested in implementing such partnerships.  

The RISK-TANDEM framework is being developed within the DIRECTED project (Horizon Europe, 2022 - 2026) to enhance risk governance, knowledge co-production and interoperability across data, models and tools to enable disaster resilience in four Real World Lab regions. An initial version of the framework, which builds upon the existing Tandem Framework² (among others) will be shared along with plans for implementation.   

The role of such governance mechanisms in integrating research, innovation and science in a collaborative way will be introduced, while opening the discussion on how to improve the application of such mechanisms to facilitate future engaged research.

Cumiskey, L. (2020). Embracing boundary spanning roles in Flood Risk Management. PhD Research Briefing Note 2. Middlesex University. Available at: https://eprints.mdx.ac.uk/30418/

¹ Climate Adaptation Partnership Framework. Available at: https://talx2020.github.io/

² The Tandem framework: a holistic approach to co-designing climate services. Available at: https://www.weadapt.org/knowledge-base/climate-services/the-tandem-framework

How to cite: Cumiskey, L., McCullagh, D., Schweizer, P.-J., and Bharwani, S.: Implications of governance mechanisms for spanning boundaries and managing risk , EGU General Assembly 2023, Vienna, Austria, 23–28 Apr 2023, EGU23-13145, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-13145, 2023.

The pressure on natural resources including water, energy and land is continuously growing through changes in climate and land use. Representatives of academia, industry, governments and society need to join forces in order to develop new pathways towards sustainable natural resource use and management. Such pathways start from the basic idea that natural resources are finite and interlinked and that human activities can affect these resources and links, with partly irreversible effects. We combine the water−energy−land nexus and the climate services concept and present a cross-sectoral approach of knowledge co-creation to inform natural resource use and management. The approach is tested in three case studies across Europe that face different challenges resulting from climate and socio-economic change. We present the process, applied methods and major results of knowledge co-creation for sustainable natural resource use and management, and we reflect on the challenges and opportunities from engaging multiple stakeholders. Even if a comprehensive, cross-sectoral approach encourages embedding the water−energy−land nexus into climate services and allows the development of pathways towards sustainable natural resource use and management, maintaining these achievements and partnerships beyond the lifetime of a research project remains challenging.

How to cite: Tudose, N. C., Marin, M., Cheval, S., and Ungurean, C.: Challenges and opportunities of knowledge co-creation for the water-energy-land nexus, EGU General Assembly 2023, Vienna, Austria, 23–28 Apr 2023, EGU23-11292, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-11292, 2023.

Strategic climate change litigation is rising on a global scale as a tool to bridge the accountability and enforcement gap that is currently affecting climate change law. The vast majority of strategic climate cases concern mitigation, while adaptation is rarely addressed, and when it is, this is done in a rather residual and vague manner (Setzer and Higham, 2022). However, if it is true that states and corporate actors are lagging behind their emission reduction commitments, at the same time ‘at current rates of adaptation planning and implementation, the adaptation gap will continue to grow’ (IPCC, 2022). Accordingly, once strategic litigation is found to be a suitable tool to advance climate action, opportunities to litigate adaptation strategically should be further explored.

 The role of science in substantiating climate change litigation is very much under the spotlight when it comes to the determination of emission reduction targets, carbon budget and ‘fair shares’ in mitigation cases (BIICL and Sant’Anna, 2021). On the other hand, science does not yet provide accurate indicators of adaptation progress or lack thereof and this contributes to narrowing down opportunities for strategic litigation on adaptation (Berrang-Ford, Biesbroek et al, 2019).

Against this background, this study aims to investigate the role of geosciences in fostering strategic litigation on climate change adaptation. This objective is pursued via a case study. The study builds hypothetical strategic cases concerning public authorities’ liability for flood risk reduction and investigates the potential role of geosciences in such cases. How can geosciences help determine the impacts of climate change on flood risk in a given area and the consequent exposure and vulnerability of specific communities? What does a science-based assessment of given adaptation and flood risk reduction policies and measures look like? To what extent can geosciences determine the activities that public authorities should take to reduce flood risk in a certain area? And, finally, how far can existing commitments in the area of disaster risk reduction and human rights be used in order to distill concrete obligations in terms of adaptation to climate change-induced hazards? The study aims to address these questions by means of an interdisciplinary approach based on combining legal and policy practice with sound geoscience methodology.

References

Joana Setzer and Catherine Higham, ‘Global trends in climate change litigation: 2022 snapshot’, (2022) Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment and Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science

IPCC [Hans-O Pörtner et al. (eds)], Climate Change 2022 Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Working Group II Contribution to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Summary for Policy Makers

A Holzhausen, R Luporini (Eds), The Role of Science in Climate Change Litigation: International Workshop Report, (July 2021)

Lea Berrang-Ford, Robbert Biesbroek, et al, Tracking global climate change adaptation among governments, Nature Climate Change 9, 440–449 (2019)

How to cite: Luporini, R., Arosio, M., Sommario, E., and Martina, M.: Strategic litigation on climate change adaptation: The case of public authorities’ liability in flood risk reduction, EGU General Assembly 2023, Vienna, Austria, 23–28 Apr 2023, EGU23-14580, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-14580, 2023.

The purpose of the study is to define how the models available for flood damage assessment in the Italian context can support cost-benefit or multi-criteria analyses of risk mitigation measures, in accordance with current laws and regulations on the subject. On the basis of the present situation in which risk mitigation measures are evaluated mostly according to their capability of reducing the hazard and by considering few simple exposure factors, the study aims at identifying more robust indicators to assess measures effectiveness based on results from flood damage modelling. State of the art flood damage models developed within the context of the project MOVIDA (MOdello per la Valutazione Integrata del Danno Alluvionale – Model for integrated evaluation of flood damage, https://sites.google.com/view/movida-project) were applied to evaluate the expected damage in several flood prone areas within the Lombardia Region (northern Italy), where mitigation actions are planned by the Regional Authority. Then, obtained results for these areas were analysed to define effectiveness indicators as well as their range of values. Finally, specific indicators were developed to evaluate the environmental impact of each intervention according to present policies to promote sustainable investments in the field of soil protection as well as contribute to achieve Green Deal goals. Results show that developed indicators increase the ability of local authorities in the definition of priorities of intervention, leading to a reduction of institutional and legislative inefficiencies and increasing the efficiency of disaster risk reduction policies.

How to cite: Gallazzi, A., Ballio, F., Molinari, D., Credali, M., and Tolone, I.: Flood risk assessment in support of the evaluation and selection of risk mitigation measures, EGU General Assembly 2023, Vienna, Austria, 23–28 Apr 2023, EGU23-16311, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-16311, 2023.