A Web Platform for Community-based Adaptation Decision-making

Abstract

AbstractDecision-making is framed as the response to scientific findings, where uncertainties are deep rooted in both climate change itself and the implementation of policy. However, responses to the challenge of communicating uncertainty to policy makers clearly and simply are insufficient, and this situation is being exploited to undermine the implementation of policy and crisis preparedness for climate change impacts. Although expert knowledge using high-resolution projection is particularly useful for community-based adaptation, these data are fraught with uncertainty, and are not freely available to be used in local decision-making processes. This paper has several aims: 1) to promote a web platform for accessible climate projection services so vital in support of local adaptation decision-making and stakeholder participation, especially in depopulated/undeveloped areas; 2) to propose a visualization approach to articulating a clear understanding of the confidence intervals in high resolution (5-km resolution) projections, for the implementation of valid adaptation strategies and reliable actionable planning; and 3) to provide an appropriate and simple method of adjusting bias and quantifying the uncertainty in future outcomes, so that regional climate projections may be transcribed into useful forms for a wide variety of different users. Our discussion focuses on capitalizing on the 5-km resolution projections for application in community-based adaptation planning in Japan, so that communities can take appropriate and effective actions themselves via the web platform. This methodology (climate projection services) could be transferred to developing countries to assist in the creation of plans for the adaptation to and mitigation of climate change.