Applications of Risk Assessment in the Development of Climate Change Adaptation Policy

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The consequences of c limate change will affect both natural systems and human populat ions. Adaptatio n policies that provide mitigation against these effects require t he collaboration of natural and socio -economic sciences to assess future risks of climat e change. Future impacts and the vulnerability of the impacted system are used to perform risk assessments allowing decision -makers to select optimal adaptation choices given available knowledge. Under climate change, however, future risk assessments are based on a number of possible climate scenarios . This multiplicity results in more than one assessment of risk with large uncertainty bounds . Present applications of ris k assessment for climate change adaptation have taken two main approaches. The main difference between the se approaches is in the presentation of the final risk either as cumulative probability distribution s of threshold exceedance or as a number of risk a ssessments assigned to different plausible futures . Different adaptation scenarios or policies are then evaluated in terms of their effect iveness in reducing risk . This paper presents a n analysis of applications of both approaches of risk assessment from r ecent literature for climatic effects such as sea -level rise. The analysis provides an evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of present climate change risk assessment methods in terms of providing useful information to support decision -making at relev ant spatial and temporal scales, and the ability of each method to direct policy -development by providing the best representation of future uncertainties given policy objectives . This analysis sheds light on the utility of climate change risk assessment m ethods as a function of information availability and policy scope , thereby providing the necessary factors that decision -makers should consider when a choosing an approach for adaptation policy development .