Indicators for Monitoring Urban Climate Change Resilience and Adaptation

Daniel Feldmeyer,Theresa Kaiser,Christian Kind,Jörn Birkmann,Christian Diller,Rüdiger Goldschmidt,Daniela Wilden

doi:10.3390/su11102931

Abstract

In the face of accelerating climate change, urbanization and the need to adapt to these changes, the concept of resilience as an interdisciplinary and positive approach has gained increasing attention over the last decade. However, measuring resilience and monitoring adaptation efforts have received only limited attention from science and practice so far. Thus, this paper aims to provide an indicator set to measure urban climate resilience and monitor adaptation activities. In order to develop this indicator set, a four-step mixed method approach was implemented: (1) based on a literature review, relevant resilience indicators were selected, (2) researchers, consultants and city representatives were then invited to evaluate those indicators in an online survey before the remaining indicator candidates were validated in a workshop (3) and finally reviewed by sector experts (4). This thorough process resulted in 24 indicators distributed over 24 action fields based on secondary data. The participatory approach allowed the research team to take into account the complexity and interdisciplinarity nature of the topic, as well as place- and context-specific parameters. However, it also showed that in order to conduct a holistic assessment of urban climate resilience, a purely quantitative, indicator-based approach is not sufficient, and additional qualitative information is needed.

Highlights

Our society is facing multitudinous different challenges—in this paper we are focusing on two main challenges: climate change and urbanization
The indicator list was used as an important starting point for developing the MONARES Indicator Set (MIS)
The yellow indicators were moved from one action field to another

Summary

Introduction

Our society is facing multitudinous different challenges—in this paper we are focusing on two main challenges: climate change and urbanization. We use the term adaptation as defined by the United Nations Climate Change [4]: “Adaptation refers to adjustments in ecological, social, or economic systems in response to actual or expected climatic stimuli and their effects or impacts. It refers to changes in processes, practices, and structures to moderate potential damages or to benefit from opportunities associated with climate change”. The concept of resilience can be attributed to Holling [6] and originates from ecology He described resilience as the “measure of persistence of systems and of their ability to absorb change and disturbance and still maintain the same relationship between population or state variables” [6]. It is remarkable that the term resilience is interpreted in a much wider range of ways by practitioners than by academia [13]

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Conclusion