Supporting urban adaptation to climate change: What role can resilience measurement tools play?

Abstract

Cities are emerging as leading forces for climate change adaptation and resilience. Many approaches and tools have been developed and used to measure climate resilience in cities. In this study, we explore if and how such tools can be or have been used to support decision-making for building urban climate resilience. We applied a deep analysis of 27 tools developed for measuring urban climate resilience and supplemented it with semi-structured interviews with experts who implemented such tools in over 100 cities around the world. Our analysis shows that only about one-third of these tools are designed to support implementing resilience actions while the rest mainly focus on sharing knowledge and raising awareness. We also observed a prevailing focus on evaluating coping and incremental adaptation capacities (as opposed to transformative capacities) against climate risks in such tools, which tends to trigger short-term fix rather than long-term solutions. Therefore, we argue that urban climate resilience measurement tools need to 1) support action implementation processes as much as assessing outcomes, and 2) consider the enabling environment for enhancing transformative capacities as much as coping and incremental adaptation capacities of cities. Finally, we explore challenges and opportunities of implementing resilience actions drawn from end-users' insights.