Supporting urban adaptation to climate change: what role can resilience measurement tools play?
In this study, the authors explore how and to what extent such tools can be or have been utilised by city-level actors to support their decision-making processes for building climate change resilience. Cities are emerging as leading forces for climate change adaptation and resilience, due to their financial, technological and human capacities. Many approaches and tools have been developed and used over the last few decades to measure climate resilience in cities and identify areas that need further intervention. The authors argue, therefore, that urban climate resilience measurement tools need firstly to support processes of implementing action as much as assessing outcomes, and secondly to consider the enabling environment for enhancing the adaptive and transformative capacities as much as the coping capacities of cities.
The authors found that only 10 of the 27 tools they analysed are designed to support the implementation of resilience actions. The remainder focus mainly on sharing knowledge and raising awareness. They also observed that the tools have a prevailing focus on evaluating the coping capacities of cities against climate risks, which tends to trigger short-term solutions rather than long-term, transformational adaptation strategies.