How policy hackathons can help accelerate climate adaptation
How do you make decisions about climate adaptation when risks are interconnected, knowledge is incomplete, and there is no obvious way forward?
Policy hackathons can help policymakers and planners quickly bring together knowledge, assess climate impacts, and evaluate possible solutions. A new perspective article led by Sadie McEvoy from Deltares, published in Environmental Science & Policy, shows how this approach can support adaptation and even accelerate climate action.
Climate change is confronting policymakers with questions that are increasingly complex and urgent. Extreme events are already occurring beyond the scenarios used in existing plans, while longer-term climate change involves major uncertainties.
At the same time, decisions often need to be made before detailed studies can provide all the answers. Sadie McEvoy and other researchers from Deltares, Utrecht University, Arcadis, Delft University of Technology and the Municipality of Recife (Brazil) argue that policy hackathons can help bridge this gap.
From talking to doing
A policy hackathon is a short, intensive event in which experts from different disciplines answer questions about complex problems. Unlike a traditional workshop that may focus mainly on dialogue, exchange or generating ideas, a hackathon aims to produce something concrete, such as initial assessments, prototype, and maps. They can also generate research agendas and prioritize knowledge gaps.
These results can then be developed through more detailed studies or planning. The researchers analysed experiences from five policy hackathons on sea level rise, flood risk and river management in the Netherlands and Brazil. They found that hackathons can be particularly useful when a question is urgent or new, when different areas of expertise need to be combined, or when an existing policy process has become stuck.
What if the Limburg rainfall occurred elsewhere?
One example followed the extreme rainfall and flooding in Limburg and neighbouring parts of Germany and Belgium in 2021. The Water Bomb hackathon evaluated whether the Netherlands was prepared for the consequences if such an extreme rainfall event occurred elsewhere in the Netherlands. Using available and rapid assessment tools, experts quantified flooding, impacts to critical infrastructure and economic damages, among others.
The work resulted in seven recommendations forming a research agenda. These recommendations were adopted by the Dutch government and contributed to the formation of a national knowledge programme and subsequent research projects, including regional stress tests. Analyses of large-scale extreme rainfall are now being carried out across the Netherlands and contribute to the development of a National Strategy for Pluvial Floods.
Bringing together different expertise, not just to talk but to work on solutions and rapid assessments, creates new insights for decision makers and can also help accelerate climate action.
Sadie McEvoy, lead author.
Turning flood risk into action in Recife
Another example comes from Recife, Brazil. Following catastrophic flooding and landslides in 2022, the city needed to decide how to prioritise investments within a large adaptation programme.
During a four-day hackathon in 2023, around 30 experts, planners and policymakers examined coastal, river, and rainfall-related flooding under different climate scenarios and evaluated possible solutions from different sectors and disciplines.
The hackathon resulted in a prioritised list of evidence-based, no-regret actions for the near term, alongside recommendations for mid- and long-term options. The paper reports that the hackathon helped shift the city's strategic direction away from large protective measures, such as barriers, towards more open, no-regret solutions. Prioritised actions were further developed into designs for implementation, while longer-term options continue to be studied.
Supporting decisions about sea level rise
Policy hackathons have also contributed to Dutch research and policy on sea level rise. A 2016 hackathon explored the consequences of potentially faster and higher sea level rise and examined when existing adaptation strategies could reach their limits. Its results raised awareness about the issue and contributed to the establishment of the Sea Level Rise Knowledge Programme, in the Netherlands.
A later hackathon assessed different adaptation strategies in more detail. Multidisciplinary teams used calculations and models to explore, for example, how measures like barrier islands, large dikes and sedimentation would perform under different amounts of sea level rise and what consequences they could have for ecology, agriculture and communities.
A catalyst, not a replacement for research
The authors emphasise that policy hackathons do not replace detailed research, stakeholder processes or formal planning. Instead, hackathons are a complementary tool for adaptation planning. Their value lies in rapidly creating an integrated first assessment of complex problems, identifying the most important knowledge gaps, and giving direction to subsequent research and decisions.
The cases also show that a hackathon does not create an impact on its own. Results are more likely to be used when the hackathon is connected to an existing project, policy process, or governance structure where the findings can be taken forward.
For Sadie McEvoy and the other authors, the experiences nevertheless show the potential of the approach: when an urgent or emerging climate question requires rapid, multidisciplinary assessment, a well-prepared policy hackathon can help clarify the problem, identify possible ways forward and contribute to accelerating climate action.