Guidelines to quantify climate change exposure and vulnerability indicators for the future: an example for heat stress risk across scales

This report provides guidelines for the development of socioeconomic indicators to assess future exposure and vulnerability to future climate hazards and inform science-policy assessments. Current climate risk assessments primarily rely on static indicators or linear extrapolations, which do not fully capture dynamic socio-economic drivers like urbanization, aging, and income distribution with more qualitative variables relating to vulnerability. This report proposes integrating insights from Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) to create scenario-based risk assessments that reflect future societal trends, making climate indicators more relevant for policy and planning.

The methodology combines single-indicator and index-based approaches, emphasizing participatory methods to define indicators that capture complex, context-specific vulnerabilities with two case studies illustrating the approach. The authors demonstrate that the application of SSP-based vulnerability projections can maintain coherence across scales yet allows tailoring at the appropriate scale with an efficient use of resources through effective participatory processes. Emphasis is placed on addressing non-climatic factors in climate resilience planning, with the goal of ultimately enhancing human well-being by providing future-generation oriented climate risk assessments for Europe.