Klimasken

Description

Klimasken is a tool for assessing cities, municipalities and buildings’ contribution to climate change and adaptation to climate change. The tool consists of several indicators, computed based on user-provided data and aggregated, by means of simple computations, into an index and its sub-components. More in detail, the tool:

• monitors the state and development of the environment in which a city/district or building is located, in terms of temperatures, heat waves, rainfall, drought or extreme weather phenomena. This is based on ten indicators.
• uses 16 indicators to assess the vulnerability of the city to the effects of climate change assessing its sensitivity and adaptive capacity, in terms of its readiness and in terms of the characteristics of the specific systems present in the area.
• devotes 14 indicators to gauge the contribution of the area under scrutiny to the stock of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, thus determining how much is the city responsible for climate change in terms of both direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions.
• draws on 16 indicators to assess the preparedness of the city/district/building owners to implement adaptation and mitigation measures, and their practical effects on everyday life.

The results of the evaluation are summarized by means of a Climate Label that depicts the overall rating by means of several concentric circles divided into four quadrants. These quadrants illustrate four main topic areas for assessing the approach of a city, district, or building in terms of adaptation to climate change (exposure, sensitivity, and capacity) and greenhouse gas emissions. Each quadrant is further subdivided into smaller slices, representing sub-indicators included in that topic area.

Five colours (red, orange, yellow, light green and dark green) capture the status or development of the system described by the indicators used, from negative (red) to positive (dark green). Thus one single label can show the status and development of sub-indicators, whole topic areas, and the overall status of the system.

Reference information