ClimWatAdapt Integrated Assesment Framework

The ClimWatAdapt project developed an Integrated Assessment Framework for assessing vulnerability to climate change and for assessing appropriate adaptation strategies. The project’s main result was an Integrated Assessment Framework (IAF), a compilation of datasets and tools which both supports and documents systematic analysis, and which brings together the different project components. The Greatest focus is on the following IAF components.

• Scenarios: these provide alternative views of the future. They are not predictions, nor should they be taken as the most likely of the numerous possible futures. At most, they draw pictures of a limited number of plausible futures, based upon a coherent and internally consistent set of assumptions about choices by key actors, the progression of social processes, and underlying system relationships. They identify significant events, main actors and their motivations. By using scenarios, possible future developments can be explored and strategies to influence those potential developments can be tested.
• Vulnerability Indicators: changes due to global warming are expected to further aggravate water-related hazards and water scarcity, increasing vulnerability of socio-ecological systems. These changes and their impact have to be studied, monitored and assessed in order to decrease vulnerability and adapt to them successfully. Such assessments can be done on the basis of indicators, allowing current vulnerability to be compared with future vulnerability due to climate change.
• Inventory of measures: the purpose of this database is to create a pool of measures, that decision makers from European, national, and regional level can draw on when looking for adaptation options in water management and that will be incorporated into the Integrated Assessment Framework of this project and, in a wider sense, will contribute to the adaptation knowledge base.