Determining the Return on Investing in Adaptive Strategies
Case Scenario
A city sustainability officer in the Midwest has learned of adaptation actions moving forward in neighboring peer cities, and wants to propose strategies to the mayor to help their city keep current. With the UAA, the sustainability officer can find their city data, and identify the hazards (whether extreme cold, extreme heat drought, flooding, or sea level rise) that pose the highest risk to their city.
They can then, for each hazard, evaluate conditions in a peer city that might influence their own strategies, by looking at specific indicators, costs of hazards, or overall scores.
If a strategy, for instance, would raise the city’s adaptive capacity to mitigate the cost of droughts, and the city data shows low adaptive capacity currently and an overall high risk for drought, the sustainability officer can be confident that this strategy would likely deliver a good return on the cost of implementation. The sustainability officer can review indicators for each of the climate hazards, and develop a package for the mayor with a prioritized list of which strategies that would be likely to reduce future climate-related costs.