Indicators for Monitoring Urban Climate Change Resilience and Adaptation

• Main Authors: Daniel Feldmeyer, Daniela Wilden, Christian Kind, Theresa Kaiser, Rüdiger Goldschmidt, Christian Diller, Jörn Birkmann
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2019-05-01
• Series: Sustainability
• Subjects: resilience; indicator; monitoring; climate change; climate adaptation
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/10/2931

In the face of accelerating climate change, urbanization and the need to adapt to these changes, the concept of resilience as an interdisciplinary and positive approach has gained increasing attention over the last decade. However, measuring resilience and monitoring adaptation efforts have received only limited attention from science and practice so far. Thus, this paper aims to provide an indicator set to measure urban climate resilience and monitor adaptation activities. In order to develop this indicator set, a four-step mixed method approach was implemented: (1) based on a literature review, relevant resilience indicators were selected, (2) researchers, consultants and city representatives were then invited to evaluate those indicators in an online survey before the remaining indicator candidates were validated in a workshop (3) and finally reviewed by sector experts (4). This thorough process resulted in 24 indicators distributed over 24 action fields based on secondary data. The participatory approach allowed the research team to take into account the complexity and interdisciplinarity nature of the topic, as well as place- and context-specific parameters. However, it also showed that in order to conduct a holistic assessment of urban climate resilience, a purely quantitative, indicator-based approach is not sufficient, and additional qualitative information is needed.