1. Climate change integrated assessment methodology for cross-sectoral adaptation and vulnerability in Europe
Identifying vulnerability hotspots using the
Integrated Assessment Platform
For further information contact Rob Dunford (
or visit the project website (
Funded under the European Commission
Seventh Framework Programme
Contract Number:

2. Vulnerability hotspot approach
The CLIMSAVE vulnerability hotspot approach aims to assess spatially the impacts of future scenarios on human well-being. To do so it breaks vulnerability down into three key elements: (i) the scale of the impact itself; (ii) the level of adaptation in place to reduce the impact; and (iii) the extent to which humans are able to draw on their available resources (both tangible and societal) to cope with the impacts that remain: its “coping capacity”. Areas where the level of impact following adaptation is greater than the societies’ ability to cope with them are considered vulnerable.
The schematic breaks the vulnerability concept down into four different classes:
“Not Vulnerable: Negligible impact”: Situations where vulnerability cannot happen, as the impact is too low, beneath a threshold under which it is considered negligible (the blue box on the left).
“Not Vulnerable: Can cope”: Situations where the “residual impact” (the level of impact above the point at which coping begins) is beneath the coping capacity and so there is no vulnerability as the people can “cope”.
“Vulnerable: Can’t cope”: Situations where the “residual impact” could be coped with, but there is insufficient coping capacity to do so.
“Vulnerable: Impossible to cope”: Situations where the “residual impact” is too great to ever be coped with.
Note “CC” is short for coping capacity in the last box.  ? 

3. Indicator variables So how do we calculate coping capacity?
In the CLIMSAVE approach coping capacity reflects the available resources, both tangible and societal, that are available to a particular society and these are split into four capitals: Human, Social, Financial and Manufactured.
To assess these we followed an indicator-based approach similar to that used in other examples within the literature (e.g. Schröter et al. 2004; Metzger and Schröter 2006; Metzger et al. 2008).
This slide shows the twenty-three potential indicator variables that were identified. Two were selected to represent each capital. The selection was driven by five guiding principles: (i) appropriateness, there must be a clear conceptual tie between the variables and the capital that they are used to represent; (ii) open access, the data used must be freely accessible within the public domain; (iii) independence, the two selected variables must have a low correlation with the other indicator variables; (iv) fixed asset, resource stocks were preferred over flows and rates; and (v) spatial resolution, fine spatial resolution datasets were preferred over those at the country scale. We also prioritised where possible variables related to individuals rather than national/institutional factors.

4. Standardisation
Expert-based system developed to convert datasets to standardised 0-1 index.
: Very low
: Low
: Medium
: High
: Very high
With reference to European and world max/min values.
For some variables (life expectancy) values should already be “very high” across the board. For others there should be more spread.
An expert-based system was developed linking the indicator variables in their own units to standardised values between 0 and 1.
Conceptual classes of “Very Low” to “Very High” were used to standardise between indicators.
Current European and world maxima and minima values were consulted during the process.
The two indicators for each capital were then combined into an individual index one for each of the four capitals.

5. The four capitals at baseline
HUMAN CAPITAL
SOCIAL CAPITAL
These maps show how the individual capital maps across Europe.
They match expectations with high levels of human capital (generally a healthy, educated European population), but a more mixed picture for the other capitals with a north-south and west-east divide.
FINANCIAL CAPITAL
MANUFACTURED CAPITAL

6. Scenario coping capacities
2050 Max
2020 Max
Current Max
Having created capital values for baseline it was then necessary to determine a method to project these to the future in response to the socio-economic scenarios. A sliding scale was developed to translate the stakeholder-determined changes into increases and reductions in the indicator variables. For changes from baseline to the 2020s, a stakeholder-classified “moderate” change was reflected by a shift of a single class (either positive or negative) reflecting the stakeholder classification. A “high” change was reflected by a two-class shift. For changes from the 2020s to the 2050s these shifts were doubled in weight reflecting the length of the time period being approximately double that from baseline to the 2020s. As such, a moderate change from 2020s-2050s was reflected by a two-class shift, and a “high” change by a four class shift. This created a 13 class system with baseline (0) in the centre and classes from -6 to +6 on either side. The quantification of each indicator in each of these classes was done with reference to expert judgements on the plausible ‘absolute’ maximum and minimum values for each indicator. A systematic approach was then put in place that created limits between which each indicator variable was standardised for each of the classes.
Current Min
2020 Min
2050 Min

7. Coping Capacity at baseline
By combining the capital indices for baseline it was possible to map coping capacity and classify it into six classes.
The same approach was used with the capital values re-standardised using the sliding scale to create maps for each of the socio-economic scenarios (for both the 2020s and 2050s).
At baseline, the CLIMSAVE map of coping capacity looks reasonable. The majority of Europe has a medium level of coping capacity reflecting the fact that in general Europe has a reasonable level of capital to deal with crises, and that there is considerable scope for coping capacity to both increase and decrease with changes in its socio-economic future. The differentiation in classes between high- and low-medium identifies key differences between northern and central Europe, where coping capacity is generally higher, and southern and eastern Europe where coping capacity is lower. In terms of extremes, only two sub-regions of Bulgaria map out as “very low”, but there is significant room for improvement in all countries, with only Netherlands and Switzerland, north-western Norway and the cities of London, Paris, Oslo and Brussels standing out as having high coping capacity. These distributions broadly reflect the map of adaptive capacity identified in other index-based projects (see Schröter et al., 2003, Metzger et al., 2006 and Acosta et al., 2013) and particularly those of Greiving et al. (2011).

8. Coping capacity for scenarios
We are
the world
Riders on
the storm
Should I stay
or should I go
Icarus
2020s
The re-scaling method has performed well and maps a significant variety of spatial patterns that reflect the storylines of the scenarios. In the “We are the world” scenario (WRW) successful innovation and steady economic growth combines with effective government leading to a continual improvement in coping capacity through the 2020s and 2050s. In the “Icarus” scenario, short-term policy planning and a stagnating economy leads to initial improvements in coping capacity in the 2020s, but a significant downturn by the 2050s. The dystopian society of “Should I Stay or Should I Go” (SoG) shows a continual decline in coping capacity and “Riders on the storm” shows significant improvements following a slow start.
2050s

9.    Vulnerability From sectoral experts From coping capacity method
To return to the CLIMSAVE vulnerability method we have now demonstrated how coping capacity is calculated using an indicator-based methodology.
To understand vulnerability we need two more sets of information. First we need the level of impact; which is is provided as output variables from the Integrated Assessment Platform. Second, we need thresholds for the points at which vulnerability begins and ends: the upper and lower coping thresholds. These were attained for six ecosystem service related indicators in consultation with sectoral experts.
Vulnerability was calculated in each grid cell for each sectoral indicator by comparing the impact with the thresholds and coping capacity to determine into which of the four classes it fell.
“Not vulnerable, negligible impact” (residual impact is less than the lower coping threshold);
“Not vulnerable, coping” (the significant residual impact is less than the coping capacity);
“Vulnerable, not coping” (the coping capacity is insufficient to deal with the significant residual impact); and
“Vulnerable, impossible to cope” (the residual impact is greater than the upper coping threshold).     ? 
From sectoral experts
From coping capacity method
From IA Platform

10. Mapping vulnerability
Biodiversity
Vulnerability
2020s
The vulnerability can then be mapped to determine spatial patterns in vulnerability.
Here is a worked example for the two utopian scenarios “We are the world (WRW)” and “Riders on the storm (Riders)” in the 2020s and 2050s timeslices.
The storyline for WRW is one of steady growth, with improvements in government effectiveness, a declining focus on financial capital and global efforts to focus on sustainable development. Conversely, the storyline for “Riders” is one where Europe is on its own in the global market, it has invested heavily in green technology, but there is no buyer to sell it to, and as such there is a strong economic recession. In terms of capitals, both socio-economic scenarios reflect a positive move forward in terms of social and human capital and a decrease in financial capital. The “togetherness” of the “WRW” scenario is reflected as a larger boost to social capital than that in “Riders”. The economic downturn of the “Riders” scenario is reflected as a decrease in financial and manufactured capitals leading to “WRW” having greater levels of coping capacity than “Riders” across Europe in 2020.
In the worked example, the combination of the “not vulnerable, coping” (yellow) and the “vulnerable, not coping” (orange) areas highlight where there is a significant residual impact that could be coped with given sufficient capital. The spatial pattern of this combined area is very similar in both socio-economic scenarios. However, the proportion that is vulnerable due to its inability to cope changes notably between the socio-economic scenarios with areas of the UK, France, Italy, Lithuania and Bulgaria that are more able to cope with the impacts on biodiversity in the “WRW” scenario than in the “Riders” storyline. This is reflected in the summary figures: in “WRW” approximately 358,000 km2 is mapped as vulnerable, whereas 615,000 km2 is vulnerable in “Riders”.
Biodiversity
Vulnerability
2050s

11. Cross-sectoral vulnerability
The indicators focused on key ecosystem services: provisioning (food, water); regulating (flood regulation); supporting (biodiversity); cultural and aesthetic (land use intensity) and multi-functionality (land use diversity).
The first thing to note is that the relative levels of vulnerability reproduced are in line with expectations based on the socio-economic scenarios and climate projections. In general terms the more dystopian scenarios (Should I stay or should I go/Icarus) show greater vulnerability in terms of both the number of people and the area vulnerable than the more utopian scenarios (We are the world and Riders on the storm) in the majority of sectors. Similarly in most cases the more moderate climates scenarios (low emissions and low climate sensitivity) generally have lower vulnerability than their extreme counterparts (high emissions and high climate sensitivity). In terms of socio-economics these general trends reflect the lower significant residual impacts in the scenarios where innovations are successful, and higher coping capacities reflecting the higher capital stocks available in the utopian scenarios. In a climatic context, vulnerability tends to be higher in high emissions scenarios as these scenarios tend to experience the greatest climatic changes, which put greater stress on the indices studied here.
However, the vulnerability indices show a more nuanced impression reflecting the exact combination of climate model, level of climate sensitivity, socio-economic scenario and sector.

12. Aggregate vulnerability
Extreme climate scenario
(GFCM21, High emissions)
Icarus
socio-economic scenario
Aggregate vulnerability maps can be created using the Integrated Assessment Platform to map out the number of indicators that are vulnerable for each grid cell.
The maps show the differences between a low and a high vulnerability scenario. In the low vulnerability scenario (CSMK3, Low emissions, We are the world, 2050s) there are a few key areas of vulnerability linked mostly to single indicators – for example, southern Spain (water exploitation), Estonia (food) and some coastal areas, particularly in north-east Italy (flood). There are very few areas highlighted as hotspots for multiple indicators, the most notable being Scandinavia and the Alps (food and diversity) and pockets of France, Austria and Hungary (food, biodiversity and land use diversity). This is reflected by the low proportion of Europe vulnerable to at least one indicator both in terms of people (46%) and area (36%). In the high vulnerability scenario (GFCM21, High emissions, Icarus, 2050s), the proportion of Europe that is vulnerable is much larger with 81% of the area and 88% of the baseline population (443,004,000 people) vulnerable to at least one sector. Furthermore, significant areas of Scandinavia, France, Spain, Italy, Lithuania, Romania, Bulgaria and Greece are vulnerable to more than one indicator. Vulnerability differs between geographic areas. In Scandinavia, vulnerability is to food and land use diversity, whilst in southern and eastern Europe, and the areas around Prague and Paris, vulnerability is to biodiversity and water exploitation. Some areas are vulnerable to three indicators, especially along the coast which are vulnerable to floods, but also in parts of Germany, the Czech Republic and Romania where vulnerability is to land use intensity.
Moderate climate scenario
(CSMK3, Low emissions)
We are the world
socio-economic scenario

13. Conclusions The CLIMSAVE approach to vulnerability assessment:
is replicable and transferable;
allows the integration of the concepts of capitals and coping capacity with stakeholder-derived scenarios; and
produces patterns of coping capacity that might be expected for the socio-economic scenarios.
The aggregate vulnerability hotspot maps suggest that human well-being is most at risk from water stress and biodiversity loss in southern Europe, and from the lack of food provision and land use diversity in northern Europe.