Towards a more integrated research framework for heat-related health risks and adaptation.

Advances in research on current and projected heat-related risks from climate change and the associated responses have rapidly developed over the past decade. Modelling architectures of climate impacts and heat-related health risks have become increasingly sophisticated alongside a growing number of experiments and socioeconomic studies, and possible options for heat-related health adaptation are increasingly being catalogued and assessed. However, despite this progress, these efforts often remain isolated streams of research, substantially hampering our ability to contribute to evidence-informed decision making on responding to heat-related health risks. We argue that the integration of scientific efforts towards more holistic research is urgently needed to tackle fragmented evidence and identify crucial knowledge gaps, so that health research can better anticipate and respond to heat-related health risks in the context of a changing climate. In this Personal View, we outline six building blocks, each constituting a research stream, but each needed as part of a more integrated research framework-namely, projected heat-related health risks; adaptation options; the feasibility and effectiveness of adaptation; synergies, trade-offs, and co-benefits of adaptation; adaptation limits and residual risks; and adaptation pathways. We outline their respective importance and discuss their benefits for health-related research and policy.

Adaptation to compound climate risks: A systematic global stocktake.

This article provides a stocktake of the adaptation literature between 2013 and 2019 to better understand how adaptation responses affect risk under the particularly challenging conditions of compound climate events. Across 39 countries, 45 response types to compound hazards display anticipatory (9%), reactive (33%), and maladaptive (41%) characteristics, as well as hard (18%) and soft (68%) limits to adaptation. Low income, food insecurity, and access to institutional resources and finance are the most prominent of 23 vulnerabilities observed to negatively affect responses. Risk for food security, health, livelihoods, and economic outputs are commonly associated risks driving responses. Narrow geographical and sectoral foci of the literature highlight important conceptual, sectoral, and geographic areas for future research to better understand the way responses shape risk. When responses are integrated within climate risk assessment and management, there is greater potential to advance the urgency of response and safeguards for the most vulnerable.

Proposing DAPP-MR as a disaster risk management pathways framework for complex, dynamic multi-risk.

Climate change impacts are increasingly complex owing to compounding, interacting, and cascading risks across sectors. However, approaches to support Disaster Risk Management (DRM) addressing the underlying (uncertain) risk driver interactions are still lacking. We tailor the approach of Dynamic Adaptive Policy Pathways (DAPP) to DAPP-MR to design DRM pathways for complex, dynamic multi-risk in multi-sector systems. We review the recent multi-hazard and multi-sector research to identify relevant aspects of multi-risk management frameworks and illustrate the suitability of DAPP-MR using a stylized case. It is found that rearranging the analytical steps of DAPP by introducing three iteration stages can help to capture interactions, trade-offs, and synergies across hazards and sectors. We show that DAPP-MR may guide multi-sector processes to stepwise integrate knowledge toward multi-risk management. DAPP-MR can be seen as an analytical basis and first step toward an operational, integrative, and interactive framework for short-to long-term multi-risk DRM.

Scenario processes for socio-environmental systems analysis of futures: A review of recent efforts and a salient research agenda for supporting decision making.

This paper reviews the latest research on scenarios including the processes and products for socio-environmental systems (SES) analysis, modeling and decision making. A group of scenario researchers and practitioners participated in a workshop to discuss consolidation of existing research on the development and use of scenario analysis in exploring and understanding the interplay between human and environmental systems. This paper presents an extended overview of the workshop discussions and follow-up review work. It is structured around the essential challenges that are crucial to progress support of decision making and learning with respect to our highly uncertain socio-environmental futures. It identifies a practical research agenda where challenges are grouped according to the process stage at which they are most significant: before, during, and after the creation of the scenarios as products. These challenges for SES include: enhancing the role of stakeholder and public engagement in the co-development of scenarios, linking scenarios across multiple geographical, sectoral and temporal scales, improving the links between the qualitative and quantitative aspects of scenario analysis, addressing uncertainties especially surprise, addressing scenario diversity and their consistency together, communicating scenarios including visualization methods, and linking scenarios to decision making.

The Dutch dominant perspective on water: risks and opportunities involved.

To implement or continue water management strategies social support is needed. Social support highly depends on people's perspectives on water. However, these perspectives are not static and may change over time leading to changes in social support for strategies. Therefore, sustainable water management strategies should be robust. Robust strategies are able to cope with changing social and environmental developments. Lacking robustness runs the risk of losing social support, which may force policymakers into sudden or expensive measures. We use the Perspectives Method to analyze the present Dutch policy perspective and the dominant perspective on water among Dutch water professionals, by respectively studying the Dutch Delta report and questionnaire outputs and distinguishing between Hierarchical, Egalitarian, Individualistic and Fatalistic perspectives. A comparison between the policy and professional perspective shows similarities and differences. Topics regarding drought, water supply, and waters' relation to spatial planning need serious reconsideration to guarantee enough present and future social support to implement the measures suggested in the policy report.