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As the impacts of climate change are expected to be increasingly disruptive, a growing share of the economic literature moved to modelling approaches to address the interconnectedness of social, economic, and environmental issues. Among them, System Dynamics (SD) stands out as a well-established modelling approach to analyse complex social-ecological systems. In order to benefit from such modelling exercises it is necessary to follow a structured process, bearing in mind that models should have as their ultimate ambition that of supporting decision-making processes. Yet, the connection with decision-making is addressed only in the last phases of the modelling process, with emphasis placed only on few particular sectors. Hence, a lack of a general framework that can be used as a reference to address climate change adaptation and which could provide insights to economic valuations to support decision-making processes for a different range of sectors emerges. Consistently, the present study aims to bridge the observed gap by employing a combined SES-DAPSIR framework to build a conceptual modelling process for simulating the behaviour of a generic socio-ecosystem, with a particular focus on climate change adaptation. It also illustrates how the proposed conceptual modelling process is concretely put into practice with an application for a coastal socio-ecosystem. This allows demonstrating how the proposed methodology constitute a potential common starting point for different targeted modelling exercises, resulting particularly useful when moving from analytical modelling to decision support.

International audience

ISBN: 978-2-9577416-0-1; International audience; Virtually all sub-regions of the Mediterranean Basin, on land and in the sea, are impacted by recent anthropogenic changes in the environment. The main drivers of change include climate (temperature, precipitation, atmospheric circulation, extreme events, sea-level rise, sea water temperature, salinity and acidification), population increase, pollution, unsustainable land and sea use practices and non-indigenous species. In most areas, both natural ecosystems and human livelihoods are affected. Due to global and regional trends in the drivers, impacts will be exacerbated in the coming decades, especially if global warming exceeds 1.5 to 2°C above the pre-industrial level. Significantly enhanced efforts are needed in order to adapt to inevitable changes, mitigate change drivers and increase resilience.

International audience

The First Mediterranean Assessment Report (MAR1) prepared by the independent network of Mediterranean Experts on Climate and environmental Change (MedECC) founded in 2015 was published in November 2020. MAR1 assesses the best available scientific knowledge on climate and environmental change and associated risks in the Mediterranean Basin in order to render it accessible to policymakers, stakeholders and citizens. The report includes a Summary for Policymakers (SPM), which comprises the key messages of the MAR1. The report has been written by 190 scientists from 25 countries, all contributing in individual capacity and without financial compensation. The UNEP/MAP – Barcelona Convention Secretariat, through its Plan Bleu Regional Activity Center, and the Secretariat of the Union for the Mediterranean work in partnership to support MedECC, and to contribute to establish a sound and transparent scientific assessment process., Preferred citation: MedECC 2020 Summary for Policymakers. In: Climate and Environmental Change in the Mediterranean Basin – Current Situation and Risks for the Future. First Mediterranean Assessment Report [Cramer W, Guiot J, Marini K (eds.)] Union for the Mediterranean, Plan Bleu, UNEP/MAP, Marseille, France, pp 11-40, doi:10.5281/zenodo.5513887.

International audience; Virtually all sub-regions of the Mediterranean Basin, on land and in the sea, are impacted by recent anthropogenic changes in the environment. The main drivers of change include climate (temperature, precipitation, atmospheric circulation, extreme events, sea-level rise, sea water temperature, salinity and acidification), population increase, pollution, unsustainable land and sea use practices and non-indigenous species. In most areas, both natural ecosystems and human livelihoods are affected. Due to global and regional trends in the drivers, impacts will be exacerbated in the coming decades, especially if global warming exceeds 1.5 to 2°C above the pre-industrial level. Significantly enhanced efforts are needed in order to adapt to inevitable changes, mitigate change drivers and increase resilience.

Virtually all sub-regions of the Mediterranean Basin, on land and in the sea, are impacted by recent anthropogenic changes in the environment. The main drivers of change include climate (temperature, precipitation, atmospheric circulation, extreme events, sea-level rise, sea water temperature, salinity and acidification), population increase, pollution, unsustainable land and sea use practices and non-indigenous species. In most areas, both natural ecosystems and human livelihoods are affected. Due to global and regional trends in the drivers, impacts will be exacerbated in the coming decades, especially if global warming exceeds 1.5 to 2°C above the pre-industrial level. Significantly enhanced efforts are needed in order to adapt to inevitable changes, mitigate change drivers and increase resilience. Due to anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases, climate is changing in the Mediterranean Basin, historically and projected by climate models, faster than global trends. Annual mean temperatures on land and sea across the Mediterranean Basin are 1.5°C higher than during pre-industrial times and they are projected to rise until 2100 by an additional 3.8 to 6.5°C for a high greenhouse gas concentration scenario (RCP8.5) and 0.5 to 2.0°C for a scenario compatible with the long-term goal of the UNFCCC Paris Agreement to keep the global temperature well below +2°C above the pre-industrial level (RCP2.6). On land and in the sea, heat waves will intensify in duration and peak temperatures. Despite strong regional variations, summer rainfall will likely be reduced by 10 to 30% in some regions, increasing existing water shortages, desertification and decreasing agricultural productivity., peer-reviewed

Climate change may result in reduced water supply from the Alps an important water resource for Europe. This paper presents a multilingual platform that combines spatial and multi-criteria decision-support tools to facilitate stakeholder collaboration in the analysis of water management adaptation options. The platform has an interactive map interface that allows participants to select a location of their interest within the Alpine Arc. By utilising the decision-support tool, stakeholders can identify suitable adaptation solutions for different geographical units, according to their experience and preference. The platform was used to involve experts across Alpine borders, domains and decision-making levels, as well as a group of university students. The experts favoured the planning instruments for saving water, while the students inclined towards the measures that would improve water conservation. The initial results confirmed the suitability of the platform for future involvement of decision-makers in spatio-temporal analyses of adaptation pathways in the Alps. (VLID)2304335

Task 2.2 “Clustering and network analysis” of the PLACARD project aimed at supporting the mapping of interactions within and between CCA and DRR communities and assessing quantitatively the roles that different actors have in them, using a Social Network Analysis (SNA). SNA techniques are used to answer questions about how actors are connected to each other, how strong their relationships are and which actors are best positioned to connect other actors in a network through the calculation of indicators such as degree, closeness, betweenness centrality and clustering coefficient. In the context of the PLACARD project, two SNA exercises were carried out to investigate the intensity of actors’ interactions (i.e. on a scale from 1 to 5 representing lack of interaction, weak and strong communication, and weak and strong collaboration), as well as the type of interactions (i.e., whether an interaction is related to CCA, DRR, or both fields). Social network metrics were calculated to quantitatively assess the roles of different actors in the network and their interrelationships. In particular, we focused on centrality measures – degree, in‐ degree, betweenness and eigenvector – that are considered good indicators of an actor’s power position, meaning the strength of the role played by an actor in influencing interactions in a network. The first exercise took place in summer 2016 and focused on the interactions between CCA and DRR actors operating at the European and International level. Data was collected from the responses of 32 out of the 35 actors that were invited to participate in an online SNA survey. The European Climate Adaptation Platform (Climate‐ADAPT) emerged as the actor with the highest degree, eigenvector and betweenness centrality values. Besides Climate-ADAPT, the Directorate‐General for Research and Innovation (DG R&I), the European Environment Agency (EEA) and the Directorate‐ General for Climate Action (DG CLIMA) were identified as actors with high centrality values. The actor with the highest in‐degree centrality, an indicator that considers the number of ties that a certain actor has as specified by other actors in the network, was DG CLIMA, followed by EEA and IPCC. When it comes to the analysis of whether interactions are related to CCA and/or DRR issues, collaboration appeared to be most often related to both CCA and DRR, while communication mostly related to one of the two areas when these were considered separately. Cluster analysis was applied to explore if actors could be grouped on the basis of SNA metrics. The application of Clauset‐ Newman‐Moore algorithm revealed two large groups, which clearly depicted the two main communities: DRR and CCA, and one significantly smaller cluster. A detailed description of the first SNA can be found in the PLACARD Milestone 10 report (Bojovic et al., 2017). The second round of the SNA initiated in autumn 2017. This aimed at exploring the two-way interactions between national level actors in four European countries: Germany, Italy, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, as well as the one-way interactions between national level actors and a small group of international actors whose role was identified as important based on the output of the first SNA. Data collection took place in parallel in all four countries, while data was analysed separately for each one of them. The output of the analyses along with a description of the methodological approach employed in this study and a review of CCA and DRR studies that have used SNA during the last two decades are presented in detail in this report (PLACARD Deliverable 2.2 report) (Karali et al., 2018). Selected observations and general remarks from this second exercise are presented below: Governmental actors and research institutes were well represented in all four countries. Output of the SNA analyses confirmed our hypothesis that these actors have a central role in national CCA / DRR networks. • Knowledge platforms and businesses were less equally represented across the four countries, yet they had an important role in the networks in which they were present. Especially for the case of business / companies, relevant actors appeared to be very active in networking, reaching out to a large number of actors (see the out-degree centrality metric). The importance of these actors’ role in the CCA / DRR networks is expected to increase further in the near future. • In many cases the same actors occupied the top places in the ranking of more than one of the calculated SNA metrics. This observation reflects the key role of certain actors in interacting with other actors in their networks as well as in setting up interactions with actors that are less well-connected. • The one-way interactions of national level actors in the four countries with the six international actors (as indicated by the former) suggest that the former interact more with international actors with whom share a similar field of expertise. • Differences exist in the type and intensity of interactions among national level actors in the four countries and the ranking of the different types of actors considered in each network. While some general remarks can be made based on the output of the four SNAs, a full crosscountry comparison is not considered useful in this study due to the differences in the composition of the four networks. • Both CCA and DRR are dynamic and highly evolving fields. This implies that the roles and the importance of actors may change over time as a result of the changing needs in the different networks. Already in this study, the important role of actors such as networks, nongovernmental organisations or non-governmental advisory boards emerged. • Ensuring the diversity of voices and the involvement of actors that are often neglected in relevant exercises is expected to benefit the network in terms of its potential to expand and increase its strength and relevance in the long-term. • Several challenges emerged at the different stages of the SNA exercise. Setting the network and identifying suitable survey participants were key challenges during the design of the SNA. High workload, fatigue, scepticism about the way that data will be used and the repetitive pattern of the SNA questionnaire were identified as barriers during the data collection process that had to be overcome in order to minimize their impact on the response rates of the surveys and the completeness of the collected responses. Finally, during the phase of the data analysis and the interpretation of the results, we were confronted with two ‘weak’ points of the SNA method: (i) the fact that the method is a rather static, as it can reflect actors’ interactions only at a specific point in time, and (ii) that it cannot capture the reasons why certain patterns emerge. These challenges reinforce the idea that the applications of SNA need to be complemented by other methodological tools (i.e. interviews, focus groups) to support a more insightful interpretation of their results.

This work illustrates the findings of a participatory research process aimed at identifying responses for sustainable water management in a climate change perspective, in two river basins in Europe and Asia. The chapter describes the methodology implemented through local participatory workshops, aimed at eliciting and evaluating possible responses to flood risk, which were then assessed with respect to the existing governance framework. Socio-economic vulnerability was also investigated developing an indicator, whose future trend was analysed with reference to IPCC scenarios. The main outcome of such activities consists in the identification of Integrated Water Resource Management Strategies (IWRMS) based upon the issues and preferences elicited from local experts. The mDSS decision support tool was used to facilitate transparent and robust management of the information collected and communication of the outputs.

Disaster risk information is spatial in nature and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Remote Sensing (RS) play an important key role by the services they provide to society. In this context, to risk management and governance, in general, and to civil protection, specifically (termed differently in many countries, and includes, for instance: civil contingencies in the UK, homeland security in the USA, disaster risk reduction at the UN level). The main impetus of this article is to summarize key contributions and challenges in utilizing and accepting GIS and RS methods and data for disaster risk governance, which includes public bodies, but also risk managers in industry and practitioners in search and rescue organizations. The article analyzes certain method developments, such as vulnerability indicators, crowdsourcing, and emerging concepts, such as Volunteered Geographic Information, but also investigates the potential of the topic Critical Infrastructure as it could be applied on spatial assets and GIS and RS itself. Intended to stimulate research on new and emerging fields, this article’s main contribution is to move spatial research toward a more reflective stance where opportunities and challenges are equally and transparently addressed in order to gain more scientific quality. As a conclusion, GIS and RS can play a pivotal role not just in delivering data but also in connecting and analyzing data in a more integrative, holistic way.