Adaptation L3

Question 1

What is a risk?

Answer 1

the combination of the probability of an event and its negative consequences

Question 2

What is a hazard?

Answer 2

a dangerous phenomenon, substance, human activity or condition that may cause loss of life,injury or other health impacts, property damage, loss of livelihoods and services, social and economic disruption or environmental damage

Question 3

What is exposure?

Answer 3

people, property, systems or other elements present in hazard zones that are thereby subject to potential losses

Question 4

What is vulnerability/

Answer 4

the characteristics or circumstances of a community, system or asset that make it susceptible to the damaging effects of a hazard

Question 5

What is resilience?

Answer 5

the ability of a system, community or society exposed to hazards to resist, absorb, accommodate to and recover from

Question 6

What is a response?

Answer 6

Actions taken in response to climate change
can be both mitigation and adaption

Question 7

What is an example of the following in the context of a flood risk assessment
- probability
-consequence
-characterisation
- risk to people

Answer 7

Probabilty of an extreme hydormeterological condition eg. rainfall, flow, tide level

Consequence - the harm/damage to people and property that occurs during the flood

typically characterised in terms of the depth of flooding that occurs for each property - e.g. house in the flood plain, and the economic damage caused by flooding in a house too that depth - exposure

risk to people are typically characterised in terms of the coverage of insurance

Question 8

What are some assumptions behind a damage function?

Answer 8

• the flows are stationary - i.e. assuming that future predictions will happen in the same world that we are in today but it is not cc will change the likelihood of damage events happening
• the economics losses are well characterised by the damage function
• economic damage is the only aspect of risk that we are concerned about

Question 9

What are the three key metrics in quantified risk-based decision making and how do you quantify them?

Answer 9

Benefits are damages avoided relative to the basline

net present value = PV(benefits) -PV(costs)

benefit-cost ratio = PV(benefits)/PV(Costs)

Question 10

What are some of the challenges associated with a global climate risk assessment?

Answer 10

• non-economic losses are big and difficult to quantify
• damage function is uncertain due to quantity and breadth of risks
• v little information about the future
• limited data about global hazards

Question 11

In the context of climate change where can risks arise?

Answer 11

from potential impacts of climate change as well as the human responses to climate change

Question 12

What are the key consideration sin a risk matric for climate and socio-economic processes?

Answer 12

Climate
- nature variability
-anthropogenic climate change

SE
- SE pathways
-adaptation or mitigation actions
-governance

Question 13

What are the three sides of the three sided propeller by the IPCC?

Answer 13

hazard

vulnerability

exposure

Question 14

What is a critical characteristic to understand about risks?

Answer 14

risks do not occur in isolation

interact across different sectors, times, spaces and have multiple different response options

time is important because ability to react to risks diminishes if the same risk occurs repeatedly

e.g. pandemic and cc = compound risk or cascading risks - drought leading to lower harvest leading to food insecurity

Question 15

What is a key risk?

Answer 15

defined as a potentially sever risk and therefore especially relevant to the interpretation of dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system

Question 16

Why are key risks potentially severe?

Answer 16

while come could already reflect dangerous interference now

more typically they become severe over time due to changes in the nature of hazards

and/or the exposure/vulnerability of societies or ecosystems to that hazard

and/or become sever due to the adverse consequences of adaptation or mitigation responses to the risk

BUT ALSO by the values, which determine the importance of a risk

nb. all of this v subjective and cannot be measured objectively

Question 17

What are four key considerations in key risks?

Answer 17

• magnitude of adverse consequences
  -likelihood of adverse consequences
• temporal characteristics of the risk
• ability to respond to the risk

Question 18

Can you give some examples of represetnative key risks?

Answer 18

Risks to…
- low-lying coasts
- terrestrial and ocean ecosystems
- critical infrastructure
- living standards
- human health
- food security
- water security
- peace and human mobility

Question 19

What are some of the reasons for concern

Answer 19

risks to/associated with….
- unique and threatened systems
- extreme weather events
- the disruption of impacts
- global aggregate impacts
- large-scale singular events

n.b. these have changed over time - vulnerability of systems and humans have been underestimated as well as the lack of consideration for adaption in previous conceptualisation

Question 20

How do we assess risks globally

Answer 20

Step 1 - literature - read and anlyse existing literature - but this is dependent on what part of the world you are looking at heterogenous literature coverage

Step 2 - assessment of uncertainty - research data and look at the confidence of the risk assessment
what is the actual basis of assessment for these risks that have been identified

Step 3 - expert eliciation
- facilitate judgements about what level of climate change might be dangerous by aggregating risks from various sectors considering hazards, exposures, vulnerabilities, capacities to adapt

Question 21

What is a risk assessment?

Answer 21

the potential for a chosen activity or action to lead to an undesirable outcome

Question 22

What are the key features of a risk assessment?

Answer 22

• deals with activities or actions inlcuding the choice of inaction
• focuses upon outcomes that we value
• contains notions of probability - or potential - and consequences - the undesirability of the outcome
• implies the need to value undesirable outcomes
• recognise that perceptions of risk have a material impact on choices
• is forward-looking - outcomes that are observed are realisation of a risk
• provides a rational basis for deciding upon actions, by trading off between costs and risks

Question 23

What are the issues associated with the global disaster data base?

Answer 23

EM-DAT is a comprehensive data base about natural hazards and the deaths associated

however there are huge parts of the world with a lack of data recorded for heatwaves - do we assume that nothing has happened -noooo

Question 24

What are some asects of environmental vulnerability?>

Answer 24

• air pollution
  -biodiverity loss
  -deforestation
  -desertification
  -land-use change
  -water pollution

Question 25

what are some socioeconomic factors to consider in vulnerability

Answer 25

• growing inequality
• deographic change
  -science investment
  -human im/mobility
  -urbanisation

Question 26

What are some suseptabilty factors to consider in vulnerability?

Answer 26

• social infrastructure
• political commitment
  -socio-econoic conditions
  -indvidiaul factors
  -population health status

Question 27

What are the key elements of adaptation readiness

Answer 27

Social rediness - social inequalty, ICT infrastructure, education and innovation

economic readiness - world bank doing business indicators

governance readiness - potlical stability and non-violence, control of corruption, rule of law, regulatory quality

Question 28

What are some key risks that we don’t fully understand yet

Answer 28

impacts on mental health and conflict and violence

Question 29

Is cc causing conflicts?

Answer 29

the assessment is that cc is playing a role but adaption is v low but there is low confidence in this assessment due ot the complexity of factors that lead to armed conflict

disentangling the role of cc is v challenging

but the impact of droughts on conflict could be a correlation and not cuasation