Impact- and Vulnerability Assessment

Climate change may have significant impacts on physical aspects of an area like floods and droughts; and on socio-economic functions of a society. Vulnerability relates to a system’s sensitivity and its ability to adapt to new climatic conditions. Deltares can help to analyze the response of physical- and socio-economic systems on changing climate related boundary conditions. We can assess the range of boundary conditions within which societies and their policy strategies function well.

Top down and bottom up approach

Our research includes both application of top-down and bottom-up approaches to assess the vulnerability for climate change on different scales (local, regional, national, river basins) and the impact on different functions, sectors. Within our ‘governance’ research, we look at economic, legal, institutional and cultural factors that may hamper or enhance successful adaptation.

Top down approaches use scenarios for sea level rise and anthropogenic climate change as the starting point for impact and vulnerability studies. Adaptive strategies are proposed that use these scenarios as boundary conditions. The disadvantage of such approaches is that the strategy proposed will be strongly dependent on the chosen climate scenario and associated uncertainty bandwidth.

Bottom up approaches start from the vulnerability of society, or in particular water management itself and try to answer the question: ‘How much sea level rise / climate change can we cope with under the current management, before the consequences of global change cannot be managed anymore?’   The thresholds after which a policy, strategy or specific measure will no longer hold are called ‘adaptation tipping points’.

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DELTA ALLIANCE comparative overview of Deltas (pdf)
Climate proof Flood Risk Management (pdf)
Climate proof Fresh Water Supply (pdf)