*Please note: the formal call for evidence has now closed. More information can be found here.*
To develop strategic and collaborative actions to adapt to climate change, the city region needs a broad consensus about where to place its efforts to ensure timely, proportionate actions to respond to climate change. This risk and opportunity assessment is intended to provide this consensus. CRSES is undertaking an assessment of risks and opportunities for the region as a whole and for that we need a complete an evidence base as possible. Much of the data surrounding vulnerability, exposure, observed impacts, assets, planned investment and development within the region is held by external organisations. Making good use of this existing evidence is vital to pinpoint potential cascading risks within the region and will enable the city region assessment to build on previous work, reduce duplication of effort and add detail and nuance which will be important when scoring the risks and opportunities.
We are asking for two types of evidence to be submitted:
1. Formal evidence – please share any climate risk and opportunity assessments that you have undertaken for your organisation, sector or community which will improve the regional evidence base. This could also include resilience plans, planned asset upgrades, major new development / investment plans which could affect vulnerability and exposure to climate risks.
2. Lived experience (personal, community, place-based anecdotal or photographic evidence of how climate impacts and extreme weather events have affected you and your place) to be submitted via the project Story Map which launches later this month.
If you hold formal evidence which could help the Climate Ready South East Scotland climate risk and vulnerability assessment please email climatereadyses@sniffer.org.uk before Friday 27 September with links to the documents / data you want us to consider.
How do I know if the information my organisation holds would be useful to the climate risk and opportunity assessment?
To assess the risks and opportunity that climate change impacts could have on the region, we need to understand
- how and where the region is vulnerable (this might include costs / cascading impacts arising from weather events today, as well as risk assessments considering climate change projections)
- how the region and it’s assets, infrastructure and land use might develop between now and 2080,
- and action that is already being taken (or is being planned) to respond to climate impacts, or which could have an impact on underlying exposure or vulnerability to climate risks.
Evidence that will help our understanding of these issues could take many forms: climate risk assessments, public bodies climate change duties reporting, data about how previous extreme weather events have impacted your assets and organisation, existing resilience plans, and plans for future investment in the region (this could be asset upgrades, land management plans, planned development). It might be available in the public domain, or not. It may be documents, or it could be maps and GIS data layers. If you are not sure if we already have the information – please send it to us, it’s better to have it twice than for it not to be considered in the risk assessment. If you are not sure if the data you hold will help the assessment, please get in touch on the email button below.
Handling of confidential information
In some situations, we appreciate it may not be possible for the project team to directly access information held by partners for reasons of confidentiality and commercial sensitivity. In these cases, the organisations will be asked to complete a copy of the draft risk and opportunity registers with their own organisation’s view on the risks and associated evidence they draw on to support their conclusions. Please email climatereadyses@sniffer.org.uk if you would like to submit your information this way.
