Policy support for urban climate change adaptation a deep dive assessment of the Knowledge Centre on Earth Observation (kceo)

Adverse impacts of climate change call for all territories to enhance their adaptive capacity, strengthen resilience and reduce vulnerability (Paris Agreement). Climate adaptation has been mainstreamed in local and national policies. However, the need to support adaptation plans and policies with a robust set of indicators to support decision-making and assess progress is presently lacking. Policy implementation requires monitoring, reporting and evaluation using a harmonized framework of standards and indicators. For example, the EU Strategy on Climate Adaptation (2021) stresses the importance of developing indicators that allow quantification of climate hazards (e.g., frequency and severity) and climate change impacts (e.g., economic losses). Important changes are equitable adaptation, as unequal exposure and vulnerability to climate impacts of different regions and socioeconomic groups may exacerbate pre-existing inequalities even more in urban areas [EEA, 2018]. This was also stressed at the COP28. Thus, an SDG-like process is required to cover aspects of climate change (hazards, impacts, vulnerability, adaptive/coping capacity, and resilience). To support indicators, the role of Earth Observation is critical to produce routine and accurate spatial data. The event will display several recent publications, the Deep-Dive and the Atlas of the Human Planet 2024 book that showcases these applications.
Climate adaptation requires guidance to support local to international actors in terms of prioritization. The deep dive (DD) methodology consists of the following steps: 1. definition of key actors involved, 2. collection and assessment of needs of policy Departments across the entire policy cycle, 3. Earth observation (EO) value chain analysis, 4. translation of policy needs into technical requirements, 5. fitness for purpose analysis of existing products and services, and 6. gap analysis and final report production, including recommendations to fill the knowledge gaps. The DDs on urban climate change adaptation are a result of co-design activities carried out with policy Departments, identifying four use cases:

1) the role of urban greening in managing flood and drought risks and mitigating the urban heat island (UHI) phenomenon.
2) monitoring temperature and its impacts (floods, drought and UHI) at a temporal and spatial resolution adapted to Cohesion Policy 2021-2027 reporting.
3) coastal flooding, coastal eutrophication, coastal erosion and geomorphological change and coastal marine heat waves, in relation to the Marine Spatial Planning Directive.
4) compact cities, the function of cities in strategic corridors in Africa, and measuring urban vulnerability to make cities resilient.

In this session, panellists will share their perspectives on using climate adaptation indicators supported by Earth Observation (in particular, freely available Copernicus data and services). We will share recent experiences and user stories of cities.