Louise Simonsson

Cities’ capacity to manage climate vulnerability: experiences from participatory vulnerability assessments in the lower Göta Älv Catchment, Sweden

Within the scope of this project, tools for conducting systematic and integrated climate vulnerability and sustainability assessments have been developed. Two municipalities in the lower Göta Älv catchment were selected as study cases. Together with representatives from key municipal departments and national government agencies, the interdisciplinary research team designed and conducted a co-production process. Results obtained using the developed tools demonstrate that conducting such a systematic assessment of the current situation and potential impacts of climate change adaptation measures would contribute to synergies between adaptation strategies and other policy arenas. Our recommendation for enhancing the capacity of local vulnerability management in Sweden is to shift foci in four fields: from static analysis of climate vulnerability to a dynamic approach to social vulnerability, from a sector-wise fragmented approach to integrated management, from a focus on technical fixes and physical measures to institutional adaptation measures, and, finally, from sustainability-blind adaptation investments to long-term sustainable climate adaptation measures. The processes and mechanisms for succeeding in this requires that knowledge be produced, shared, and managed in partly new ways, allowing stakeholders both inside and outside local government administration to voice and synergise their concerns and solutions.

Perceptions of Risk and Limits to Climate Change Adaptation: Case Studies of Two Swedish Urban Regions

This study analyzes processes of adaptation to climate change through participatory research in Sweden’s two largest cities, Stockholm and Gothenburg. Perceptions of climate risks and constraints to adaptation are discussed. Practitioners from the public and private sector have identified stakeholders who are, and who should be, giving attention to adaptation, including the risks and threats facing the regions and how and which factors hinder the implementation of adaptation. In this study, it is found that those issues where adaptation is considered most difficult are mainly related to response capacity.

Characterising vulnerability of the elderly to climate change in the Nordic region

Elderly people are known to be more vulnerable than the general population to a range of weather-related hazards such as heat waves, icy conditions and cold periods. In the Nordic region, some of these hazards are projected to change their frequency and intensity in the future, while at the same time strong increases are projected in the proportion of elderly in the population. This paper reports results from three projects studying the potential impacts of climate change on elderly people in the Nordic region. An interactive web-based tool has been developed for mapping and combining indicators of climate change vulnerability of the elderly, by municipality, across three Nordic countries: Finland, Norway and Sweden. The tool can also be used for projecting temperature-related mortality in Finland under different projections of future climate. The approach to vulnerability mapping differs from most previous studies in which researchers selected the indicators to combine into an index. Here, while researchers compile data on indicators that can be accessed in the mapping tool, the onus is on the users of the tool to decide which indicators are of interest and whether to map them individually or as combined indices. Stakeholders with responsibility for the care and welfare of the elderly were engaged in the study through interviews and a workshop. They affirmed the usefulness of the prototype mapping tool for raising awareness about climate change as a potential risk factor for the elderly and offered suggestions on potential refinements, which have now been implemented. These included adding background information on possible adaptation measures for ameliorating the impacts of extreme temperatures, and improved representation of uncertainties in projections of future exposure and adaptive capacity.

Method Development for Identifying and Analysing Stakeholders in Climate Change Adaptation Processes

It is now widely recognized that stakeholder interaction and dialogue is essential to improve decisions about and awareness of climate change. The term ‘stakeholder’ is broad and researchers and practitioners may have interrelated and contrasting views on who is a stakeholder or who is (or should be) responsible for adaptation to climate change. To engage stakeholders in research or other projects on adaptation thus requires a careful mapping of the stakeholder landscape and identification of relevant actors at different levels. Through a case study approach, based on studies of two Swedish urban regions, Stockholm and Gothenburg, this paper proposes a systematic method to analyse and identify roles and responsibilities in the stakeholder landscape. The initial mapping exercise was complemented by participatory studies of local and regional stakeholders’ perceptions of who is, or should be, involved in adaptation and their significance for climate change adaptation in the respective regions. The results indicate the value of careful stakeholder analysis for sustainable, effective, planned adaptation that is flexible, but also systematic enough to fulfil practical and scientific requirements for the study and advancement of ongoing adaptation processes and implementation.

The effect of subsurface military detonations on vadose zone hydraulic conductivity, contaminant transport and aquifer recharge.

Live fire military training involves the detonation of explosive warheads on training ranges. The purpose of this experiment is to evaluate the hydrogeological changes to the vadose zone caused by military training with high explosive ammunition. In particular, this study investigates artillery ammunition which penetrates underground prior to exploding, either by design or by defective fuze mechanisms. A 105 mm artillery round was detonated 2.6 m underground, and hydraulic conductivity measurements were taken before and after the explosion. A total of 114 hydraulic conductivity measurements were obtained within a radius of 3m from the detonation point, at four different depths and at three different time periods separated by 18months. This data was used to produce a three dimensional numerical model of the soil affected by the exploding artillery round. This model was then used to investigate potential changes to aquifer recharge and contaminant transport caused by the detonating round. The results indicate that an exploding artillery round can strongly affect the hydraulic conductivity in the vadose zone, increasing it locally by over an order of magnitude. These variations, however, appear to cause relatively small changes to both local groundwater recharge and contaminant transport.