Mohanasundar Radhakrishnan

Coping capacities for improving adaptation pathways for flood protection in Can Tho, Vietnam

The planning and phasing of adaptation responses are essential to tackle uncertainties and ensure positive outcomes while adapting to changing circumstances. Understanding the evolution of coping and adaptation responses and their capacities is a prerequisite for preparing an effective flood management plan for the future. The aim of this paper is to determine the effect of coping capacity on longer term adaptation responses in a flood risk management system. The objectives, requirements, targets, design, and performance of flood protection measures will have to be determined after taking into account, or in conjunction with, the coping capacities. A methodology has been developed and demonstrated based on an adaptation pathway approach to account for coping capacities and to assess the effect of these on flood protection measures. Application of this methodology for flood protection measures in Can Tho City in the Mekong Delta shows the effect of considering coping capacity for flood protection measures and the value in delaying the occurrence of tipping points. Coping measures such as elevating property floor levels can postpone the tipping points when dikes are no longer effective. Consideration of coping capacity in the system improves adaptation responses and leads to better adaptation outcomes.

Managing urban water systems with significant adaptation deficits—unified framework for secondary cities: part I—conceptual framework

The lack of resilience of urban systems to weather and climate variability—termed type I adaptation—and also to climate change—type II adaptation—are both major challenges to the livability and sustainability of cities in the Global South. However, there is often competition and conflict in these cities between actions that address existing adaptation deficits (type I) and projected adaptation gaps (type II). Extending the concept of the environmental Kuznets curve, this paper argues that synergistic action on type I and type II adaptation is essential in order for these cities to maintain their livability and build resilience to climate variability and climate change in the face of growing urban populations. A proposed unifying framework has been demonstrated in Can Tho, Vietnam, where there are significant adaptation deficits due to rapid urbanization and adaptation gaps due to climate change and socioeconomic changes. The analysis in Can Tho reveals the lack of integration between type I and type II measures that could be overcome by closer integration between various stakeholders in terms of planning, prioritizing, and implementing adaptation measures.

Managing urban water systems with significant adaptation deficits—unified framework for secondary cities: part II—the practice

Adaptation gaps are shortcomings of a system responding to climate change, whereas adaptation deficits are shortcomings in providing services. These two drivers for adaptation are often in conflict in many secondary cities in the global south (SCGS). It is possible to align these seemingly conflicting drivers into a productive unity, a conceptual alignment, which is the first step in achieving harmony while implementing adaptation actions. This paper focuses on the practical aspects of implementing aligned adaptation action that leads to improvements in liveability, sustainability, and resilience of SCGS. At an abstract level, the nature of the adaptation problem is similar to the complex problems identified in various domains, such as software development, manufacturing, and supply chain management. The widely accepted “agile principles”—used in the above domains—is the basis for developing a set of twelve principles for urban adaptation, which are synthesized from numerous recent studies that have implicitly proposed or applied most of these principles to climate change adaptation in urban settings. These principles lead to four essential objectives appertaining to the process of sustainable urban adaptation. The urban agile principles are used to analyze the current state of adaptation of Can Tho City in Vietnam and to ascertain the agile ways of addressing its adaptation challenges. Analysis of the outcomes shows that harmonized approaches can simultaneously address both adaptation deficits and gaps.

Simulating flood risk under non-stationary climate and urban development conditions – Experimental setup for multiple hazards and a variety of scenarios

A framework for assessing economic flood damage for a large number of climate and urban development scenarios with limited computational effort is presented. Response surfaces are applied to charac ...

Context specific adaptation grammars for climate adaptation in urban areas

Abstract In the context of climate adaptation planning there are relationships between adaptation drivers and adaptation measures, which makes the selection and implementation of the adaptation measures a challenging task. This challenge may be addressed by: structuring the adaptation problem using a multiple perspective adaptation framework; and applying a context specific precedence grammar logic for selecting and evaluating adaptation measures. Precedence grammar logic is a set of rule based algorithms (grammar) that are based on the relationships in a local adaptation context. This paper demonstrates the application of a context specific precedence grammar logic in an adaptation context in Can Tho, Vietnam. Adaptation pathways comprising flood adaptation measures (i.e. dike heightening) for this case were generated using rule based algorithms based on the relationships between the drivers and the adaptation measures. The results show that complex adaptation issues that are structured, can be resolved using a context specific adaptation grammar approach.