Ray Quay

Anticipatory Governance: A Tool for Climate Change Adaptation

Problem: Human and natural systems will probably have to adapt to climate change impacts, but this cannot be planned for using the traditional approach based on predictions because of the subjects great complexity, its planning horizon more than 50 years away, and uncertainty about the future climate and how effectively CO2 emissions will be reduced. Purpose: This article proposes a more appropriate basis for planning climate change adaptation. Anticipatory governance is a flexible decision framework that uses a wide range of possible futures to prepare for change and to guide current decisions toward maximizing future alternatives or minimizing future threats. Rather than trying to tame or ignore uncertainty, this approach explores uncertainty and its implications for current and future decision making. Methods: I review and summarize the literature on anticipatory governance and provide three case studies to demonstrate its application to climate change planning. Results and conclusions: Denver Water, New York City, and the City of Phoenix are all using scenarios to anticipate the range of global climate changes that may impact their communities and to develop adaptation strategies to address these impacts. Each is developing a decision framework for implementing adaptation strategies incrementally based on climate monitoring. An incremental approach minimizes the resources that must be allocated to address these risks and has allowed these cities to plan in spite of the high uncertainty associated with climate change science and social change. Takeaway for practice: The complexity, uncertainty, and distant planning horizon associated with climate change cannot be managed sufficiently for the traditional predict-and-plan approach to yield good decisions about the significant social and capital investments likely to be required for adaptation. To be successful, social institutions must embrace new methods that explore uncertainty and that provide strategic guidance for current and future decisions. Research support: None.

Using watered landscapes to manipulate urban heat island effects: How much water will it take to cool phoenix?

Problem: The prospect that urban heat island (UHI) effects and climate change may increase urban temperatures is a problem for cities that actively promote urban redevelopment and higher densities. One possible UHI mitigation strategy is to plant more trees and other irrigated vegetation to prevent daytime heat storage and facilitate nighttime cooling, but this requires water resources that are limited in a desert city like Phoenix. Purpose: We investigated the tradeoffs between water use and nighttime cooling inherent in urban form and land use choices. Methods: We used a Local-Scale Urban Meteorological Parameterization Scheme (LUMPS) model to examine the variation in temperature and evaporation in 10 census tracts in Phoenixs urban core. After validating results with estimates of outdoor water use based on tract-level city water records and satellite imagery, we used the model to simulate the temperature and water use consequences of implementing three different scenarios. Results and conclusions: We found that increasing irrigated landscaping lowers nighttime temperatures, but this relationship is not linear; the greatest reductions occur in the least vegetated neighborhoods. A ratio of the change in water use to temperature impact reached a threshold beyond which increased outdoor water use did little to ameliorate UHI effects. Takeaway for practice: There is no one design and landscape plan capable of addressing increasing UHI and climate effects everywhere. Any one strategy will have inconsistent results if applied across all urban landscape features and may lead to an inefficient allocation of scarce water resources. Research Support: This work was supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under Grant SES-0345945 (Decision Center for a Desert City) and by the City of Phoenix Water Services Department. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of NSF.

Why Land Planners and Water Managers Don't Talk to One Another and Why They Should!

Increasing evidence demonstrates that unsustainable land use practices result in human-induced drought conditions, and inadequate water supplies constrain land development in growing cities. Nonetheless, organizational barriers impair coordinated land and water management. Land planning is strongly influenced by political realities and interest groups, while water management is focused on the single-minded goal of providing reliable water for future development, often set apart from other priorities. Survey results from Portland, OR, and Phoenix, AZ, show that water managers and land planners are generally aware of the physical interconnections between land and water, but there is little cross-sector involvement in the two cities. Focusing on shared concerns about outdoor water use, climate variability, and water-sensitive urban design is a fruitful first step in integrating the practices of land planning and water management for climate adaptation and sustainable resource use.

Socio-hydrology modelling for an uncertain future, with examples from the USA and Canada

Abstract Socio-hydrology brings an interest in human values, markets, social organizations and public policy to the traditional emphasis of water science on climate, hydrology, toxicology and ecology. It also conveys a decision focus in the form of decision support tools, stakeholder engagement and new knowledge about the science–policy interface. This paper demonstrates how policy decisions and human behaviour can be better integrated into climate and hydrological models to improve their usefulness for decision support. Examples from SW USA and western Canada highlight uncertainties, vulnerabilities and critical tradeoffs facing water decision makers in the face of rapidly changing environmental and societal conditions. Irreducible uncertainties in downscaled climate and hydrological models limit the usefulness of climate-driven, predict-and-plan methods of water resource planning and management. Thus, it is argued that such methods should be replaced by approaches that use exploratory modelling, scenario planning and risk assessment in which the emphasis is on managing uncertainty rather than on reducing it. Model fusion supports all of these processes in integrating human and biophysical aspects of water systems, allowing policy impacts to be quantified and clarified, and fostering public engagement with water resource modelling.

Outdoor Water Use as an Adaptation Problem: Insights from North American Cities

Recent efforts to influence the efficiency and timing of urban indoor water use through education, technology, conservation, reuse, economic incentives, and regulatory mechanisms have enabled many North American cities to accommodate population growth and buffer impacts of drought. It is unlikely that this approach will be equally successful into the future because the source of conservation will shift from indoor to outdoor use. Outdoor water is climate sensitive, difficult to measure, hard to predict, linked to other components of complex and dynamic urban resource systems, imbued with behavioral and cultural dimensions, and implicated in societal conflicts about climate risk, modern lifestyles, social justice, and future growth. Outdoor water conservation is not a traditional management problem focused on the water sector, assuming a stationary climate, and set aside from public debate. Instead, outdoor water is an adaptation problem, involving complex and uncertain system dynamics, the need for cross-sector coordination, strategies for dealing with climatic uncertainty, and mechanisms for engaging stakeholders with differing goals. This paper makes the case for treating outdoor water as an adaptation problem and offers a six-point strategy for how cities can better prepare their water systems for the uncertainties of climate and societal change.

Bridging the gap between ecological research and land use policy: The North Sonoran Collaboration

A key factor in bridging the gap between ecological research and public land use policy is translating information from the language of research into the language of public policy making. Creating effective translations of research is often beyond the skills of urban planners and environmental researchers individually, and thus collaboration between the two is needed. Examples of such translation and partnerships can be found in the projects of an interdisciplinary group coined the North Sonoran Collaborative. This group consists of Phoenix, AZ, USA city staff, Arizona State University faculty, graduate students, and staff, and people from other local private companies and government agencies. The group, through its collaboration, has sponsored a series of environmental research efforts and translated those into successful land use planning activities and policies. The focus of the collaboration is the northern, largely undeveloped portion of the city of Phoenix, Arizona. This group has pursued three principles: desert ecosystems should be protected, a diversity of development should be pursued, and a sense of community should be created in new developments. This paper discusses this unique approach to planning and how it has proven effective in responding to the local communities needs quickly.

Visualization of Sustainability Indicators: A Conceptual Framework

Due to complex, interwoven entities in the science of sustainability, an effective strategic approach that allows issues to be examined from various angles is needed to successfully integrate sustainability into public policy processes. Indicators can be an effective method for providing simple assessments of sustainability, however, there has been little research of indicator organization or visualization techniques to meet the unique information needs of public decision makers. There are numerous models for defining and organizing sustainability indicators but only a few provide defined methods of weighting and aggregation. There is also much published work on developing visualization methods and tools for decision making. However there is little research on how sustainable indicator visualization systems can be structured to meet the specific information needs of public decision makers as they address a wide range of issues at various spatial and functional scales. This article examines the current sustainability indicator and relevant visualization literature and proposes a theoretical organization and visualization framework for sustainability indicator data that blends data organization with flexible and simple information visualization.