NI Adaptation Planning Toolkit

NI Adaptation

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NI Adaptation Planning Toolkit

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Step Two

Understanding your vulnerability

Aims

  • Better understand how your organisation is vulnerable to past and future weather events

 

Objectives

  • The working group assess past and future climate risks, including consequences for your organisation and relevant existing policies which already address the risks
  • Collate the list of risks to use as the basis for developing your adaptation plan in Step 3

 

Introduction

Understanding your current vulnerability to extreme weather events is a useful starting point for assessing how your organisation may be affected in years to come, and to guide decisions about priority actions.

Workshop 1 will be the first meeting of the extended working group. That meeting will provide you with a preliminary assessment of current climate related impacts which have been of significance locally and have had implications for the operations of your organisation. You will begin to consider how these may change in the future and where new impacts might emerge.

At this early stage, the assessment is designed as a risk screening exercise and so a high level of detail is not required. Bullet points and qualitative descriptions of impacts are the aim for now. It is likely that the risk screening will identify risks for which you need further detail. Gathering this further information could be an action included in your adaptation plan (in step 3).

If every service area plays a role then the quality and impact of the plan will be much greater, and the time investment required for the adaptation lead and core working group to develop the plan will be reduced. This is why getting representation from right across your organisation is so important. Climate adaptation is a key strategic priority that everyone has a part to play in delivering.

One key tip: Get the GIS Map (guidance under ‘What do you need to do?’) developed as early as possible. The number of locations you choose to map will dictate how many groups you split participants into at Workshop 1.

For Workshop 1 you will need to create maps which overlay key details including: assets in key geographic areas, AONBs within your council areas, flood maps etc… These will be used during exercises which enable participants to identify how the council is at risk from current and future climate impacts. Prepare these maps as early as possible!

Send the following guidance document to the relevant GIS personnel in your organisation. The document lists the specifications used to create the maps used in Derry City and Strabane District Council, but you can include additional information as you see fit.

GIS Guidance for Workshop 1

Now you are ready to prepare for the Workshop itself. Click on the ‘Resource’ tab to find the relevant guidance, including meeting papers and presentations for Workshop 1.

Resources for workshop one are split into two sections:

Briefing Documents– send these out with your invitations to explain the background of the meeting. (You could also include the relevant Service Area Factsheets from step 1 if you choose).

Documents to send ahead of the meeting:

Workshop 1 Brief

Pre–Workshop 1 – Awareness Questionnaire

Workshop 1 Materials – for use at the meeting itself. These are templates so you will have to amend some of these with your own organisational logos, and adjust the agenda times etc. to fit your meeting. 

Workshop 1 Draft Agenda

Workshop 1 Facilitators Agenda

Workshop 1 – Draft Presentation

Workshop 1 – Group Exercise Worksheets

NB. Due to COVID, the workshops may now be conducted online. These are held on zoom in order to create virtual breakout rooms. The scribe for each group shares their screen to enable te group to see the information being input to the worksheets. And the online workshop tool MIRO is also used to do some online vulnerability mapping work. Contact Climate NI if you would like to discuss the online methodology further.

When you have completed your first workshop you should have identified:

A list of current impacts and consequences for each climate hazard

Future impacts and consequences for each climate hazard

Existing policies which work to reduce some of the risks

Step Two Complete

The ‘adaptation lead’ and core working group now have some tasks to complete before the next workshop. Step 3 involves using the list of risks to create a climate risk register which outlines the key issues for your organisation and serves as the basis for developing your action plan.

Go to Step Three