Introduction

The MEDIATION Adaptation Task Navigator (ATN) provides interactive access to guidance on assessing climate change vulnerability, impacts and adaptation (VIA) as well as on implementing, monitoring and evaluating adaptation. This encompasses a wide range of activities addressed by a diversity of methods. While many previous guidances have focused on particular aspects of these activities, this guidance presents a novel approach to integrating these activities into a coherent framework.

The guidance focuses on assessing vulnerability and impacts in the context of adaptation. This is of particular importance to note because the methodological guidance on how to assess impacts and vulnerability is thus embedded into the wider picture of addressing adaptation problems and advancing adaptation. Impact assessment carried out for other purposes such as for setting mitigation targets are not considered. This guidance provides insight both in identifying which methods are appropriate within these general stages of the adaptation, and in applying specific methods once the appropriate ones have been identified.

• show adaptation task list (by theme)
• show adaptation task list (alphabetically)

How to use

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The ATN describes tasks that are carried out for addressing climate change adaptation. It is structured into four subsections standing for the four general tasks that are defined by the adaptation learning cycle. The subsections are further broken down into more specific tasks that may be relevant depending on the adaptation situation (AS) given.

Since we aim at supporting the identification of critical tasks as well as the choice of methods for addressing these, this chapter presents decision-trees for each subsection that help the analyst to decide, based on the characteristics of AS, which tasks are critical and methods appropriate.

The whole ATN can in fact be seen as a decision tree for the analyst to transverse in the process of addressing adaptation. The first decision is at which point to enter the adaptation learning cycle. This leads the analyst to the corresponding ATN subsections. Within these subsections, more specific entry points and decision trees are given, leading to the tasks that need to be addressed and the methods applicable. When a method has been identified, a more comprehensive description of methods and tools is given.

Having selected an entry point at one of the 4 main tasks, the analyst is guided down a more specific decision tree to the identification of a critical sub-task. To take an example from the first stage in the adaptation learning cycle, appraising vulnerability and impacts, the analyst may be a coastal manager faced with sea-level rise. This may mean that, given what the analyst knows about her current AS, the task of impact projection is identified. With identification of a critical task to be addressed, the analyst would then be guided to sections in which methods for impact projection are described in detail, and examples are given to show how they have been applied.

Alternatively, the analyst may be guided to a task which is addressed in another stage of the adaptation learning cycle. Again using our example of a coastal manager, this would be the case when the analyst has determined that she has sufficient knowledge of the vulnerabilities and impacts, and is guided through the decision tree to the stage appraising adaptation decisions. In this sense, there are two kinds of "exit points" to a decision tree. In the first, the analyst is guided to the description of the application of a specific method contained in Chapter 3. In the second, the analyst is guided to another stage in the adaptation learning cycle.

It is important to note that the ATN aims leading the analyst through the process of thinking about the problem of addressing adaptation. The decision-section provides a coherent structure in which to organise thinking about the diversity of methods that are applied in addressing adaptation. The decision-trees, further, provide a consistent rationale for the application of a particular method in a given AS. They thus provide a structure and sequence for the methods described.