MEDIATION CP

Adaptation Task Navigator

Question

Have impacts been explored for the full range of uncertainty?

Back        Yes No
appraising vulnerability and impacts

impact analysis
You are here: Home / ATN / Appraising vulnerability and impacts / Impacts or capacity / Impact analysis
ATN interactive decision tree - click any node to select it

How to answer

In an ideal situation, future impacts may be analysed by using an impact model to project the impacts attained under relevant scenarios into the future. Unfortunately, impact models are only available for some sectors such as agriculture, forestry and water and even then uncertainty in impact models are great (Hoffmann et al. 2011).

What is essential for impact analysis to be useful for adaptation is that a representative range of uncertainties in terms of climate and socio-economic scenarios is explored, because adaptation decisions that are based on only a subset of this uncertainty space may lead to maladaptation. Most impact assessments found in the literature, however, only explore a subset of this uncertainty range (Hofmann et al 2011; Hinkel 2012). If a representative range of uncertainty has been explored, the analyst must consider appraising adaptation decisions, as addressed in Section 2.2. If a representative range of uncertainty has not been explored, then further impact analysis is indicated.

Criteria checklist

Overview on the criteria that lead you to the current step:

1.You want to appraise vulnerability and impacts.
2.Your focus is on impacts.
3.Either no data is available on observed impacts, or trend detection / impact attribution have already been performed.
4. Knowledge on future impacts is available.
5. As a next step you are faced with the question whether impacts have been explored for the full range of uncertainty.