For public adaptation situations, in which public actors wish to influence the adaptation of others adaptive capacity indicators are applicable. These summarise the generic potential capacity of social groups to adapt based on a wide variety of socio-economic variables ranging from aggregate variables such as GDP, literacy rates, education level to household-level variables such as income, age structure, etc (Hinkel, 2012). It is important to note that adaptive capacity indicators of both of these types only provide a rough, high-level and rapid assessment of the potential and generic capacity of actors threatened by climate change. Whether this potential capacity is realized in the context of a specific climate threat depends on many contextual, in particular institutional and cognitive factors.

See also the Toolbox section on Indicators of adaptive capacity.