In a city, almost all departments are facing the impacts of climate change. They must adapt their policy and practice. Measures taken by one department might also meet the adaptation needs of another. On the other hand an adaptation action of one department may conflict with the adaptation aim of another urban structure. This is where the Adaptation Compass starts from:

• It is a guide to interlink different stakes and to check the vulnerability and adaptation options across sectors.
• The Future Cities Adaptation Compass aims to help planners and experts in cities and water boards structure work steps, provide good-practice examples and highlight issues and possible barriers.
• Applying a pre-structured assessment and documentation layout, this Compass enables the user to plan the stages to create climate proof cities.
• The Adaptation Compass can be applied to a region, a city or a project area. 
• The tool provides general information and automated answers. It also gives the user the opportunity to submit local information.

The tool is being tested by the Future Cities partner and will be available autumn 2012.

• The VULNERABILITY CHECK for a city region or parts of a city provides the basis to determine the current vulnerability.

• UNDERSTAND CLIMATE CHANGE EFFECTS – here the Compass informs how to get the relevant information. It advices how to cope with the uncertainties involved in climate projections and related effects. 

• For the APPRAISAL OF RISKS AND OPPORTUNITIES a method is proposed that uses the results from the vulnerability check and the projected climate change trends. 
  

• The module EXPLORE ADAPTATION explores the various adaptation options: especially the combination of different measures based on the practical experiences of the Future Cities partnership. 

• Last but not least, the NEED FOR ACTION can be determined. The core problems and problem areas can be identified and suitable adaptation measures can be found. 

• The user can save the results, REVIEW input data later and update, if required. Examples for MONITORING the results of measures are also provided. 

Find more information in the brochure about the Adaptation Compass.