Systemic Risk and Resilience Group at Adaptation Futures in Canada

The session titled "Measuring the resilience of communities to climate impacts and using this knowledge to adapt" co-organized by the Systemic Risk and Resilience research group in collaboration with the Flood Resilience Alliance (‘the Alliance’), is set to be among the highlights of the conference. This session delves into innovative methodologies intended to assess community resilience while catalysing the development of adaptive strategies informed by this understanding. Presentations by the IIASA researchers in this session include the following:

• An evidence-based framework for enhancing resilience against multiple hazards: The Climate Resilience Measurement for Communities (CRMC) - This presentation by Adriana Keating and Naomi Rubenstein (IIASA) introduces the CRMC, a new comprehensive and evidence-backed Alliance framework designed to support bolstering resilience against a spectrum of climate-related hazards (currently flood, heatwave, and wildfire). Rooted in empirical data, this framework offers a systematic approach to fortify community-level resilience against increasing climate risk.  
• Inclusive flood resilience measurement for communities (FRMC): Insights from Manila and Navotas (Philippines) - Delving into insights from Manila and Navotas in the Philippines, this presentation brings a lens of inclusivity and intersectionality to the assessment of flood resilience within communities. This talk, by IIASA’s Teresa M. Deubelli-Hwang and Plan International’s Daniela Donia, explains how the voices of the most marginalized members of society, including children, adolescents and youth (CAY), and women, can be better heard through newly developed CAY-specific indicators for the FRMC and outlines how their use has opened avenues for designing interventions that cater to the distinct needs of marginalised community members. 
• Capturing the impact of community-level resilience-building interventions: A framework for resilience measurement, monitoring, and evaluation - Presented by IIASA researcher Jung Hee Hyun, this framework focuses on capturing the tangible outcomes of interventions aimed at bolstering community resilience. This study will emphasize the need to look at the portfolio and the interaction of interventions, since resilience measurement approaches are typically not designed to sensitively capture project impacts. To avoid creating an incentive to choose interventions that might automatically generate an increase in resilience scores, which is driven by outcome-based evaluation metrics in the short term, the framework will allow for capturing and intensifying systematic, long-term resilience building.  
• Scaling community disaster resilience approaches: Why, when, how and who? - This presentation by IIASA’s Adriana Keating probes into the multifaceted dimensions of scaling up community disaster resilience initiatives. It unravels the "why," "when," "how," and "who" of the process, exploring the essential motivations, optimal timings, implementation approaches, and key stakeholders involved and explaining the role of the Flood Resilience Measurement for Communities (FRMC) approach used in the Alliance.  

Furthermore, Jung Hee Hyun will contribute to the "How to incentivise financing for a resilient recovery" session, which doubles as the launch event for the new Alliance flagship report on resilient recovery. In her presentation, she will share insights from her analysis of interventions carried out across over 20 Alliance countries and hundreds of communities, to elaborate on how the FRMC framework facilitates the selection and design of interventions that transcend disaster recovery, culminating in resilience.

Beyond the contributions within the context of the Alliance, the Systemic Risk and Resilience Group research group will also contribute to several other sessions that speak to the varied aspects of systemic risk and resilience. 

• Robert Šakić Trogrlić (IIASA), together with colleagues from UNU-EHS, is convening a session called “Compound, cascading and complex climate risks and their impacts: getting from methodological advancements to practical outcomes” organised with the MYRIAD-EU project, where he will also present recent work on the framework for systemic multi-hazard and multi-risk assessment and management.   Furthermore, Robert Šakić Trogrlić is co-organiser and contributor to the session “Mutual learning across Indigenous, Local and Scientific Knowledges to better adapt to interconnected risks: towards building a global Community of Practice. 
• IIASA’s Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow Elisa Calliari will contribute to the session "Climate justice perspectives on planned relocation" by sharing insights from her Marie Sklodowska-Curie project ITHACA (Planned relocation as adaptation in a changing climate). She will present ongoing research on planned relocation in the context of climate-related flood risk in Northern Italy, shedding light on the intricate dynamics of navigating radical and potentially transformative adaptation measures. 

For more information on the Adaptation Futures conference, please see here: https://adaptationfutures.com/program/preliminary/