SystR project develops innovative approaches addressing systemic risks due to interconnections between multiple sectors and stakeholders and resulting cascading climate impacts. The approaches aim to accelerate transformative climate change adaptation and avoid maladaptation. CAT group is responsible for developing local systems models to pilot Systemic Resilience Solutions that consider the interconnections between ecological, social, economic and financial systems. The models align Integrated Systems’ Performance indicators and climate resilience measures with broader economic and development goals and constraints.
The successful implementation of the EU Mission on Climate Adaptation and the recent European Climate Risk Assessment Report highlight an increasing number of new systemic risks and the urgency to act. However, there is growing consensus that Climate Change Adaptation (CCA) lacks the scale, depth and speed needed to avoid dangerously increasing climate-related risks (cf IPCC Sixth Assessment Report). Indeed, adaptation efforts remain too incremental, and upscaling remains challenging. In addition, systemic risks can impede the implementation of resilience solutions and lead to mal-adaptation actions, generating new aggravating vulnerabilities. The systemic risks challenge policy implementation and coherence, requiring innovative approaches that systemically link long-term visioning to short- and mid-term actions.
As CCA accelerates, the goal of Systemic Resilience (SystR) project is to ensure the adaptation measures are developed and implemented in a systemic and cross sectoral way addressing systemic risks (due to interconnections between multiple sectors and stakeholders and resulting in cascading impacts) within short-, mid- and long-term horizons thereby avoiding mal-adaptation. The project aims to reinforce the systemic and cross sectoral CCA approaches by focusing adaptation on the regional unique strengths and competitive advantages, ensuring that the adaptation strategies not only address local vulnerabilities but also build on the region's existing assets and capacities.
The CAT (Cooperation and Transformative Governance) group of the Advancing Systems Analysis (ASA) program at IIASA plays one of the leading roles in SystR project by contributing its unique Systems Analysis expertise and modelling tools for supporting decisions making, especially when the decisions must be taken based on incomplete and uncertain data (both regarding current climatic pressures, vulnerabilities and uncertain future predictions about climate impacts, societal changes, and environmental dynamics), in view of possible mal-adaptation and irreversibility risks. The CAT-ASA group is a part of a large SystR Consortium of research organizations, NGO’s, SMEs, local stakeholders and communities, contributing to the SystR project. In collaboration with project partners, the CAT-ASA group develops and applies simulation, optimization and AI-based data-driven local systems models to pilot systemic adaptation solutions (Systemic Resilience Solutions, SRS) that consider the interconnections between ecological, social, economic and financial systems. In particular, the models will investigate for Investments and Actions Prioritization Solutions (IPS) based on Integrated Systems’ Performance (ISP) indicators, which will help maximise regional CCA efforts by aligning climate resilience policies/measures with broader economic and development goals and constraints.
As part of the EU Mission on Climate Adaptation, the three Demonstration and three Replication sites (case study regions) of the SystR project will be investigated from various systems’ perspectives and stakeholders’ views demonstrating the importance of the Systemic Cross-sectoral Impact Assessment and Resilience Decision Support Framework (DSF), which is expected to become the new Mission standard for the demonstration, replication and beyond. The SystR DSF will integrate short-, mid- and long-term perspectives, performance indicators, goals and constraints into the respective SRSs thereby avoiding straightforward myopic solutions, which may provide immediate relief, but ignore a broader systemic context and potential mal-adaptive outcomes in the presence of uncertainties and risks of all kinds. The SRS will be shown in the three contexts most representative for Europe and twinned with replication sites of similar challenges (coastal region in Guadeloupe-France; rural area in Bystrica-Slovakia; and urban area in Rome-Italy; vs Galicia, Strasbourg and Egaleo, respectively).
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