Welcome to the Carpe Diem West Academy Discussion Forum. This feature allows Academy users to share information, thoughts, questions and suggestions with each other creating virtual conversations between water manager on water-climate issues in the American West. We hope this feature facilitates the richessness of peer-to-peer learning and interaction and creates a venue to build relationships and connections.
Guide Tools
This guide is provided to assist project managers/working group leaders in obtaining and compiling much of the information that a NatureServe Vista project requires.
ADAPT allows users to input data to assess their community’s vulnerabilities, choose preparedness goals, and develop and prioritize actions. Need to become an ICLEI member.
The purpose of this guide is to help local jurisdictions understand how to apply the concepts of Benefit-Cost Review to the prioritization of mitigation actions. B-CR involves a thorough and comprehensive treatment of potential benefits and costs, both monetary and non-monetary. It is generally a pre-cursor for BCA.
This 2010 EPA study examines the steps taken by eight water utilities in order to identify the emergent characteristics of water utility climate change vulnerability assessments. The study discusses the approaches taken, and describes the steps, information, and judgments needed for such decision making.
This 2011 EPA study looks in detail at how 4 water utilities conducted their vulnerability assessments. The examples span small to large utilities, qualitative and quantitative approaches, and include a wide range of potential climate impacts and system vulnerabilities.
The Essential Principles of Climate Science presents important information for individuals and communities to understand Earth's climate, impacts of climate change, and approaches for adapting and mitigating change.
Costings is part of UKCIP's toolbox. Costing the impacts of climate change is a methodology for calculating the costs of climate impacts and describes how to compare these to the costs of adaptation measures.
The updated TTX Tool contains fifteen scenarios that address an all-hazards approach to emergency preparedness and response, including natural hazards and manmade incidents, as well as introduces users to the potential impacts of climate change on the Water Sector.
CREAT allows users to evaluate potential impacts of climate change on their utility and to evaluate adaptation options to address these impacts using both traditional risk assessment and scenario-based decision making. The tool guides users through identifying threats based on regional differences in climate change projections and designing adaptation plans based on the types of threats being considered. Following assessment, CREAT provides a series of risk reduction and cost reports that will allow the user to evaluate various adaptation options as part of long-term planning.
These guidelines were developed as supporting material for the IPCC in 2004. It reviews statistical downscaling methods and describes when it is/is not appropriate to use statistically downscaled data.
This guide was developed by the Water Utilities Climate Alliance (WUCA). It provides examples of how water utilities have analyzed climate change impacts on water resources, as well as a thorough and up-to-date description of the science of climate modelling.
This guide was developed by the Water Utilities Climate Alliance (WUCA). It outlines five decision making approaches, including Classic Decision Analysis, Traditional Scenario Planning, Robust Decision Making, Real Options and Portfolio Planning. Case studies are also provided.
LCIP is part of UKCIP's toolbox. The LCLIP process highlights a locality’s current vulnerability to severe weather events and how these events affect local communities as well as local authority assets, infrastructure and capacity to deliver services. Understanding current vulnerability can be considered a robust starting point for the preparation of an adaptation strategy.
This guidebook was prepared for ICLEI's climate resilient community program. Its purpose is to help you as a decision-maker in a local, regional, or state government prepare for climate change by recommending a detailed, easy-to-understand process for climate change preparedness based on familiar resources and tools.
This guide represents a summary of a workshop, held in 2010, to "examine the concepts and principles of tolerability of risk and tolerable risk guidelines (TRG) and to explore their application to, and use in, managing lifesafety, economic, and environmental risk associated with levee systems." TRG is a tool that can to be used to explain and characterize (risk communication) the significance of risk estimates, and it may be used to prioritize among options and to evaluate their urgency for action (risk management).
The Adaptation Wizard will help you assess your organization's vulnerability to current climate and future climate change, identify options to address your organization's key climate risks, and help you develop and implement a climate change adaptation strategy
Guide tools include descriptions of processes that could be used for climate change planning.
Downscaled CMIP3 Climate & Hydrology Projections
This data tool was developed by a team of government agencies and universities and contains statistically downscaled data at a 1/8 degree spatial resolution. It was derived from climate projections referenced in IPCC AR4. Data includes temperature, precipitation and hydrologic conditions. Check out the tutorial tab on their site for a demonstration on custom data retrieval methods.
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