Climate Resilience Analysis Framework and Tools

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Project Partners:

The University of Adelaide and CSIRO

Research Theme:

N/A

Status:

Project Overview

Between 2011 and 2014, the Goyder Institute undertook a major project to develop downscaled climate change projections for South Australia. The resulting ‘SA Climate Ready’ dataset provides the most comprehensive downscaled climate projections data available in South Australia and is intended for the purposes of climate change impact assessment to inform appropriate climate change adaptation planning. Over the same period of time, regional climate change adaptation plans have been developed for many regions of South Australia, according to the SA Government’s ‘Prospering in a Changing Climate’ adaptation planning framework. A number of these adaptation plans have adopted an ‘adaptation pathways’ approach, which identifies a number of pathways for the adaptation of a community, industry or natural resource to climate change. The intention of this type of adaptation plan is that planners, managers and policy makers will switch their planning approach to the most appropriate pathway according to the observed changes in the climate as they develop.

The climate change adaptation planning community within SA does not a have a clear methodology to identify the vulnerability of natural resources and water supply systems in relation to projected changes in rainfall, temperature and other climate variables. An important element of the adaptation pathways approach to climate change adaptation planning is that planners need to know the threshold climate variable values (the ‘trigger’ values) at which an alternative adaptation pathway within the adaptation plan should be adopted. A methodology is required with to guide the identification of threshold values of hydroclimate variables, helping climate change adaptation planners to determine the most appropriate timing of adopting alternative adaptation pathways. The framework to be developed through this research is intended to guide the identification of climate thresholds for climate change adaptation planning.

The project addressed the following priority policy questions identified within the Climate Action program of the Goyder Institute Strategic Research Plan:

  • Identify knowledge gap research to support implementation of regional climate change adaptation plans;
  • Application of Climate Ready SA to assess potential future climate scenarios of rainfall patterns and temperature in each SA NRM region and across industry sectors;
  • Alignment of climate change adaptation planning with forecast changes in rainfall intensity and frequency of extreme rainfall events at a local or sub-regional scale;
  • Alignment of climate change impact planning in public health, infrastructure, agriculture and other sectors with projected changes in frequency and duration of periods of extreme heat; and,
  • Identify key investment priorities that are sensitive to climate-change driven water limitations The knowledge gap that led to this project was identified in the 2015-16 Annual R&D Plan as an analysis of rainfall intensity and frequency, as part of a detailed analysis of projected changes in rainfall patterns on the State’s water infrastructure and water security.

The project also considered climate extremes, including high-intensity rainfall events and droughts.

Progress Update and Key Findings

How can climate-affected systems (natural resources, water supply systems) be analysed to identify the elements that most affect their vulnerability to temporal variations in rainfall and other climate variables?

A methodology and framework was developed to assess the vulnerability of industries and natural resources to the impacts of climate change and climate variability, with particular regard to the impacts of extreme rainfall events (high-intensity rainfall and drought periods) and the identification of the trigger points, indicating when a system is likely to be pushed beyond acceptable operating conditions. This was achieved through “stress testing” case study systems or processes to rainfall events of different types, with a particular focus on extreme event types and on a range of time scales, from daily (e.g. events of extreme rainfall intensity) to multiple years (droughts). The developed framework can guide the examination of the operational details of agricultural, industrial or water supply systems, to understand which variables most affect a system’s vulnerability to climatic variations and extreme characteristics of rainfall. The intention of this is to provide information on ways in which the management or operation of systems can be altered to improve their resilience to both climate variability and climate change. Importantly, this will also enable identification of threshold values of climate variables (primarily rainfall patterns) at which the operation of a system requires alteration to function effectively.

A case study of a stormwater capture and Managed Aquifer Recharge scheme was examined to identify the scheme’s vulnerability to rainfall events of different types, such as more intense rainfall or long gaps between rainfall events. In this example, the objective of the analysis was to determine if the vulnerability to those types of rainfall characteristics is due to the size of the stormwater capture basin, or the injection rate of the MAR, or the storage capacity of the aquifer, etc. This enabled recommendations to be made on which of those system variables would have to change to improve the resilience of the scheme to those kinds of rainfall variation.

Project Impacts

The primary outcomes of this project:

  1. A generic framework to guide the analysis of the vulnerabilities of natural resources and water supply systems to climate variability and projected changes in climate.
  2. Greater uptake of climate projections data, such as the Climate Ready SA datasets, for use in climate change adaptation planning.
  3. Improved ability for natural resource managers, planners to identify ways to make natural resources and water supply systems more resilient to variations in rainfall, temperature and other climate variables.
  4. An analysis of vulnerabilities of the case study stormwater capture and MAR scheme to rainfall variability, and identification of which of the scheme’s elements are most affecting this vulnerability.

Research Outputs

Case study for Climate Resilience Analysis Framework and Tools (CRAFT): Managed aquifer recharge at Parafield Airport

Climate Resilience Analysis Framework: Testing the resilience of natural and engineered systems

Climate Resilience Analysis Framework and Tools

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