Newcastle University

Climate Change: Vulnerability, Impacts and Adaptation

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This course provides in-depth understanding and hands on experience of using future climate scenarios from the UKCP09 and other international projections. The course can be tailored to specific sectors, and delegates may choose to specialise and attend:

• Days 1-2 Water Resources
• Days 2-3 Flooding and sea level rise
• Days 4-5 Infrastructure, heat waves, buildings and sustainable cities

The course is organised around case studies of key cities or infrastructure. Delegates are encouraged to propose their own case studies or locations in advance. They will then be trained in how to generate and apply scenarios for assessments of vulnerability and impacts and the development of climate change adaptation plans.

The course outlines the main vulnerabilities, risks and likely impacts of climate change in a range of areas of the human, built and natural environments, and describes in detail, for a number of key areas, the assessment of impacts and engineering strategies for adaptation.

• Key Vulnerabilities and Risk: regional and global geophysical and social systems, critical systems, tipping points.
• Observed Impacts on Systems: Climate and non-climate drivers of change, changes in natural and managed systems, examples in cryosphere, water resources, biological systems, agriculture.
• Frameworks for assessment: Characterising future change, SRES socio-economic scenarios, integrated assessment.
• Uncertainty and Risk: Risk-management frameworks, thresholds/criteria for risk, communicating uncertainty and risk.
• Water Resources:
  • global, water for all, Millennium development goals;
  • UK and Europe: demand management, water transfer schemes.
• Sea level rise and coastal systems: Thames Barrier, Dutch defences, coastal re-alignment.
• Flooding: Fluvial and pluvial, FORESIGHT, SUDS, options for flood management.
• Critical infrastructure: transport networks, power, slope stability, BIONICS, flooding and railways.
• Ecosystems: freshwater ecology, marine ecosystems, forestry.
• Food and agriculture: water-energy nexus.
• Health, tourism and population.
• Heat and buildings.
• Practical exercise on increased heat wave frequency: assessment of impact and building services response options.
• Sustainable Cities: Tyndall Cities programme: SCORCHIO, LUCID; Dong Tan.

Upon completion, delegates will have:

• Understanding of main societal and infrastructure vulnerabilities and risks of climate change;
• Understanding of linked nature of risks to society and necessity for integrated assessment and response;
• Detailed technical knowledge of risks and engineering responses for key areas;
• Ability to assess likely impact and vulnerability of systems (or infrastructure components) to climate change;
• Ability to select and specify sustainable response and adaptation strategies for critical engineering systems;
• Confidence and understanding to promote use of sustainable engineering approaches.

Presenters

School of Civil Engineering and Geosciences

• Prof Chris Kilsby (Course Leader)
• Dr Richard Dawson
• Mr Alistair Ford
• Prof Tom Wagner
• Dr Claire Walsh
• Dr Mark Wilkinson

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