MONARES - Monitoring adaptation measures and climate resilience in cities

The implications of climate change present decision-makers at all levels with urgent and unprecedented challenges. It is no longer just about climate change mitigation but also about adapting to climate change’s already unavoidable consequences and strengthening climate resilience. Cities play a central role in adapting to climate change and strengthening  resilience. Many municipalities have already developed their own adaptation strategies and implemented a variety of adaptation measures. However,often the question remains as to which impacts these adaptation measures actually have.

In this context, it is becoming increasingly important to learn as quickly as possible what activities have successfully contributed to climate resilience and what actions need to be adjusted. This kind of evaluation is also of relevance, as large amounts of global public funds are being dedicated to building resilience. Hence methods for monitoring climate resilience and assessing the impacts of adaptation measures are needed. However, appropriate indicators and monitoring systems in this realm are often not available at the municipal level.

The MONARES project, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), had two main objectives: (1) to develop tried and tested methods for climate resilience monitoring and for impact assessment of adaptation measures and (2) to concretely support this monitoring and assessment in pilot municipalities.

For this purpose, adelphi, together with its partners, developed an urban climate resilience framework as well as a modular resilience indicator set. This flexible toolbox was for its applicability and practicability in German cities. Based on the resilience indicator set, the group of partners developed a methodology to measure the impacts of climate resilience adaptation measures, which was also tested with the cooperating municipalities. A major part of the project also consisted in making the findings available to relevant actors from municipalities, science and politics.