Publications & tools

Guidance document

RAMSES Transition Handbook and Training Package

The RAMSES Project has produced an immense and highly valuable  collection  of  reports  and  resources  on  climate  change  adaptation  and  resilience  in  cities.  The  project  has  developed  cutting-edge  research  on  some  of  the  most  relevant topics for urban climate change adaptation. These include:

  • Modeling climate projections and scenarios to understand future climate impacts and illustrate the effects of specific adaptation measures for cities;
  • Understanding how to make architecture and infrastructure more resilient to climate change and how to assess the effects of improved architectural design on cities;
  • Evaluating the costs of climate change and the benefits of different adaptation measures;
  • Understanding the costs that climate change causes for health and how different adaptation measures can reduce climate impacts on public health;
  • Conducting high-level vulnerability assessments in order to identify the climatic trends in European macro-regions and consequently the main risks to which cities in these regions are exposed;
  • Conducting detailed vulnerability analyses in the cities of London, Antwerp and Bilbao at a high spatial resolution to draw lessons from these cities’ experiences;
  • Understanding existing political frameworks and decision-making tools that support adaptation, and drawing lessons from those.

All  the  knowledge  generated  by  the  project  is  available  on  the project’s website but in order to present this to cities in a synthetised and practical fashion that can be used to actually make  concrete  decisions  on  climate  change  adaptation,  Tecnalia  and  ICLEI  have  developed  the  current  Transition  Handbook and Training Package.

The Transition Handbook embeds the key RAMSES findings in   a   process   management   cycle,   using   widely   known   methodologies  such  as  the  Urban  Adaptation  Support  Tool  (http://climate-adapt.eea.europa.eu/knowledge/tools/urban-ast), which is the offical support tool of the Covenant of Mayors for  Climate  and  Energy  and  synthetises  the  project  results  in  a  practical  step-by-step  fashion,  presenting  resources  that cities can use to strenghten their knowledge of climate adaptation planning.

The Training Package complements the Transition Handbook by  taking  stock  of  existing  toolkits  to  support  adaptation  management in cities and offers worksheets and exercises that cities can use to progress towards their adaptation goals. The worksheets are cross-referenced in the Transition Handbook so as to complement the information contained in it and to offer cities a clear path towards becoming more climate adaptive.

The Training Package is complemented by a slidedeck, available on  the  RAMSES  website  (www.ramses-cities.eu/toolbox), which  summarises  the  most  policy-relevant  project  findings  to support cities in raising awareness on climate adaptation.

Videos   from   the   RAMSES   audio-visual   guidance   tool   www.on-urban-resilience.eu ,  developed  by  Climate  Media  Factory  are  cross-referenced  in  the  handbook  and  in  the  training  package.  They  offer  additional  information  on  the  different relevant sectors for adaptation planning by experts interviewed by the RAMSES Consortium in several occasions.

The  Transition  Handbook  and  Training  Package  are  not  intended  to  be  stand-alone  resources  but  instead  aim  to  be used complementarily with other adaptation toolkits and with the  http://climate-adapt.eea.europa.eu  platform, which represents  the  major  European  information  hub  on  climate  adaptation.

English

2017