How Well Are We Adapting Portal

CeRDI, in collaboration with the member Councils of the Western Alliance for Greenhouse Action in Melbourne’s west, has recently developed the How Well Are We Adapting portal. How Well Are We Adapting is a web-based tool to assist the Councils to implement the framework for monitoring, evaluation and reporting on climate adaptation. The portal is assisting to build the capacity of the council and community to respond to and manage municipal climate impacts.
 

How Well Are We Adapting Portal

Background

The Western Alliance for Greenhouse Action (WAGA) is committed to action and advocacy to assist local governments to the west of Melbourne respond to climate change. Its members are the Cities of Brimbank, Greater Geelong, Hobsons Bay, Maribyrnong, Melton, Moonee Valley and Wyndham, and the Shire of Moorabool. 

WAGA councils work collaboratively to respond to climate change across the region with plans and projects which focus on mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions as well as adaptation to the impacts of climate change.

The How Well Are We Adapting is a framework for monitoring, evaluation and reporting on climate adaptation performance of the member Councils of Western Alliance for Greenhouse Action.

In 2013, the WAGA councils received $200,000 from the Victorian Government to help fund the project. WAGA is developing the monitoring, evaluation and reporting framework with partners RMIT Centre for Urban Research and Net Balance Foundation.

The framework developed for How Well Are We Adapting is one of the first climate change adaptation monitoring and evaluation frameworks in the world for measuring adaptation focused on local government, and developed and tested by decision-makers.

The framework focuses on four ‘theme’ areas intended to reflect regional climate change impacts and vulnerabilities, and the main council operations likely to be impacted by climate change. Narrative structures and indicators sets were developed under two of these themes:

1. Open Space and Water Security
2. Community Wellbeing and Emergency Management

CeRDI in collaboration with the WAGA Councils has recently developed the How Well Are We Adapting portal, a web-based tool to assist the Councils to implement the framework for monitoring, evaluation and reporting on climate adaptation.

For residents in the region, the How Well Are We Adapting portal aims to raise awareness of local climate change impacts and how to address them.

How Well Are We Adapting Portal - Our local parks and sports fields

Outcomes

How Well Are We Adapting has recently gone live and is now going through its early use stages. As council sustainability officers interact with the site over the coming months, feedback on portal function and minor improvements are expected.

How Well Are We Adapting was officially launched in May, 2017 at Brimbank City Council.

Innovation

How Well Are We Adapting uses a novel approach to monitoring, evaluation and reporting on climate adaptation, by combining the spatial visualisation of data in an interactive map with on-the-fly data summary through the indicator reporting tool. The combination of these two approaches is one of the first of its kind, with the ultimate aim of dynamically linking the data reporting tools and the mapping tool to provide rapid numerical, qualitative and spatial summaries for end users.

How Well Are We Adapting Portal - Map

Technical Features

• Intuitive user interface to capture climate adaptation indicator data across the two themes Open Space and Water Security and Community Wellbeing and Emergency Management from multiple staff at the eight participating councils.
• Advanced reporting interface enabling customised reporting outputs for differing council requirements including long term trending and cross-council comparison.
• Web-based spatial portal with real-time access to remote databases utilising interoperable web services where available. Where interoperable services are unavailable, a CeRDI hosted Geoserver (geoserver.org) installation is used for the Geospatial processing and service delivery utilises Open Geospatial Consortium (www.opengeospatial.org) standards.

Approach

The How Well Are We Adapting framework and portal is intended to build the capacity of the council and community to respond to and manage climate impacts. With this in mind, portal development was undertaken to communicate climate adaptation information at different levels, making it relevant to both councils and local communities.

The portal includes tools to monitor adaptive capacity in relation to the two themes Open Space and Water Security and Community Wellbeing and Emergency Management. It also includes interactive mapping functionality to assist to visually identify specific vulnerabilities due to the effects of climate change. 

The portal has three main user areas:

• A place for community members to learn about the WAGA How Well Are We Adapting project and get up-to-date information on council progress toward monitoring, evaluation and reporting in relation to the two themes;
• An online data entry system for WAGA administrators and sustainability officers; and
• An interactive and dynamic reporting tool for WAGA administrators and sustainability officers that generates quantitative and qualitative summaries on user-selected indicators under each theme.

The internal reports assists WAGA administrators and sustainability officers to track the impacts on council services and assets, and evaluate responses over the long term, to understand how well they are adapting to climate change.

The mapping portal rapidly communicates spatial patterns in climate adaptation-related information, allowing users to navigate to their area of interest.

How Well Are We Adapting Portal - Strengthening Community

Future Directions

The portal has three key areas for future growth:

1. Expansion to include the other two climate adaptation reporting themes:
   • Assets and Infrastructure; and
   • Planning, Building and Regulation;
2. Longitudinal reporting functionality including expansion of dynamic reporting capabilities as data is generated over time;
3. Dynamic linking of the reporting tool to the interactive map, so that end users can do spatial queries of climate adaptation indicator data.