Tool to aid companies with adaptation

EDP24 (UK): A free computer-based tool developed in Norfolk to help companies and organisations around the country adapt to the effects of climate change was launched yesterday. Thought to be the first of its kind in the country, the Climate Adaptation Tool (Cat) is designed to guide organisations through the process of adapting to the effects of inevitable climate change.

It has been put through its paces by infrastructure support company May Gurney during a trial and is also being used by Norfolk County Council. Rob Bellamy, climate adaptation officer for the Norfolk Climate Change Partnership and lead author of Cat, said: “Finding practical and positive solutions to climate change is very important if we are to effectively engage people. We are talking about adaptation rather than the causes of climate change and this tool basically sets out the business case for adaptation.

“For example, Norfolk has miles of roads which, in summer, could crack because of increasingly extreme heat. To help consider the best way to adapt to that, the options - for example different road dressings - can be put into the tool and it considers what is best using a range of factors.”

The Cat challenges the temptation to wait for risks to impact and then only react afterwards by providing a framework for long term sustainable decision making. Prof Douglas Crawford-Brown, adviser on climate change to Barack Obama, said: “Adaptation to climate change will require significant investments in the built environment of communities. These must be wise investments, which in turn require spending the money where it will reduce risks most significantly. “This adaptation toolkit provides the means for organisations to do just that, helping them focus limited investment resources where they will be needed most.”

…The tool is available via the www.norfolkambition.gov.uk website.

A signpost in Ringstead, Norfolk, shot by Uksignpix, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license