Key Research Questions
To advance the knowledge base of climate impacts and vulnerability, we will study a broad range of potential damages (sensitivity and exposure) as well as the capacity of society to cope with damages (adaptive capacity). Specifically, this implies the following question
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How sensitive are specific sectors (in selected regions) to climate and global change? Past research has been focussed on few sectors with expected high sensitivity or readily available models (e.g., agriculture and forestry) – and studies of other sectors (e.g., health, tourism) are comparatively sparse.
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Can the practical knowledge from stakeholders and other experts on adaptation be ‘mined’ in order to produce a new quality of regional vulnerability assessment?
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Can regional integration of vulnerability be achieved by systematic comparison of different sectors? Sensitivity and adaptive capacity differ between sectors not only in economic terms but also along social and/or ecological dimensions. New valuation techniques need to account for these differences, as well as for the interactions between sectors.
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How do the findings from regional vulnerability assessments scale up to broader spatial scales (e.g., national, EU) and to the globe?
