Cities Impacts and Adaptation Tool

From the University of Michigan Graham Sustainability Institute, the Cities Impacts and Adaptation Tool (CIAT) was a result of the Great Lakes Adaptation Assessment for Cities (G-LACC) project. This online climate adaptation planning support tool was designed to support decision makers at the municipal level in the Great Lakes Region. The goal was to create a tool that can be used by stakeholders to synthesize, communicate, and apply climate-relevant knowledge for urban resilience under different climate scenarios. The CIAT also provides a searchable database of adaptation strategies pulled from existing climate action plans from across the country.

This tool provides usable local-scale data such as demographic and socioeconomic data from the Canadian and U.S. Census, and current and projected climate trends. Using this data, it identifies a unique set of “climate peer” cities, or cities whose current climate matches the user's city projected climate, through an interactive map interface.

The adaptation strategy database can be searched by Climate Driver (related to temperature, precipitation or extreme weather events), Climate Impact, and/or by location, selecting from over 30 cities. Climate Impacts in the database to choose from for related adaptation strategies include: changes in crop yield, decreased water quality and air quality, infrastructure damage, drought, ecosystem shifts, extreme heat, flooding, high winds, water supply, erosion, habitat loss, loss of native species, urban tree canopy loss, sewer  overflow, urban heat island and wildfires. 

 

Related Organizations:

  • University of Michigan

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Resource Types:

  • Modeling tool

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