Climate change is already impacting community assets and wellbeing across Victoria. This includes local government assets like buildings, roads, drainage, and natural assets as well as built assets in natural areas. Understanding the impacts of climate change on community assets can be complicated. This can be due to the uncertain nature of future climate variables and their impacts on climate hazards. Further uncertainty arises due to missing or inadequate data on existing assets or when there is a need to understand impacts on natural assets, like trees and parkland. These factors make it difficult for councils to quantify the negative impacts from climate change on assets and in turn to demonstrate the benefits of climate change adaptation options.
Being unable to demonstrate the benefits of adaptation makes it difficult for local government to identify, compare and implement economically viable adaptation options. It also makes it difficult to demonstrate value for money and to obtain funding from State and Federal Government for adaptation. These factors limit early intervention on climate change and limit the ability of local governments to perform their legal obligation to manage climate related risks to community assets.
This project set out to establish a framework and a suite of data for demonstrating and determining the most the beneficial adaptation options for communities. Over five months the researchers conducted a desktop review of adaptation approaches and supporting data, consulted with hundreds of council officers across Melbourne, and received data from almost all councils in the region. Using this data they compiled a suite of council and regional data profiles and created a cost-benefit analysis framework. The framework primarily focusses on adaptation to the climate hazards of inland flooding, coastal flooding, sustained higher temperatures, bushfires, heatwaves, droughts, and severe storms (i.e. a combination of both acute and chronic climate hazards). The framework will help councils across Greater Melbourne to develop their own cost-benefit analysis of adaptation options for their assets, using a six-step process.
This project was coordinated by the Victorian Greenhouse Alliances, project managed by the Northern Alliance for Greenhouse Action and delivered by Natural Capital Economics. It has been part of Melbourne’s Climate Journey, a community-led project supporting Greater Melbourne communities to adapt to a changing climate, supported by the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning (DELWP) and funded through the Supporting Our Regions to Adapt program.