Coastal adaptation decision making in Cape Town

Between 2012 and 2014, Dr Joseph Daron worked together with City of Cape Town municipality to delve into the “messy” world of using climate information to guide climate change adaptation. The project explored the realities of the challenges facing coastal adaptation decision makers in Cape Town. The research specifically focused on approaches to dealing with uncertainty in adaptation decision making in the face of multiple climatic and non-climatic stressors. The study followed the progress of projects considering the implementation of remedial interventions to protect railway infrastructure along the South Peninsular Transport Corridor (SPTC) from the increasing risks of coastal erosion and sea level rise.

The engagement resulted in two papers. The first, titled, “Challenges in using a Robust Decision Making approach to guide climate change adaptation in South Africa” is one of a series of papers contributing to a special issue of Climatic Change on uncertainty and climate change adaptation. The second, titled “A critical investigation of evaluation matrices to inform coastal adaptation and planning decisions at the local scale” was published in the Journal for Environmental Planning and Management, and explores the use of a multi-criteria decision analysis tool to aid adaptation decision making.

Time frames: 2012 to 2014

Funder: Unfunded

Partners: City of Cape Town

For further details: Contact Dr Joseph Daron