Software and database tools

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Main Page > GCAP academy > Guide to Adaptation Tools > XLRM framework > Software and database tools

While there is no silver bullet, there are a variety of tools and methods which are helpful when working on adaptation. The tools and methods below are ones that have been developed through the weADAPT partnership, or that we find particularly useful. With the tools in particular, please take some time to understand their strengths and limitations by reading the associated documents that come with them. If you know of, or are using any other methods that you find particularly effective, please add some information to this page!

weADAPT Tools

The Climate Change Explorer Tool - displays output from multiple climate models which has been downscaled to a station level, and guides users through the interpretation of this output.Email us to receive a password for the Climate Change Explorer tool.

WEAP ("Water Evaluation And Planning" system) is a user-friendly software tool that takes an integrated approach to water resources planning.

AWhere Spatial Information Systems - an easy to use mapping tool that allows users to integrate information on climate risks and vulnerability.

NAIADE is a multi-criteria analysis tool to help choose between different options. - Download the tool]

Adptation Decision Explorer is in prototype phase and is a decision support tool to screen adaptation options and provide guidance on appropriate options. For more information on decision-making click here. You can download a prototype of the adaptation decision explorer here

The weADAPT Adaptation Layer for Google Earth is a layer in Google Earth developed by weADAPT and our partners. It allows users to browse adaptation projects, videos, downscaled climate data, studies and which institutions are involved in adaptation around the world. Using Google Earth makes it easy to quickly get an idea of which projects are going on where! If you would like to add your own projects to the layer we are more than happy to do this and for them to be branded as your organisation. Contact Sukaina Bharwani for more details.

Methods

There are a variety of methods that we find particularly useful in our work on adaptation, vulnerability and livelihoods. Not all methods will suit everyone, or be appropriate for each study, however, please have a browse of the list below and see if any of these strike you as useful.

KnETs-Tools for Knowledge Elicitation. This method supports traditional participatory fieldwork methods and can also provide input for agent based models. It combines methods used in anthropological fieldwork combined with classical knowledge engineering techniques from computer science and provides a formalised link between qualitative and quantitative representations of knowledge and their interaction.

Agent-based modelling. Agent based modelling is a way of exploring the consequences of social behaviours, and dense interactions among actors, on the natural environment. An agent is an autonomous piece of program code representing an actor in a social system [1], which can be used to model many or multiple types of agency at different levels of action. A study in the Tana river basin in Kenya illustrates this method.

Robust Decision-Making is an approach for taking decisions given conditions of deep uncertainty, in this case uncertainties in future climate impacts. It takes the approach of seeking robust strategies - that is ones which perform reasonably well compared to the alternatives across a wide range of plausible futures, evaluated with a range of values. Robust strategies are often (but not always) adaptive, that is they evolve over time in response to new information. Robust decision-making underpins the principles of the Climate Change Explorer and Climate Adaptation Decision explorer.

Social Network Analysis is the mapping and measuring of relationships and flows of information between people, groups and organizations. It can be useful to look at way that information is used and the connections between different groups. An important tool for exploring the institutional arrangements needed for adaptation.

Characteristics of a Disaster Resilient Community In 2006, as part of the BOND DFID DRR Subworking Group, Tearfund together with ActionAid, ChristianAid, Plan International, Practical Action, and the British Red Cross along with the International Federation of the Red Cross/ Crescent commissioned DRR Consultant John Twigg to define a Disaster Resilient Community. The 6 commissioning agencies are now in the process of field testing the characteristics across their projects, with the aim of producing an updated version in time for the Global Platform in Geneva, 2009. Practitioners and agencies are encouraged document their processes and send the reports to Oenone Chadburn. This information will be used in developing the updated version. Contact Oenone Chadburn to discuss further Tearfund's own field testing processes at: oenone.chadburn@tearfund.org. This publication is available to download in a variety of languages on the Provention Consortium website