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Adaptation to Climate Change: Decision Making

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Sustainable Water Resources Planning and Management Under Climate Change

Abstract

In spite of the recent global effort in mitigating greenhouse gases, the temperature of the earth continues to increase because we are already committed past emissions. Therefore, adapting to the changing climate is an immediate challenge that requires choosing a successful strategy. This chapter reviews classical decision-making methods and discusses their limitations when applied to climate change adaptation planning. Three novel decision-making methods, robust decision making (RDM), real option analysis (ROA), and dynamic adaptive policy pathways (DAPP), are discussed, and their applications are then introduced in water resources planning under different climate change scenarios. Such methods should be either “robust” or “adaptive” for decision makers to capture the nonstationary and uncertain characteristics of climate change. As its name indicates, the RDM method focuses on the “robust” perspective and chooses an alternative that performs satisfactorily over a wide range of scenarios. In contrast, both the ROA and DAPP methods focus on the “adaptive” perspective and have a decision tree framework where risk is spread over time. ROA allows decision makers to delay or abandon the chosen alternative rather than just implementing it without modification, while DAPP introduces the tipping point concept that offers a systematic way of when to switch between alternatives. However, these advanced decision-making methods are resource intensive; thus, a continuous administrative effort and institutional as well as technical supports are required for their success in the climate change era.

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Acknowledgment

This research was supported by Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Science, ICT, and Future Planning (NRF-2013R1A1A2073677) and also supported by a grant from Advanced Water Management Research Program funded by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (14WMP-B082564-01) of Korea. Special thanks goes to Professor Joern Birkmann of University of Stuttgart and LG Yonam Foundation who supported the sabbatical leave of the first author when a major part of this chapter was written.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, Seoul National University, 1 Gwanak-ro, Gwanak-gu, Seoul, Republic of Korea, 08826

    Young-Oh Kim

  2. Department of Civil Engineering, Seoul National University of Science and Technology, 54-325 Gongneung-ro 232, Nowon-gu, Seoul, Republic of Korea, 01811

    Eun Sung Chung

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  1. Young-Oh Kim
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Correspondence to Young-Oh Kim .

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  1. School of Civil Engineering Division of Hydraulics and Environmental Engineering, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece

    Elpida Kolokytha

  2. The Research Center for Urban Safety and Security, Kobe University, Kobe, Hyogo, Japan

    Satoru Oishi

  3. Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatics Engineering, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, Florida, USA

    Ramesh S.V. Teegavarapu

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Kim, YO., Chung, E.S. (2017). Adaptation to Climate Change: Decision Making. In: Kolokytha, E., Oishi, S., Teegavarapu, R. (eds) Sustainable Water Resources Planning and Management Under Climate Change. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-2051-3_8

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