Adapting the community sector for climate extremes

Abstract People experiencing poverty and inequality will be affected first and worst by the impacts of climate change to infrastructure and human settlements, including those caused by increasingly frequent and intense extreme weather events and natural disasters. They have the least capacity to cope, to adapt, to move and to recover. Community service organisations (CSOs) play a critical role in supporting individuals, families and communities experiencing poverty and inequality to build resilience and respond to adverse changes in circumstances. As such, the services they provide comprise a critical component of social infrastructure in human settlements. However, very little is understood about CSOs own vulnerability to – or their role in managing and mitigating risks to their clients and the community from – climate change impacts to physical infrastructure. The Extreme Weather, Climate Change and the Community Sector – Risks and Adaptations project examined the relationship between physical and social infrastructure (in the form of CSO service provision). Specifically, the ways in which the climate-driven failure of CSO service delivery worsens risks to the individuals and communities they serve and, on the other hand, how preparedness may reduce vulnerability to climate change and extreme weather impacts to human settlements and infrastructure.The research comprised a comprehensive and critical scoping, examination and review of existing research findings and an audit, examination and judgment-based evaluation of the current vulnerabilities and capacities of CSOs under projected climate change scenarios. It employed three key methods of consultation and data collection. A literature review examined research conducted to date in Australia and comparative countries internationally on the vulnerability and climate change adaptation needs of CSOs. A program of 10 Community Sector Professional Climate Workshops consulted over 150 CSO representatives to develop a qualitative record of extreme event and climate change risks and corresponding adaptation strategies specific to CSOs. A national survey of CSOs, which resulted in the participation of approximately 500 organisations, produced a quantitative data set about the nature of CSO vulnerability to climate change and extreme weather impacts to infrastructure, whether and how CSOs are approaching the adaptation task and key barriers to adaptation.While the methods employed and the absence of empirical data sets quantifying CSO vulnerability to climate change impacts create limitations to the evidence-base produced, findings from the research suggest that CSOs are highly vulnerable and not well prepared to respond to climate change and extreme weather impacts to physical infrastructure and that this underlying organisational vulnerability worsens the vulnerability of people experiencing poverty and inequality to climate change. However, the project results indicate that if well adapted, CSOs have the willingness, specialist skills, assets and capacity to make a major contribution to the resilience and adaptive capacity of their clients and the community more broadly (sections of which will be plunged into adversity by extreme events). Despite this willingness, the evidence presented shows that few CSOs have undertaken significant action to prepare for climate change and worsening extreme weather events. Key barriers to adaptation identified through the research are inadequate financial resources, lack of institutionalised knowledge and skills for adaptation and the belief that climate change adaptation is beyond the scope of CSOs core business. On the other hand, key indicators of organisational resilience to climate change and extreme weather impacts include: level of knowledge about extreme weather risks, past experience of an extreme weather event and organisational size.Given its size, scope and the critical role the Australian community sector plays in building client and community resilience and in assisting communities to respond to and recover from the devastating impacts of extreme weather events and natural disasters, the research identifies serious gaps in both the policy frameworks and the research base required to ensure the sector’s resilience and adaptive capacity – gaps which appear to have already had serious consequences. To address these gaps, a series of recommendations has been prepared to enable the development and implementation of a comprehensive, sector-specific adaptation and preparedness program, which includes mechanisms to institutionalise knowledge and skills, streamlined tools appropriate to the needs and capacity of a diverse range of organisations and a benchmarking system to allow progress towards resilience and preparedness to be monitored. Future research priorities for adaptation in this sector have also been identified

Using Open Research to mitigate the impact of adverse weather on agriculture in Africa

Professor Emily Black and Dr Ross Maidment discuss the TAMSAT AgricuLtural EaRly warning sysTem (TAMSAT-ALERT), an open monitoring and decision support tool which helps stakeholders in the African agricultural and financial sectors assess the potential impact of adverse weather on agriculture. The application of Open Research principles has directly increased the uptake and impact of TAMSAT-ALERT, particularly in the financial sector, where transparency in decision-making is essential

Later wet seasons with more intense rainfall over Africa under future climate change

Changes in the seasonality of precipitation over Africa have high potential for detrimental socio-economic impacts due to high societal dependence upon seasonal rainfall. Here, for the first time we conduct a continental scale analysis of changes in wet season characteristics under the RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5 climate projection scenarios across an ensemble of CMIP5 models using an objective methodology to determine the onset and cessation of the wet season. A delay in the wet season over West Africa and the Sahel of over 5-10 days on average, and later onset of the wet season over Southern Africa is identified, and associated with increasing strength of the Saharan Heat Low in late boreal summer, and a northward shift in the position of the tropical rain belt over August-December. Over the Horn of Africa rainfall during the `short rains' season is projected to increase by over 100mm on average by the end of the 21st century under an RCP 8.5 scenario. Average rainfall per rainy day is projected to increase, while the number of rainy days in the wet season declines in regions of stable or declining rainfall (West and Southern Africa) and remains constant in Central Africa, where rainfall is projected to increase. Adaptation strategies should account for shorter wet seasons, increasing intensity and decreasing rainfall frequency, which will have implications for crop yields and surface water supplies

TAMSAT Daily Rainfall Estimates (Version 3.0)

The dataset comprises high resolution (0.0375 degrees) satellite-derived daily rainfall estimates for all Africa from January 1983 to December 2016 (data from 2017 onwards can be downloaded from the TAMSAT website: http://www.tamsat.org.uk/). The dataset is derived from TAMSAT Version 3.0 pentadal (5-day) rainfall estimates (1983-present). Although the principle features of the TAMSAT rainfall estimation approach have remained the same in generating TAMSAT Version 3.0, the calibration used in Version 3.0 differs markedly to Version 2.0 and is designed to better capture local variations in the rainfall climate while reducing problems associated with Version 2.0. Additionally, the timestep for the primary rainfall estimate is 5-day (pentad) in Version 3.0, compared to 10-day (dekad) in Version 2.0. Further details can be found on the TAMSAT website

Pre-purchase satisfaction of work shirts worn by women in agriculture.

As part of a larger comprehensive study on clothing preferences in women\u27s outdoor apparel, the purpose of this study is to assess the pre-purchase satisfaction of women participating in agriculture and to compare with functional, expressive, and aesthetic attributes, specific to shirts. From preliminary data analysis, shirts were identified as a major concern of the participants

Recent observed and simulated changes in precipitation over Africa

Multiple observational data sets and atmosphere-only simulations from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 are analyzed to characterize recent rainfall variability and trends over Africa focusing on 1983–2010. Data sets exhibiting spurious variability, linked in part to a reduction in rain gauge density, were identified. The remaining observations display coherent increases in annual Sahel rainfall (29 to 43 mm yr−1 per decade), decreases in March–May East African rainfall (−14 to −65 mm yr−1 per decade), and increases in annual Southern Africa rainfall (32 to 41 mm yr−1 per decade). However, Central Africa annual rainfall trends vary in sign (−10 to +39 mm yr−1 per decade). For Southern Africa, observed and sea surface temperature (SST)-forced model simulated rainfall variability are significantly correlated (r~0.5) and linked to SST patterns associated with recent strengthening of the Pacific Walker circulation

Incorporating satellite data into weather index-based insurance

What: Twenty-three people from six countries came together to discuss how drought insurance based on remotely sensed data can reduce the impact of weather shocks on some of the poorest people in the world. Participants were drawn from financial and agricultural sectors, nongovernmental and governmental organizations, and universities. When: 16–17 February 2016. Where: Reading, United Kingdo

What Code-Switching Strategies are Effective in Dialogue Systems?

Since most people in the world today are multilingual, code-switching is ubiquitous in spoken and written interactions. Paving the way for future adaptive, multilingual conversational agents, we incorporate linguistically-motivated strategies of code-switching into a rule-based goal-oriented dialogue system. We collect and release CommonAmigos, a corpus of 587 human-computer text conversations between our dialogue system and human users in mixed Spanish and English. From this new corpus, we analyze the amount of elicited code-switching, preferred patterns of user code-switching, and the impact of user demographics on code-switching. Based on these exploratory findings, we give recommendations for future effective code-switching dialogue systems, highlighting user\u27s language proficiency and gender as critical considerations