A Decade of Dynamic Adaptive Decision-making tools in New Zealand

A mini symposium was held in Wellington 9 March 2023 to mark 10 years since New Zealand introduced dynamic adaptive pathways planning (DAPP) approaches for addressing the new climate reality and to share research and practice experience and to discuss where to next. This builds on a 10-year collaboration between Deltares, The Netherlands and the Climate Change Research Institute at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of New Zealand, with support from the Deep South Science Challenge, the Resilience to Nature’s Challenges Science Challenge and Ministry for the Environment.

The mini-symposium was broken into four sessions—setting the context (why and how); sharing applications from New Zealand and elsewhere (what); discussing lessons learned (experience) ; advancing methods, assessment, engagement and implementation (where to).

The sixty-four participants (including fourteen online) were from research institutions and universities, local and regional government, consultant companies, crown and government agencies with experience in developing decision making under deep uncertainty (DMDU) methods, using the methods and implementing the outputs from using them. Four international researchers also attended including the developers of the DAPP and other DMDU methods from the Netherlands, a researcher and user from Boston USA applying DAPP in a cities context,  and a researcher from Denmark applying DAPP at different scales for infrastructure planning under a changing climate (the full attendee list attached).

Two presentations set the scene. One discussed the role that deep uncertainty tools can play for decision making in a changing climate reality and why we use them, and the other covered the New Zealand context and how the decision tools were socialised into New Zealand and what enabled this to happen. The report and a slide set from the mini-symposium is available here.