Developing signals to trigger adaptation to sea level rise

Environmental Research Letters (2018)

A key component of Dynamic adaptive policy pathways (DAPP) is to monitor indicators of climate change which can trigger timely adaptive actions of thresholds.

Signals and triggers are needed to support DAPP—the signal provides early warning of the emergence of the trigger (decision-point), and the trigger initiates the process to change pathway before a harmful adaptation-threshold is reached.

We demonstrate a new approach to designing signals and triggers using the case of increased flooding from sea level rise in New Zealand. The flooding frequency is framed in terms of probable timing of several events reaching a specific height threshold within a set monitoring period.