Jakarta, Indonesia, faces a paradox. Its economy and population are soaring, but the city itself is sinking. Excessive groundwater use is causing land to sink by up to 10 inches annually. Experts warn that by 2050, this sinking, combined with rising sea levels and extreme weather, could leave a third of the city underwater. In response, the Indonesian government is weighing plans to relocate the capital at an estimated cost of $35 billion.

Jakarta’s climate-related conundrum may be extreme, but the underlying question it raises is relevant to urban areas around the world: What is the best use of limited resources for cities to adapt to climate change?

To help answer this question, governments and organizations now have a critical new resource developed by a team at the University of Notre Dame: the Global Urban Climate Assessment (GUCA). It is a decision-support tool that offers leaders a way to understand and compare city vulnerabilities, assess adaptation plans and develop resilience.

“Cities are realizing the question isn’t ‘if’ they’ll face the effects of climate change—it’s ‘when’ and ‘how,’” said Danielle Wood, associate professor of practice at the University of Notre Dame’s Environmental Change Initiative.

According to Wood, who leads the Notre Dame Global Adaptation Initiative (ND-GAIN), what those investing in climate adaptation need is evidence-based guidance.

“The challenge for investment is a lack of reliable, comparable data, making prioritizing difficult for those managing climate investment,” she said.

A more granular approach to climate resiliency

GUCA builds on the foundation of ND-GAIN’s Country Index, which measures climate vulnerability and readiness for more than 180 countries. The GUCA pilot provides city-level metrics for 12 cities, incorporating data from multiple sources, including remote sensing. Like ND-GAIN, GUCA is free and open-source, so stakeholders across the public, private and nongovernmental organization sectors can identify priorities and direct funding where it is most needed.

GUCA measures vulnerability and resilience across a number of globally comparable metrics. Vulnerability includes specific hazards such as flooding, extreme heat and landslides. It also measures sensitivity to climate change, which can refer to potential impacts on people (including specific groups, such as children, seniors, migrants or low-income residents) as well as features of urban areas, such as the rate of urban expansion.

Resilience, on the other hand, is the capacity of a city to withstand shocks and adapt over time. It includes disaster planning, water access, governance systems and economic stability, recognizing that cities with robust systems can respond more effectively to climate-related challenges.

A tool with global implications

GUCA’s 12-city pilot phase focused on Abuja (Nigeria), Amman (Jordan), Beijing (China), Berlin (Germany), Bogotá (Colombia), Jakarta (Indonesia), Kinshasa (DR Congo), Mogadishu (Somalia), Mumbai (India), Panama City (Panama), Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), and Shenzhen (China). With additional funding, ND-GAIN aims to expand the GUCA framework, enabling a deeper understanding of vulnerabilities and resilience in more cities across the globe.

Wood emphasized that this expansion is critical because as more people migrate to urban environments, the need to identify and target funding for climate adaptation in the most impacted cities is becoming an even more widespread and urgent concern.

“At the start of the 20th century, only 13 percent of the world’s population lived in urban areas. By 2050, that number is expected to rise to 60 percent, with an estimated 4.9 billion people living in cities,” she pointed out. “Our team at Notre Dame is eager to see the tool evolve with feedback from partners around the world.”

GUCA is the latest addition to ND-GAIN’s already robust suite of data-driven climate tools and resources, which includes the U.S. Urban Adaptation Assessment, a tool assessing more than 270 U.S. cities’ climate risks and social vulnerabilities by neighborhood.

ND-GAIN is a program of the Notre Dame Environmental Change Initiative (ND-ECI). At ND-ECI, more than 60 faculty across several disciplines are pursuing research solutions for some of the key environmental challenges of our time. ND-ECI focuses on globally significant, multidisciplinary research that can be translated into management and policy solutions to help make the world a better place for humans and the environment upon which people depend.

Contact: Jessica Sieff, associate director of media relations, 574-631-3933, jsieff@nd.edu