Principles for implementing this strategy
Challenging the way the Council and its partners work
In addition to tackling the specific risks detailed above, a number of universal actions were also identified for the partnership to address in the future. Things organisations may need to work more collaboratively on in order to be more effective at addressing future trends. These covered data gathering, data sharing and use of Geographical Information Systems.
The development of information dashboards with the agencies involved to share management information and monitor progress in delivering outcomes will be particularly useful. The need for training and raising awareness across the City working with businesses and communities in helping them to adapt to the changes in weather they are facing will be vitally important in the future.
One of the most significant universal actions is to work with representatives in local communities in an effort to help neighbourhoods to become more resilient in the face of extreme weather so that communities and the organisations which serve them can better prepare and protect their neighbourhood their homes, friends and family and to have the ability to recover more quickly when events occur.
Independent Assessment of the Pathway Group
This was assisted by the WMCA, which funded ‘Climate Sense’, a national specialist adaptation and resilience consultancy to assess all the local authorities in the Combined Authority area and their ability to address adaptation and resilience issues for their own organisations, protecting the services they provide and working with partners to safeguard the City and its people.
Coventry has received an initial favourable assessment from Climate Sense and is in the process of receiving a furthermore detailed assessment. At present the city is demonstrating efficient management and is on target to start the delivery of breakthrough projects such as extension of wetlands with a major rewilding project at Brandon Wood and future SUDs proposals all of which will help to reduce exposure to risks.
Practical actions to adapt to Climate Change
Over 90 specific actions are proposed by the Council and its partners which address the 24 key High and medium risk areas of concern to the city. These are summarised in this document under key types of activity and intended outcomes, the full action plan can be found in detail in the main Strategy and Action Plan document.
Understanding and minimising risks for the delivery of public services and promoting health
There are many organisations delivering front line services for the public in the private, voluntary and public sector and it is critical that they understand the risks and how they may affect the public, especially those people who may be particularly vulnerable to their effects. This will also involve reviewing contracts for the delivery of services to ensure that risks from extreme weather events are addressed.
We will need to audit our facilities and ways of working to prevent disruption to service delivery, to be able to cope and provide support, no matter what the circumstances may be when experiencing extreme weather events.
We will also need to obtain better quality information about such events at the local level to map out the details to assist forward planning. This will improve the quality-of-service delivery as well as prevent any adverse effects of climate events on the public. One such area that the WMCA is working with the Council on with the support of Birmingham University is the development of the Climate Risk & Vulnerability Assessment (CRVA) Mapping Tool which is being developed for use by all the local authorities as a planning and management tool.
We have insufficient data on the effects of heat at the very local level; this is needed so that we are better able to identify where the heat islands exist (i.e. locations of hot spots) across the city. An improved level of detail concerning heat islands resulting from the work of the Met Office and that of the University of Birmingham for the Climate Risk should help with targeting of locations landscaping and urban design resulting in significant improvements to the living conditions for the population of the City.
There are real risks of significant cost implications to service providers in protecting property and infrastructure in the future whether that be maintenance and repair, capital improvements or higher insurance premiums as a consequence of enhanced risks. Providers of key services that are critical to the functioning of our city such as energy supply, telecommunications, transport, emergency services, water supply and digital data networks are to meet and share their risk assessments, models and management plans.
To help set priorities for action and explore connectivity and managing those possible situations when extreme weather events can result in several service failures where one can affect the other in what are known as cascading failures. These sessions will help the organisations to better predict and adapt to change and where possible pool resources to make a real difference and enhance the overall resilience of the City.