This report summarises key aspects of discussions held during a half-day stakeholder workshop on transformational adaptation to climate change. The workshop, hosted by UKCIP with funding by the Natural Environment Research Council under its University of Oxford Impact Accelerator Account programme, was held in London on 20th March 2015 as part of a small scoping project. The invitation-only workshop brought together over 20 people from government and funded agencies, NGOs, practice and research with interest in transformational adaptation.
AbstractThe publication of the UKCP09 climate change projections for the United Kingdom provides the opportunity for more rigorous inclusion of climate change uncertainty in water resources planning. We set out how the current approach to incorporating climate change and other uncertainties in water resources planning may be updated to incorporate the UKCP09 projections. In an uncertain future, the frequency with which customers will experience water shortages cannot be predicted for sure, so a water company cannot predict definitely whether it will or will not fulfil its Level of Service commitments. We therefore go on to propose that the probability of failing to meet Level of Service (for given populations of customers) provides an appropriate metric of risk, which conveniently summarises the uncertainties associated with supply and demand, including climate change uncertainties. We sketch out how this risk metric can be calculated based upon simulation modelling of the water resource system.