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In this study, barriers to adaptation in urban areas in Germany have been identified, organized and analysed. In addition, the nine cities examined in this study offer insights on how to avoid and overcome these barriers, and several types of aids, advantages and strategies have been identified. One can conclude that institutions and people make the biggest difference, whether it is about constraining or enabling adaptation activities. On the one hand, institutions and governance structures shape, guide, enable or constrain ongoing processes, and can thus help or hinder human actions. On the other hand, individual people are the primary agents of change and all efforts to climate change depend upon them. Cognitive filters affect human perception, influence attitudes about climate change adaptation and manipulate the decision-making process. Overall, adaptation is proceeding incrementally, often in response to climate change trends and impacts, or as a logical extension of work on climate change mitigation. In order to be successful, adaptation has to be recognised as a crosscutting topic and strategies need to be integrated across sectors and within multiple governmental scales. Based on the literature relevant to this topic, nine clusters of barriers have been proposed for the classification of barriers in urban areas. The framework used for analysis served its purpose and produced a more systematic understanding of barriers, which can explain the persistent adaptation deficit. Even though the dynamic and structural components are not reflective of the real world dynamics of understanding, planning and managing processes, most easily located their problems within it. Moreover, the different elements of the diagnostic framework have been very useful and allowed to generate a much richer understanding of barriers. Furthermore, this study has increased the reliability of, and confidence in, the diagnostic framework and the substantive findings established in the study of Moser and Ekstrom (2014). In conclusion, the observations from this study provide a useful input into the emerging discussion on barriers to adaptation, which is still in its infancy, and serve the scientific understanding of adaptation. At the same time, the overarching findings on the nature, source and origin of barriers provide practitioners on the ground with valuable insights into the adaptation process and may warn them to take preventive measures or better manage the challenges as they proceed through the adaptation process. Finally, the findings of the study on which clusters of barriers, sets of aids and advantages, and types of strategies are most important, can be informative to local governments in their adaptation process and climate service providers that have the power and capacity to support local communities. Behandelt werden die deutschen Städte Karlsruhe, Aachen, Essen, Saarbrücken, Bad Liebenwerda, Nürnberg, Jena, Syke und Regensburg.

Abstract. When public agencies provide information provision to help people make
better decisions, they often face the choice between economy and
completeness. For weather services warning people of high-impact weather
events, this choice is between offering standard warnings (SWs) only of the
weather event itself, such as wind-speed, or also describing the likely
impacts (so-called impact-based warnings, IBWs). Previous studies have shown
IBWs to lead to a greater behavioral response. These studies, however, have
relied on surveys describing hypothetical weather events; given that
participants did not feel threatened, they may have been more likely to
process the warning slowly and analytically, which could bias the results
towards finding a greater response to the IBWs. In this study, we conducted
a field experiment involving actual and potentially threatening weather
events for which there was variance with respect to the time interval between
the warning and the forecasted event and for which we randomly assigned
participants to receive SWs or IBWs. We observe that shorter time intervals
led to a greater behavioral response, suggesting that fear of an imminent
threat is an important factor motivating behavior. We observe that IBWs
did not lead to greater rates of behavioral change than SWs, suggesting that
when fear is a driving factor, the additional information in IBWs may be of
little importance. We note that our findings are highly contextualized, but
we call into question the prevailing belief that IBWs are necessarily more
helpful than SWs.

AbstractThe sharp increase in the use of smartphones and rapid advances in mobile communication offer new ways to warn the public about developing natural or technological hazards. So far, the effectiveness of different warning types, namely standard and impact‐based warnings (SW and IBW), were mainly tested in scenario‐based experiments and not in real life. However, it can be questioned whether scenario‐based experiments are the appropriate methodology to test different warnings, for instance due to the absence of feelings catalysed by real events. Therefore, we collected information about warning responses in real time via the smartphone application 'Wetter‐Alarm' of a Swiss weather provider. In the first phase of the study, we conducted a field experiment to investigate actual responses for SW and IBW. In the second phase, we compared these results with behavioural intentions collected via a scenario‐based experiment with an almost identical set‐up. The comparison shows that warning messages were perceived and understood very similar in both experiments. Also, we did not observe any significant interactions between warning type (SW vs. IBW) and study (field vs. scenario‐based experiment). These findings indicate that the effects of warning type on behaviour can be studied on the basis of experimental (i.e. scenario‐based) research designs. The paper ends with some reflections on the potential of big data in the social sciences and on a research agenda for real‐time data collection to improve warning effectiveness and, ultimately, climate risk management.

Abstract
Bad weather continues not only to inflict damage on property but also to kill and injure people, despite significant advances in the predictive power of meteorological warnings. There is evidence that people tend to underreact to weather warning information, to a large extent because of insufficient understanding of the impacts that severe weather events can have, as well as to demonstrate the appropriate response behavior. A growing number of experts are suggesting that standard warning information should be augmented with additional information about these factors, but this has so far largely failed to take place. Past research studies have shown possible advantages of including impact-based warnings (IBWs) and behavioral recommendations (BRs) into the warning information, but the results are in part ambiguous, due to a failure to have tested for effects of the two kinds of information separately and in combination. Based on quantitative results from a survey experiment in Switzerland, this knowledge gap is addressed. Results of the research reported here indicate significant benefits from providing both sets of information together, in terms of improving both perception and understanding of warning and intended behavioral responses. When only one piece of information is given, BRs have a significant effect on both perception and intended response, whereas IBWs have a significant effect only on intended response. These findings offer empirical justification for the added expense and time associated with the more detailed hazard warnings.

Abstract. Private risk reduction behaviours can significantly reduce the
negative impacts of flooding and flash floods. Over the past decades,
researchers have used various socio-cognitive models or threat and coping
mechanisms to explain individual protective behaviours. However, these
models ignore the fact that people are not equally ready to act upon a danger, and
they (the models) give limited insights into the effectiveness of communication
strategies to foster risk reduction behaviours. Therefore, we explored the
current state of homeowners' readiness to undertake risk reduction
behaviours in flood risk areas by applying a dynamic protection motivation
framework. We conducted a survey in an Italian municipality that experienced
severe flash flooding in September 2018. The results show that people are
motivated by different factors in prompting risk reduction behaviour based
on their chosen types of protective measures. For example, people that undertook
structural or avoidance measures are more likely to be motivated to protect
themselves by increased perceptions of vulnerability and response efficacy
and are less worried about expected flood losses compared to people that
undertook only basic emergency measures. In this paper, we argue how these
new insights contribute to targeting flood risk communication strategies to
groups of individuals characterized by different readiness stages and
motivations to protect themselves.