Cities have access to an increasing number of tools, services, and frameworks to help them strengthen their climate resilience efforts. However, with such a wide range of options, finding the right tool for specific needs can be challenging. The Triple-A Toolkit offers valuable assistance in this process.
Cities vary in size, geography, socio-economic context, and their experience and capacities in terms of climate action. Some cities are leading the way while others may not have dedicated staff for climate action planning and implementation, often ending up integrating climate efforts into existing departments. Given this diversity across cities, the EU Horizon REACHOUT project has developed a flexible and modular “Triple-A” approach which effectively links and organizes urban adaptation and resilience activities based on three simple but key steps: Analysis, Ambition, and Action (Triple-A¹). These steps are flexible (do not have a pre-defined order) and can be adapted to the local context and needs to address specific challenges and achieve particular goals. Whatever the combination of the steps results in a learning process, leading to various outcomes and insights and thus advancing in urban adaptation and resilience.
¹ This approach was first used in the Dutch Delta Program.
Additionally, the Triple-A Toolkit, developed as part of the REACHOUT project, offers a set of tools, climate services and consultancy services for urban adaptation and resilience planning. The tools and services are grouped using the Triple-A approach and complexity level to facilitate municipalities, urban planners and climate adaptation practitioners finding the most appropriate resource based on its own resources, skills and maturity level.
One of the Triple-A framework’s standout features is its emphasis on Ambition, encouraging cities to imagine different futures and make plans to achieve them. It shifts the focus from predominantly managing risks to creating climate-resilient communities. Cities can set ambition at different levels —strategic (like setting visions or goals), technical (such as deciding on safety levels or choosing which risks to prioritize), or evaluative (monitoring trade-offs and benefits).
Unlike fixed step-by-step guidelines, the Triple-A framework offers flexible views on the activities that cities need for urban adaptation, supported by climate services and tools.
These activities include understanding climate change impacts, setting goals, implementing actions, and learning from them.
It is also compatible with other frameworks (UAST, RAST) to support formal adaptation plans, although this is not its primary focus.
The Triple-A Framework Explained
- Analysis phase/step involves assessing the current and future climate risks by a better understanding of hazards, exposure, vulnerabilities and different types of impacts. It also includes identifying at-risk areas (hotspots), understanding root causes, and co-creating this information with citizens and stakeholders in climate action and create a sense of urgency. Monitoring and evaluation are key to analyse and assess the feasibility and effectiveness of actions and learn and adjust the course as necessary to achieve the desired goals.
- Ambition phase/step focuses on setting priorities and agendas, while taking into consideration the key vulnerabilities, and developing ambitious adaptation strategies through envisioning positive futures of the “future we want”. Ambition setting involves defining visions, goals, and targets, and establishing values and criteria for prioritizing measures. This step is essential for transformative change and practical adaptation and/or resilience pathways. It includes setting and adjusting concrete goals, such as increasing green spaces or reducing unpaved areas. Ambition setting is a vital step towards transformative change, and it is also a necessary step towards monitoring (without clear goals it is impossible to monitor adaptation).
- Action entails undertaking the necessary measures to achieve the desired objectives and goals. This involves creating and implementing adaptation actions and measures to reduce climate risk and foster resilient societies, considering specific contexts and limitations. Action includes deciding on short, medium, and long-term actions, integrating with other policy domains, and facilitating or stimulating others to implement parts of the ambition.
Crosscutting to the Triple-A activities are enabling conditions and capacity strengthening. In the REACHOUT project this refers to the factors and circumstances that facilitate the successful implementation of adaptation strategies. The success of these activities depends on enabling conditions and capacity strengthening. This means ensuring that cities have the right tools, resources, and support in place to make these strategies work.
Triple-A in Action: Logroño, Spain
At the start of the REACHOUT project, the city of Logroño, Spain, was just beginning to plan and implement climate adaptation efforts. Using the Triple-A Toolkit, the city has made great progress. Here’s how:
During the first iteration, an initial group of stakeholders was selected, and a preliminary definition of challenges and risk was agreed upon. Extreme heatwaves and pluvial flooding were selected as key priorities to be further analysed.
Heatwaves were assessed using the Thermal Assessment Tool² (TAT) (by Tecnalia).
The tool provides a user-friendly visualization of past, present and future heatwaves. TAT also enables the development of land surface temperature maps (heatmaps) to characterize heat phenomena at city level and spatially highlight areas of elevated land surface temperature during heat episodes in summer. These maps allow Logroño to better understand how land and urban morphology affect surface temperature and to identify hotspot areas for implementing heat reduction measures. The outcomes of the TAT tool help the city to communicate about heat risks to the public, leading to increased awareness and potential support for implementing heat reduction measures.
The heat assessment was followed by mapping social vulnerability throughout Logroño with the SVI-Tool² (by Univ. College Cork). The Social Vulnerability Index (SVI) maps from the SVI-Tool allow to spatially identify the most vulnerable areas, enabling more tailored interventions to enhance just resilient strategies.
In the second iteration, additional stakeholders were involved both at the municipality level as well as outside (city-hub) to discuss flood-related challenges and the goals for adaptation.
Past and future pluvial flood maps were generated using the Pluvial Flood Tool² (by CMCC) to assess current and future flood risks in Logroño. The Pluvial Flood Tool provides a comprehensive assessment of pluvial flood risk for both the baseline situation and various nature-based adaptation strategies in Logroño, evaluating economic damages and population exposure. This tool helped Logroño to identify suitable locations for flood relief measures, such as raingardens, water ponds, and a green corridor.
In the third iteration, the outcomes of the aforementioned Triple-A Tools were combined to identify suitable measures for adaptation while considering Logroño’s broader development objectives through co-developing Climate Resilient Development Pathways (CRDP) (by Deltares). The novel CRDP approach supports Logroño in planning actions across multiple time frames, outlining various pathways into the future by explicitly addressing the interactions between climate change adaptation, climate change mitigation, and sustainable development over time and under conditions of uncertainty. By accounting for these distinct but intertwined priorities, Logroño can flag potential trade-offs between needs and take advantage of synergistic actions. This assessment provides insights into how different measures complement each other or which ones would be most effective to achieve the desired objectives of Logroño.
Along these iterations (or learning loops) Logroño’s adaptation capacity has strengthened. The municipality as well as other city stakeholders have been involved in several training sessions, co-design activities and in the co-development of the city climate story. The latter has been a transversal tool to spread the message and the sense of urgency about climate action in Logroño.
Additionally, the municipality of Logroño developed the “Strategic Plans for Heatwaves” as part of their new urban strategy, ‘Logroño Circular’. The strategic plans directly incorporated the heat and social vulnerability maps developed with the tools from the Triple-A Toolkit to spatially plan and implement proposed measures for coping with urban heat.
In summary
The Triple-A framework and Toolkit offer flexible and adaptable support for cities to navigate the complex world of urban adaptation. By focusing on Analysis, Ambition, and Action, the framework fosters continuous learning, empowering cities to effectively tackle climate challenges. Whether just starting or refining their strategies, cities can use the Triple-A Tools and customize them to local conditions, involve diverse stakeholders, and build ambitious, climate-resilient futures. Through ongoing learning cycles, cities not only become more resilient but also contribute to a deeper understanding of how urban areas can adapt to climate change, laying the foundation for sustainable and resilient development. The Triple-A Toolkit contains tools and services from the project partners primarily, but in the future will be opened to other tool providers as well.
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