Climate change, adaptation and resilience

By ‘uncertain’ knowledge, let me explain, I do not mean merely to distinguish what is known for certain from what is only probable. The game of roulette is not subject, in this sense, to uncertainty … Even the weather is only moderately uncertain. The sense in which I am using the term is that in which the prospect of a European war is uncertain, or the price of copper and the rate of interest twenty years hence, or the obsolescence of a new invention … About these matters there is no scientific basis on which to form any
calculable probability whatever. We simply do not know. Nevertheless, the necessity for action and for decision compels us as practical men to do our best. (John Maynard Keynes, 1937)

One of the biggest challenging facing us and our clients deliver sustainable development is making choices that are robust and flexible in the change of climate change. Staff at Sayers and Partners co-authored the UK Foresight Future flooding studies and have worked in various climate adaptation studies around
the world. We have leading expertise in:

Assessing climate impacts
Developing robust and flexible adaptation strategies
Dealing within uncertainty

example publications and projects

Sayers and Dawson - Impacts of climate change on flood and coastal erosion infrastructure - Sayers and Partners have been commissioned by LWEC (Living with Environmental Change) to complete an assessment of the potential impacts of climate change on the performance, planning,  design and management of engineered and natural flood and coastal infrastructure.  LWEC Climate Report Cards.

Ramsbottom, D., Sayers, P. and Panzeri, M. 2012. Climate change risk assessment for the floods and coastal erosion sector. UK Climate Change Risk Assessment. Defra, London. The full set of CCRA sector reports can be found here

Sayers, P. B, Galloway, G., & Hall, J. (2012). Robust decision making under uncertainty - Towards adaptive and resilient flood risk management infrastructure. In P. Sayers, Flood Risk: Design, Management and Planning of Flood Defence Infrastructure. Thomas Telford.

Accounting for adaptive capacity in project appraisal of flood and coastal risk
management - on-going project for Environment Agency (lead by JBA with Sayers and Partners and University of Oxford)