Developing effective, efficient, and equitable climate adaptation strategies requires a deep understanding of how physical hazards translate into localized, human-centered impacts. While identifying areas of concentrated physical risk is a critical first step, achieving resilience demands more granular assessments of inequalities, socio-economic vulnerability and adaptive capacity. This session aims to bridge the gap between hazard-focused risk identification, detailed social and economic vulnerability and impact analyses, actionable, adaptation strategies at different levels of governance
We place particular emphasis on the multifaceted human impacts of climate change - beyond traditional damage-cost metrics - encompassing health, livelihoods, well-being, and other critical dimensions of human life. The session will showcase insights from European climate risk assessments which develop science-based, impact-driven decision-support tools to enhance local and regional adaptive capacity. These projects integrate physical and social sciences, promote Nature-Based Solutions, support multi-level climate governance, and employ participatory approaches to co-produce adaptation pathways aligned with the EU Mission on Adaptation to Climate Change by 2030, but longer time horizons are also envisaged.
We invite contributions that:
-present innovative, interdisciplinary methods for assessing climate risk that integrate physical hazard data with socio-economic vulnerability and adaptive capacity analysis.
- explore equity-focused socio-economic evaluations, including capability-based approaches to understand how climate change affects what individuals and communities can do and be.
- investigate the role of Nature-Based Solutions in building resilience.
- examine cross-sectoral and cascading impacts of extreme events on human systems.
- showcase community-based and participatory methods (e.g., stakeholder consultations, Living Labs) for co-developing transformative adaptation strategies.
- demonstrate decision-support tools that translate complex risk assessments into actionable local adaptation and mitigation plans.
By bringing together diverse perspectives, empirical evidence, and methodological innovations, this session will advance the science–policy interface for climate adaptation, contributing to climate-resilient development pathways for metropolitan and regional contexts across Europe and beyond.