Community Resilience to Climate Change: Theory, Research and Practice

110 2.3. Workshop Following the Survey As mentioned previously, the explanatory power of an indicator set of urban climate resilience is hugely dependent on the context, and therefore we discussed the results of the survey again with the 14 projects (see. Figure 1 Phase 6). Moreover, this feedback loop increases the transparency of the process and the robustness of the results. The workshop started with presenting the survey results and then the participants were split into two groups in order to create two independent feedback loops and cross-validation of the indicator set. For each group, a poster was prepared, listing all indicators included in the survey. The indicators that were ranked lower in the survey were written on the poster in light grey (compared to black), for an improved visualization of the survey results. Hence, both groups had the visual results to discuss and were asked to compare each pair in detail and find explanations for the survey results. In addition, the overall set remained visible, which allowed participants to keep the important question of the overall themes in mind. Therefore, indicators could be moved across the set or could become more important if they were deemed a missing piece in the mosaic. The guiding questions for this phase of the workshop were: (1) Are there enough indicators? (2) How many indicators are needed and sufficient? (3) Are the selected indicators the right ones or should they be changed? And (4) are there important gaps in the set that are yet to be filled? 2.4. Finalizing the Indicators Set In Step 7 (see Figure 1) we analyzed the results of the workshop. Furthermore, expert interviews with practitioners were conducted with the aim to develop indicators in action fields where neither the literature review nor survey and workshop produced results. On this basis, we finalized the urban resilience indicator set. 3. RESULTS In our review of the academic literature, 19 indicator-based resilience frameworks were analyzed. Based on the indicators of these frameworks a list of 498 indicators (including duplicates) was generated. The indicator list was used as an important starting point for developing the MONARES Indicator Set (MIS). After screening the indicators through the lens of the MONARES-framework, some action fields remained empty and were filled by proposed indicators of the MONARES project-team. One to four indicators were selected per action field in order to cover all topics and include sufficient redundancy. Table 2 shows the selected and proposed indicators. Table 2. Delineated indicators and action fields. 3.1. Survey about Resilience Indicators The survey was structured based on the results of Phase 4. The survey (Figure 1 Phase 5) was filled out by 39 respondents within the funding initiative “Climate resilience through action in cities and regions” of the BMBF. The overall mean perceived importance of the indicators was 3.63 within the complete range from one to five. Considering the complexity of the urban system and the interdisciplinary character of the indicator set, this rating was regarded as high. The median of four was also high. The standard deviation of 1.17 together with the entire evaluation range reflected the diversity of interpretations. Nevertheless, despite this diversity, these core numbers show that the indicators were overall judged as important. Splitting the indicators into the five main dimensions (Figure 2), the median shows that only the indicators within the dimension of economy were rated less important, they are rated in the middle of the range, which might indicate a slight indecisiveness.