As risks are always being dealt with by human agents (in institutions and individually, bottom-up or top-down in a place based context) any risk, vulnerability and adaptive capacity assessment should be undertaken from the perspective of socio-cultural-political and socio-economic values and norms of human agents in their bio-physical environments.

Hence WP 2 will describe and analyze societal path dependencies which have led to the current risk perception, risk management and utilization of climate services by institutional and human agents in the INNOVA hubs with respect to the INNOVA objective of advancing climate service development. Furthermore WP 2 will make recommendations for change management:

• Task 2.1 Development of generic framework for assessing risk perception. In this task a generic framework for the assessment of risk perception, vulnerability and risk management based on the understanding of the needs and capacities of the innovation hubs will be developed. This generic framework will serve as a blueprint for application in each innovation hub.
• Task 2.2 Risk and vulnerability assessment. In this task the risks and vulnerabilities in the hubs will be analyzed based on the framework developed in task 2.1. In close collaboration with the hubs the analysis will be based on three areas:
  • a) Bio-physical: What are the risks/ vulnerabilities in the hubs concerning physical factors (e.g. storms, floods, droughts, etc.) and how can they best be captured through climate services?
  • b) Socio-cultural: What are the risks/ vulnerabilities concerning socio-cultural-economic and political factors in each hub and how do they direct and influence choices or actions of institutions and human agents?
  • c) Who are the relevant institutional and human agents in the hubs? 
    The assessment will involve methodologies from the social science and humanities such as qualitative narrative interviews, quantitative interviews, storytelling and oral history.
• Task 2.3 Mapping the current institutional arrangements and responses to climate change risks and the utilization of climate services. The data obtained in task 2.2. and in WP 3/4 will provide the basis for the adaptive capacity assessment of the INNOVA hubs on a hub-by-hub basis.
• Task 2.4 Summarizing and uptake of results. For the transferability of the results, similarities and differences across the INNOVA hubs will be analyzed as well as barriers for the uptake of climate services and ways to overcome such barriers formulized.