Welcome to the home page of CARAVAN
CARAVAN was a research project that ran from June 2008 to April 2011, with the full title:
"Climate change: a regional assessment of vulnerability and adaptive capacity for the Nordic countries"
The main aim of CARAVAN was to undertake a comparison of approaches for estimating regional vulnerability to climate change in the Nordic region. Vulnerability is a function of exposure to climate change, sensitivity to its effects and adaptive capacity for coping with the effects. These elements were examined in the project, with indicators being developed in collaboration with regional stakeholders for future periods out to 2050. The indicators can be combined in various ways to describe vulnerability using an interactive mapping tool. Indices of vunerability can be derived at municipality scale and mapped across the Nordic region.
This was a pilot project, with initial efforts directed towards a Nordic-wide analysis of the agricultural sector. However, since the work is closely related to ongoing or proposed studies of vulnerability in individual partner countries, CARAVAN has also been able to draw on experiences from those projects to refine and extend the analysis. In particular, the mapping tool also offers options for plotting vulnerability of the elderly to a number of potential climate hazards.
Try out the CARAVAN online mapping tool
The web tool is available online at www.iav-mapping.net/CARAVAN
Users are invited to experiment with the tool and to provide any feedback they might have using a simple questionnaire, which can be clicked at the bottom right of the mapping tool.
Work continues in MEDIATION
Further development of the CARAVAN web interface is ongoing as part of the European Commission-funded Seventh Framework Programme MEDIATION (Methodology for Effective Decision-making on Impacts and AdaptaTION) project, January 2010 – July 2013. CARAVAN is one of two case studies for the northern Europe region in MEDIATION.
News
- CARAVAN/MEDIATION Joint Workshop "Climate change vulnerability mapping for the Nordic region" was held on November 2010 in Stockholm in association with the NordClad-Net International Conference "Climate Adaptation in the Nordic Countries: Science, Practice, Policy (8-10 Nov 2010)". A report and presentations are available from this workshop.
- First CARAVAN stakeholder meeting held in Sweden, 3-4 September 2009.
- The CARAVAN kick-off meeting took place at the Finnish Environment Institute on 25-26 November 2008. More information is available on the internal website or by contacting the Project Leader.
Documents and data
Carter, T.R., Fronzek, S., Mela, H., O'Brien, K., Rosentrater, L. and Simonsson, L. 2010. Climate Change Vulnerability Mapping for the Nordic Region- CARAVAN/MEDIATION Joint Workshop, Stockholm, 9 November 2010: Summary Report, Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE) report, Helsinki, Finland, 12 pp. (MEDIATION Milestone report 5a).
Rosentrater et al.: CARAVAN: A tool for quantifying vulnerability to climate change in the Nordic region. Poster
Carter etal: Mapping vulnerability to climate change in the Nordic region. Poster
CARAVAN internal website
Research team and funding
CARAVAN was a partnership of three organisations comprising an interdisciplinary research team:
- Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE), Helsinki, Finland
Timothy Carter (Project Leader), Stefan Fronzek, Aino Inkinen, Hanna Mela, Ismo Lahtinen
- University of Oslo, Department of Sociology and Human Geography, Oslo, Norway
Karen O'Brien, Lynn Rosentrater, Cathrine Ruud and Ida Skivenes
- University of Linköping, Centre for Climate Science and Policy, Linköping, Sweden
Louise Simonsson
The total budget was 148,000 Euro, which was provided from national sources by: The Academy of Finland, The Research Council of Norway and The Swedish Environmental Protection Agency.
The project was funded under the Nordic-Call of the CIRCLE ERA-Net (Climate Impact Research Coordination for a Larger Europe). CIRCLE sought to implement a European Research Area (ERA) for the field of climate change, through networking and by aligning national research. It is part of the European Commission's Sixth Framework Programme.
Contact information
For more details, contact:
Professor Timothy Carter
Climate Change Programme
Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE)
firstname.lastname@ymparisto.fi