An open and interoperable Knowledge Management framework for Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment

Climate change vulnerability assessment (CCVA) is crucial to understand how different regions, communities, and ecosystems are susceptible to the impacts of climate change. Through the identification of vulnerabilities, policymakers can prioritize adaptation efforts, allocate resources effectively, and develop risk mitigation strategies. Social and environmental scientists can design solutions for the development of climate-resilient regions. Nowadays, various approaches have been made available for CCVA, leading to increased knowledge along with the identification of challenges and pitfalls. Participatory approaches are required for the proper selection of vulnerability indicators and the interpretation of the assessment results, accompanied by the development of quality data assessment processes to reduce inconsistencies and uncertainties in the provided data. Openness and interoperability of data and processes have to be promoted to enable the extensibility, reproducibility and comparability of the produced results. In the current work, we develop a framework to enable open and interoperable CCVA, taking advantage of a knowledge management infrastructure and specifically a Knowledge Graph that tracks information for various indicators around the Sustainable Development Goals. We follow an indicator-based vulnerability assessment approach for various temporal and spatial scales, while considering hazard-independent and hazard-dependent analysis. Indicative analysis results are provided in national, regional and local scale.