An interactive decision support tool towards climate resilience

Abstract

The study aims to enhance climate change adaptation decision-making by providing a systematic approach to leveraging previous solutions and best practices. It addresses the need for tools that enable decision-makers to identify, evaluate, and apply relevant adaptation strategies with improved climate resilience outcomes. An interactive decision support tool was developed, incorporating a knowledge base of properly encoded climate change adaptation solutions and best practices. The proposed tool demonstrates the ability to match problem descriptions with relevant cases and provide actionable recommendations. By combining case-based reasoning (CBR) and rule-based reasoning (RBR), the tool generates responses, which may include similar solutions from the knowledge base, supporting evidence-based climate adaptation decisions. Moreover, for each stored case, environmental costs and impacts are quantified in monetary terms to support informed decision-making. The integration of environmental cost quantification in monetary terms enables a more holistic evaluation of adaptation options. The proposed approach facilitates the reuse of validated solutions while incorporating environmental and economic considerations. Decision-makers can use the tool to streamline the identification and selection of climate adaptation measures that align with both environmental and economic priorities. The system’s ability to automatically generate outputs based on user-defined problems has the potential to improve adaptation planning efficiency and promote sustainable practices.