Framework for collaborative local climate adaptation scenario development- nexus between climate resilience, public health service and spatial planning

• Date: 25 November 2024
• Pages: 311-332
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCCSM-09-2023-0110
• Published date: 25 November 2024
• Subject Matter: Public policy & environmental management,Environmental issues,Climate change
• Author: Wiriya Puntub,Stefan Greiving,Joern Birkmann

Framework for collaborative local

climate adaptation scenario

development- nexus between climate

resilience, public health service and

spatial planning

Wiriya Puntub and Stefan Greiving

Department of Spatial Planning, TU Dortmund University, Dortmund, Germany, and

Joern Birkmann

Institute of Spatial and Regional Planning (IREUS),

University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany

Abstract

Purpose –The interaction betweenurban development and climate change signif‌icantlyimpacts local public

health services. Unfortunately, cities and involved institutions often fail to prioritize and integrate spatial

planning whendealing with these unprecedented future challenges.This study aims to offer Health Integrative

Climate Resilience and AdaptationFuture (HICRAF), an innovative planning frameworkthat systematically

operationalizesfuture climate risks and their impacton local public health services.

Design/methodology/approach –HICRAF is developed based on the intermix of explorative and

normative scenario planning approaches. Mixed methods of quantitative and qualitative techniques were

applied to developand operationalize the local climate adaptation scenariosthrough stakeholder participation.

The framework demonstrateshow different methods and scales(spatial and temporal) can be linked to exhibit

climate risk outcomesof different future pathways.

Findings –The practicality of HICRAF was demonstrated in Khon Kaen city, where it bridged the gaps

between global climate trajectories and local climate adaptation scenarios. It also highlights the need to

consider intertwining spatial and systemic risks in local infrastructure operations. Although HICRAF has

gained political buy-in and fostered the establishment of stakeholder discourse on climate-resilient futures,

further researchis needed to enhance its robustness andreplicability.

Originality/value –This paper proposes a novel planning framework, HICRAF, that can systematically

operationalize the future challengesof unprecedented climate change and urban development changes for the

© Wiriya Puntub, Stefan Greiving and Joern Birkmann. Published by Emerald Publishing Limited.

This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may

reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and

non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full

terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode

Our sincere thanks go to Mr. Surapong Khamtanit, Dr. Benjawan Tawatsupa, Khon Kaen city

stakeholders and experts, Thai government agencies, as well as colleagues & friends who contributed

their time and input to this research. The authors declare no conf‌lict of interest. Ethics approval for

this research was obtained from the Human Research Ethics Committee of Khon Kaen Hospital

(Reference: KH 0032.002/259).

Funding: This study has received funding from Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft; Open Access

Publication Costs.

International

Journal of Climate

Change Strategies

and Management

311

Received11 September 2023

Revised 27 December 2023

3 May 2024

Accepted23 September 2024

InternationalJournal of Climate

ChangeStrategies and

Management

Vol.17 No. 1, 2025

pp. 311-332

EmeraldPublishing Limited

1756-8692

DOI 10.1108/IJCCSM-09-2023-0110

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:

https://www.emerald.com/insight/1756-8692.htm

local public health service.The demonstration of HICRAF in Khon Kaen city providesempirical evidence of

its implementabilityand upscaling potential.

Keywords Climate risk, Local climate adaptation scenario, Climate resilience, Public health,

Spatial planning

Paper type Research paper

1. Introduction

Compounding climate-related hazards and urbanization trends could raise service demands,

disrupt service qualityand inf‌luence poorer health outcomes of the local publichealth service

(WHO, 2015;Ebi et al., 2018;Murray et al., 2022), particularly in growing medium-sized

cities, where resources and infrastructure are often not prioritized in tandem with

development. These challengesunderscore the urgent need for future-oriented risk-informed

planning at a local level, taking infrastructure operation and functionality into account.

Despite research and analytical tools coveringthis urgency seems limited, scenario planning

is a transcendent instrument for exploring the potential consequences of a variety of

responsive and adaptiveactions and interactions among physical, environmentaland societal

systems by considering the uncertainties and complexities of climate change (Moss et al.,

2010: 747–748; O’Neill et al., 2014;Kebede et al., 2018;Kok et al., 2019: 643–645).

Scenarios encompass future-oriented policies for disaster risk management and climate

change adaptation (Birkmann et al., 2015:65), covering predictive, explorative and

normative elements and also qualitative and quantitative approaches (Börjeson et al., 2006:

730). In climate vulnerability/risk studies, projecting socio-economic changes alongside

climatic changes is necessary to assess future climate risk (Greiving et al., 2018;O’Neill

et al., 2020). However, there are a few studies that encompassed a bottom-up approach

involving stakeholders in linking global and subnational (i.e. regional, delta regions, city,

neighborhood) shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs) (e.g., Nilsson et al., 2017;Kebede

et al.,2018;Lino et al., 2019;Cradock-Henry et al., 2021). Yet, there is a need to link global

climate trajectories and local climate adaptation scenarios that consider local stakeholders

and experts knowledge of the impact of land use-related decisions (Puntub et al.,2022).

Moreover, climate vulnerability/risk assessment studies are often dominated by a purely

place-based concept, which has a clear constraint whenlooking at spatially and functionally

interconnected infrastructures whose services provision is essential for urban systems in

reality (Katina and Hester, 2013;Pescaroli and Alexander, 2015;Greiving et al., 2021).

Climate impacts may question a continuous service provision in and for areas which are not

directly affected by extreme events but indirectly affected by service disruptions they are

functionally dependent on (Etzold and Sakdapolrak, 2016;Puntub and Greiving, 2022). For

example, a hospital may not be exposed to a hazard. But the hospital’s function could be

affected by disruption or loss of its dependent lifelineinfrastructure located elsewhereoutside

the region/territory, which is exposedto the hazard. Thus, a strongly established purely place-

based concept (Wi sner et al.,2004:49;Cutter et al.,2008) may not be suff‌icient to explain

and manage climate vulnerability/risk of urban infrastructure where, in reality, place and

systemic aspects are reciprocally bonded and bounded (Kruse et al.,2021;Monstadt and

Schmidt, 2019). Yet, an application of the mixed-methods approach is still a minority

(Opdyke et al.,2017)andsuff‌iciently addressing cross-scale interactions inf‌luencing risk

outcomes(Fekete et al.,2010)is still a great challenge in this f‌ieldof research.

Although the scenario approachis dominant in climate change adaptation studies (van der

Voorn et al.,2017), backcasting has been f‌irst integrated with IPCC climate change

mitigation storylines (Carlsson-Kanyama et al., 2013). Robinson et al. (2011) demonstrated

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