The availability of local level assessments is reported only by one country (Sweden). In other countries, however, there is already action taking place locally. In the UK, for example, some cities have undertaken city level risk or vulnerability assessments (e.g. Birmingham). Other cities have used the LCLIP tool to assess vulnerabilities to current weather conditions. Belgium reported that the use of vulnerability diagnostic tools are beginning to appear at the local level. In Ireland, research-based, local-scale vulnerability assessments have been conducted on an ad-hoc basis for some sectors (i.e. the Office of Public Works, Tourism and Heritage, Forfas; Ireland's policy advisory board for enterprise, trade, science, technology and innovation) bringing together groups of local authorities, civil society expert stakeholders and scientists (Falaleeva et al., 2013; Gray et al., 2013). Such activities aim to communicate local knowledge of the global change impacts on local communities to the higher level adaptation decision makers. Additionally, they aim to develop adaptation capacity by providing adaptation actors at the local level with access to climate knowledge and networks operational at regional and national scale. Nevertheless, the fact that such examples are scarce confirm the finding that more effort should be placed on the generation of adaptation information at the local/community level (this is identified as the fourth most important topic about which more information is needed, see Question 20) and agrees with the knowledge gaps identified in the EU Climate Change Adaptation Strategy (EC, 2013)
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