Now that you have clarified your specific application, it is time to decide on the process. By process we mean planning the exercises, inviting the people, documenting the outcomes, etc. It is imperative to have someone responsible for each of the responsibilities in the process. These decisions have been structured around six key points: 

  • Select a Process Leader and Process Team. This Process Leader will lead the vulnerability assessment process. This person should preferably be the one responsible for the assessment. The Process Leader will prepare the exercises and guide the discussions at the process workshops/meetings. S/He also will also invite relevant people to the meetings. If you intend to conduct an integrated assessment, please select a Process Team that is the main group that will meet and participate in the entire assessment.
  • Select exercises and make a time plan. Decide which exercises you will conduct. Decide when and how you plan to do them. We suggest the following time plan:

Meeting 1: (Exercise I, Exercise II and Exercise III) four hours.
Workshop 1: (Exercise IV) three hours.
Meeting 2: (Exercise V and Exercise VI) four hours.
Workshop 2: (Exercise VII) four hours.

The meetings are mainly intended for a more limited audience (the Process Team) while the workshops are targeted to a wider audience. Make sure that you have enough time in between the meetings in order to secure possible in-depth analyses or support materials and to summarise this material.

There are different reasons for inviting a wider audience to the Sensitivity (IV) and Integrated Vulnerability (VII) exercises. In order to make an in-depth evaluation of sensitivity, you need to invite people with sufficient knowledge about the weakest spots and strongest potential. You will probably invite a number of people working with operation and maintenance of core societal services, strategic planning, etc. You will present the outcome from Meeting 1 and relate these potential stressors to the specific application.

In order to make an overall assessment and to develop a response strategy, you will probably want to invite several of the stakeholders that were identified during Exercise A. Here you will present the outcomes from the meetings and workshops and start with summarizing these outcomes and then identifying how you should address these challenges and chances. 

  • Plan the exercises carefully. Start with a coarse plan addressing all exercises that you have decided to do. Then plan the exercises in a more detailed manner well in advance of each of the meetings and workshops. Follow the detailed instructions. You are of course free to modify the exercises.
  • Appoint a Rapporteur. This person will document the discussions and results of the exercises. This position could rotate. For each exercise, there is a specific output format. The output should be recorded in order not to lose any perspectives in the integrated assessment.
  • Documentation of the exercises. To record your progress, you will need to record the results obtained from each exercise according to the specified output format or in another way inspired by the examples presented. We also recommend that you take photos of the final product of each exercise in order to facilitate the analysis at a later point in time. Also make sure that you spread the results continuously to the Process Team.
  • Evaluation. Please decide whether you want to evaluate the usefulness of the exercise, meeting or workshop (See the section Evaluation of the exercises). Evaluations will help you modify exercises before the following meetings and to identify parts that you missed in your discussions.

Table 1. Time plan template (can be downloaded from the Related files on the right)

Application:
Process Leader:
Rapporteur(s):
We plan to conduct the following exercises: Place a (X) below When we plan to conduct the exercises:
Exercise I - How might the future society look?    
Exercise II - Climatic stressor mapping    
Exercise III - Socio-economic stressor mapping     
Exercise IV - Local sensitivity    
Exercise V - Identifying and ranking adaptive capacity     
Exercise VI - Responsibilities and relationships of key actors involved in change    
Exercise VII - Integrated vulnerability assessment and action plan    


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