@article{OttoGoepfertThieken2021,
  author    = {Otto, Antje and G{\"o}pfert, Christian and Thieken, Annegret},
  title     = {Are cities prepared for climate change?},
  series = {Mitigation and adaptation strategies for global change : an international journal devoted to scientific, engineering, socio-economic and policy responses to environmental change},
  volume    = {26},
  journal   = {Mitigation and adaptation strategies for global change : an international journal devoted to scientific, engineering, socio-economic and policy responses to environmental change},
  number    = {8},
  publisher = {Springer},
  address   = {Dordrecht},
  issn      = {1381-2386},
  doi       = {10.1007/s11027-021-09971-4},
  pages     = {25},
  year      = {2021},
  abstract  = {Cities can be severely affected by climate change. Hence, many of them have started to develop climate adaptation strategies or implement measures to help prepare for the challenges it will present. This study aims to provide an overview of climate adaptation in 104 German cities. While existing studies on adaptation tracking rely heavily on self-reported data or the mere existence of adaptation plans, we applied the broader concept of adaptation readiness, considering five factors and a total of twelve different indicators, when making our assessments. We clustered the cities depending on the contribution of these factors to the overall adaptation readiness index and grouped them according to their total score and cluster affiliations. This resulted in us identifying four groups of cities. First, a pioneering group comprises twelve (mainly big) cities with more than 500,000 inhabitants, which showed high scores for all five factors of adaptation readiness. Second, a set of 36 active cities, which follow different strategies on how to deal with climate adaptation. Third, a group of 28 cities showed considerably less activity toward climate adaptation, while a fourth set of 28 mostly small cities (with between 50,000 and 99,999 inhabitants) scored the lowest. We consider this final group to be pursuing a 'wait-and-see' approach. Since the city size correlates with the adaptation readiness index, we recommend policymakers introduce funding schemes that focus on supporting small cities, to help them prepare for the impact of a changing climate.},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{OttoKernHauptetal.2021,
  author    = {Otto, Antje and Kern, Kristine and Haupt, Wolfgang and Eckersley, Peter and Thieken, Annegret},
  title     = {Ranking local climate policy},
  series = {Climatic change : an interdisciplinary, international journal devoted to the description, causes and implications of climatic change},
  volume    = {167},
  journal   = {Climatic change : an interdisciplinary, international journal devoted to the description, causes and implications of climatic change},
  number    = {1-2},
  publisher = {Springer},
  address   = {Dordrecht},
  issn      = {0165-0009},
  doi       = {10.1007/s10584-021-03142-9},
  pages     = {23},
  year      = {2021},
  abstract  = {Climate mitigation and climate adaptation are crucial tasks for urban areas and can involve synergies as well as trade-offs. However, few studies have examined how mitigation and adaptation efforts relate to each other in a large number of differently sized cities, and therefore we know little about whether forerunners in mitigation are also leading in adaptation or if cities tend to focus on just one policy field. This article develops an internationally applicable approach to rank cities on climate policy that incorporates multiple indicators related to (1) local commitments on mitigation and adaptation, (2) urban mitigation and adaptation plans and (3) climate adaptation and mitigation ambitions. We apply this method to rank 104 differently sized German cities and identify six clusters: climate policy leaders, climate adaptation leaders, climate mitigation leaders, climate policy followers, climate policy latecomers and climate policy laggards. The article seeks explanations for particular cities' positions and shows that coping with climate change in a balanced way on a high level depends on structural factors, in particular city size, the pathways of local climate policies since the 1990s and funding programmes for both climate mitigation and adaptation.},
  language  = {en}
}