The Asian Development Bank (ADB) seeks to develop a new climate and disaster risk screening and assessment tool to replace the current tool in use. The next generation tool will embody lessons learned over almost ten years of ADB activities aimed at improving the climate and disaster resilience of ADB investments, including inputs from a wide range of ADB staff and consultants.

The tool will be designed to provide scientifically credible and context specific screening of projects for risks associated with climate, climate change and a range of geophysical hazards at project concept stage in order to guide subsequent activities, including the design of adaptation and resilience strategies and interventions.

The next generation tool will provide greater access to the underlying data, greater flexibility in user-initiated exploration of specific risks, greater scope for screening more spatially complex projects such as road networks and power grids. The tool will also include a module that allows a light-touch Climate Risk and Adaptation (CRA) assessment to be produced, semi-automatically. Future modules will support Paris Alignment and automated completion of applicable sections of the adaptation (BB2) assessment.and will be expanded to provide a basis for more detailed climate risk and adaptation assessments as appropriate.

The methodology behind the tool is being developed by a specialized team of experts in which FutureWater provides expertise on climate and hazard data, climate model projections, and climate risk assessments. The methodology is based on an iterative and consultative process with an external expert group, ADB staff and experts on software development and user experience design. The methodology defines the risk calculation based on hazard, exposure and vulnerability spatial and project data, and user inputs.
The tool will also become available for ADB member countries. Two pilots in Laos and Uzbekistan will make sure that the tool will align with their requirements and datasets.

FutureWater is involved in testing the methodology in these pilot countries and developing example risk screening and CRA reports.