Co-designing climate services to support adaptation to natural hazards

This SEI discussion brief examines how the co-design of climate services—tailored information products like models and assessments—can better support adaptation planning by focusing on the specific institutional and decision contexts of users. Using two Swedish case studies (Karlstad and Stockholm) and the Tandem framework, the brief highlights the need for climate services to align with the user's stage in the adaptation learning cycle and to address the reality that adaptation measures are often pre-defined rather than compared as a menu of options.

• The requirements for climate services vary based on the user's prior experience and their current position in the adaptation learning cycle. For example, Karlstad municipality, which had prior experience with flood defence, required "granular, place-specific climate information," whereas the City of Stockholm, with less experience in heat stress planning, needed "more generic climate information to assess and create awareness."
• There is a common tendency for stakeholders to evaluate a single, pre-defined adaptation measure rather than comparing multiple alternatives. This is supported by a study showing that only 13 percent of responding Swedish municipalities had evaluated several different adaptation measures. This pattern may be driven by institutional mandates, where civil servants only have the authority to implement specific solutions, or by the need to align adaptation with other non-climate priorities.
• Co-designed climate services can help overcome the barrier where climate information is viewed as only one of many competing considerations for practitioners. By providing "actionable information that is tailored to the user’s decision context," these services can better integrate into planning processes where climate benefits are weighed against budgetary, feasibility, or housing demand concerns.
• Uncertainty in climate projections is not necessarily an insurmountable barrier to the use of climate information in practice. In the Karlstad case, uncertainty was managed by using a "standardized “climate factor” to the water levels" and utilizing easy-to-interpret map formats. In Stockholm, the focus was on the general role of green spaces regardless of the specific degree of future climate change.
• The Tandem framework provides a seven-step iterative process for co-designing climate services: 1) identifying the adaptation challenge, 2) engaging users, 3) co-defining objectives, 4) understanding institutional/decision contexts, 5) co-exploring data needs, 6) appraising adaptation measures, and 7) embedding the service in existing institutions.

APA

Stockholm Environment Institute (2020). Co-designing climate services to support adaptation to natural hazards. https://www.sei.org/publications/co-designing-climate-services-to-support-adaptation-to-natural-hazards/

Chicago

Stockholm Environment Institute. Co-designing climate services to support adaptation to natural hazards. 2020. https://www.sei.org/publications/co-designing-climate-services-to-support-adaptation-to-natural-hazards/.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Stockholm Environment Institute |title=Co-designing climate services to support adaptation to natural hazards |date=4 February 2020 |url=https://www.sei.org/publications/co-designing-climate-services-to-support-adaptation-to-natural-hazards/ |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{stockholmenvironmentinstitute2020codesigning, author = {{Stockholm Environment Institute}}, title = {{Co-designing climate services to support adaptation to natural hazards}}, institution = {Stockholm Environment Institute}, year = {2020}, month = feb, url = {https://www.sei.org/publications/co-designing-climate-services-to-support-adaptation-to-natural-hazards/}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }