Assessing agricultural vulnerability to climate change in the Nordic countries – an interactive geovisualization approach

Abstract

Nordic agriculture must adapt to climate change to reduce vulnerability and exploit potential opportunities. Integrated assessments can identify and quantify vulnerability in order to recognize these adaptation needs. This study presents a geographic visualization approach to support the interactive assessment of agricultural vulnerability to climate change. We have identified requirements for increased transparency and reflexivity in vulnerability assessments, arguing that these can be met by geographic visualization. A conceptual framework to support the integration of geographic visualization for vulnerability assessments has been designed and applied for the development of AgroExplore, an interactive tool for assessing agricultural vulnerability to climate change in Sweden. To open up the black box of composite vulnerability indices, AgroExplore enables the user to select, weight, and classify relevant indicators into sub-indices of exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity. This enables the exploration of underlying indicators and factors determining vulnerability in Nordic agriculture.

Zoning and weighting in urban heat island vulnerability and risk mapping in Helsinki, Finland

“…how the weighting alters final maps than trying to find out the best method for weighting. In the puzzle of setting weights, different visualization tools used in wider stakeholder processes (Bohman et al 2015;Carter et al 2016;Rød et al 2015;Wirehn et al 2017) may also help, especially if one considers that vulnerability mapping is a learning process, rather than considering the final maps as the most important product. It is also possible to include processes of validation and negotiation into the stakeholder process when weighting indicators (Carter et al 2016;Rød et al 2015).…”

Augmenting the usability of parallel coordinate plot: The polyline glyphs

“…As the two proof-of-concept implementations of polyline glyphs have already been described elsewhere, 4,7 we only briefly demonstrate how the dynamic linking of parallel coordinates to polyline glyphs may work.…”

“…The agroEXPLORE tool was designed to enable an agricultural vulnerability index (AVI) to be constructed for Swedish municipalities. 7 Users can select indicators, adjust their weights, and move between sub-indices on exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity. Additionally, weights can be set for the sub-indices.…”

“…Parallel coordinates dynamically linked to polyline glyphs have so far been implemented experimentally twice: in ViewExposed 4 and in agroEXPLORE. 7 Although the implementations gave promising results, no evidence was gathered to support the assertion that polyline glyphs add value to a coordinated-view display, thus making the system more useful. With this study, we intend to better investigate this issue in more detail.…”

Water supply failure probability under influence of climate change—Balsillas river basin case study

“…Several quantitative assessments of vulnerability to climate change have been made through different analyses and comparisons of agricultural vulnerability in different regions of the world, generating composite indices based on sets of indicators [11]. Such indicators generally cover multiple dimensions of the concept of vulnerability, capturing the exposure, sensitivity, and adaptability of a system [12] [13]. In the case of Colombia, according to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, agricultural production at the national level has been affected by the occurrence of extreme weather events associated with climate change.…”