TACKLING CLIMATE CHANGE THROUGH ADAPTATION

A communication concept to build bridges between climate experts and local municipalities

The Challenge

As part of the Design Thinking Basic Track at Hasso-Plattner-Institute Potsdam, my team received the following challenge from the Institute for Social-Ecological Research (ISOE) and the Center for Climate Change and Adaptation Hessen:

»Design a sustainable concept to communicate with local municipalities in one region in Hessen in order to gather information on their knowledge requirements regarding Climate Change Adaptation exampled by Urban Greenspace.«

Project Kick-Off · Information Cluster · Okt 2019

Process Overview

While working on the challenge, my team and I got to know and apply the methods of design thinking. The method consists of the following six phases, which we used to work on the definition and solution of our problem:

Project Stages · Design Thinking

Prototype Idea

After the ideation phase and testings of several ideas, we started to focus on the idea of a digital exchange platform between research institutes like ISOE and small municipalities in Germany:

The Solution

The »Climate ExChange Platform« has the main purpose of enabling knowledge transfer from stakeholders with more knowledge about climate adaptation to those with less by offering practical information to the people who work at a municipality level. There are three types of users for the prototype:

Research institutes can understand and identify the needs and
challenges faced by municipalities and offer additional resources,
such as information, research papers or answer questions
depending on their available resources.
Municipalities interested in sharing their experiences can do so
by using a template provided in the platform.
Municipalities interested in learning can find real life experiences
from other municipalities and find additional resources from other
stakeholders, such as research institutes.