The outcome of Asia's high rate of urbanization has been the expansion of urban populations into geographic areas, which are frequently affected by disaster events. The result is an increased vulnerability of populations and infrastructure. The long term climate change impact is expected to increase the vulnerability further to a great extent if the needs are not incorporated in the development process. The region needs to improve response, preparedness capacities, as well as long-term risk reduction activities to reduce the vulnerability of city population to long-term climate-related risks.

Combining urban disaster risk management and climate change adaptation practice is a good entry point for developing appropriate solutions to improve the climate resilience of urban communities. At the same time, such solutions provide opportunities for expanding the knowledge base through interventions for promotion of traditional practices, research and technological transfer, replication of best practices, promotion of innovative solutions, and development of information products to capture experiences for dissemination as well as training and capacity building of urban level stakeholders.

The Asian Cities Climate Change Resilience Network program of the Rockefeller Foundation is an attempt to form a network of Asian cities by 2012 with robust plans to prepare, withstand and recover from the predicted impacts of climate change. Table 1 shows the ACCCRN Results Framework document dated 18 October 2010, with the Impacts and Key Outcomes for its partners and cities. This program faces interesting challenges coming from the uncertainty surrounding the predictions of climate change, especially for disaster management in anticipation of the possible rise in risk. While the IPCC has developed certain predictions of global mean temperature for the far future, the reliability of predictions for the near future and/or for smaller geographic extents are much lower. Therefore the program need to facilitate interventions for technical interventions to study some of the details of local level impacts and support the project partners and target cities to develop appropriate solutions.

However, stakeholders do not always understand the relationship between climate change and urban climate resilience. It is difficult to sort out whether disasters and other urban stresses are the result of changes carried out through development interventions such as land use changes, poor land management etc, or actual climate change drivers. It will be a challenge to identify models, strategies, and solutions that have impacts on climate change-related practices per se.

1) technical assistance for ACCCRN partners during project implementation

2) capacity building on urban climate change resilience by designing a module on urban climate change resilience for use within an existing ADPC course.

3) scholarship support to attend an ADPC course on early warning systems; and

4) a tracer study of all persons who received scholarships under this grant and a previous grant 2010 CLI 317.

1) assistance to the Thailand project in Chiang Rai to interpret the downscaled future climate projections for the city

2) a short training course on statistical downscaling conducted in Semarang

3) seven scholars from India, Indonesia and Thailand attended the course ?Early Warning Systems for Hydro-Meteorological Hazards?

4) tracer study covering nine interviewed respondents from India, Indonesia and Thailand on impacts of attended courses upon their professional lives and resilience-related projects