Table 3 - final results by provinces from Climate risk index for Italy

We describe a climate risk index developed to inform the national climate adaptation planning in Italy and further elaborated in this paper. The index supports national authorities in designing adaptation policies and plans, guides the initial problem formulation phase, and identifies administrative areas with higher propensity to be adversely affected by climate change. The index combines (i) climate change-amplified hazards; (ii) high-resolution indicators of exposure of chosen economic, social, natural and built- or manufactured capital (MC) assets and (iii) vulnerability which comprises both present-time sensitivity to climate-induced hazards and adaptive capacity. We use standardized anomalies of selected extreme climate indices derived from high-resolution regional climate models' simulations of the EURO-CORDEX initiative as proxies of climate change-altered weather and climate-related hazards. The exposure and sensitivity assessment is based on indicators of manufactured, natural, social and economic capital assets exposed to and adversely affected by climate-related hazards. The MC refers to material goods or fixed assets which support the production process (e.g. industrial machines and buildings); the Natural Capital comprises natural resources and processes (renewable and non-renewable) producing goods and services for the well-being; the Social Capital (SC) addressed factors at individual (people's health, knowledge, skills) and collective (institutional) level (e.g. families, communities, organizations and schools); and the Economic Capital (EC) includes owned and traded goods and services. The results of the climate risk analysis are used to rank the subnational administrative and statistical units according to the climate risk challenges, and possibly for financial resource allocation for climate adaptation.This article is part of the theme issue ‘Advances in risk assessment for climate change adaptation policy’.