During the first national meeting of the National Assessment family in Aspen in July and August 1997, the participants were asked to identify high-priority topics for future summer sessions. The meeting was hosted by the Aspen Global Change Institute (AGCI), an innovative institution that organizes and conducts extended discussions of global change issues by small groups of experts over periods of up to two weeks.  One of the two highest priorities determined by group consensus was improving the understanding of how human and natural systems connect in urban areas.  The reason for this emphasis was an urgent need to improve the ability to assess climate change impacts and vulnerabilities in cities.

Two years later in July 1999, supported by NASA, NSF, NOAA, and USDA/Forest Service, AGCI held the session that the National Assessment group had called for.  Organized by National Assessment participants Tom Wilbanks of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Bob Wilkinson of the University of California-Santa Barbara, the session included seventeen experts from a wide variety of disciplines and backgrounds.  The group included leaders of the NACC Metropolitan East Coast, California and Pacific Northwest regional assessments, and experts on natural hazards in the world's cities, urban and regional impact assessment, integrated assessment modeling, and responses to climate change impacts.

Talking and working together for nine days, the group developed a research agenda to improve urban climate change impact and vulnerability assessment, emphasizing research needed to upgrade the understanding of critical system linkages; to improve the ability to combine quantitative and non-quantitative approaches to learning; to strengthen the connection between analysis and use; and to improve the ability to integrate top-down and bottom-up perspectives.  The group also outlined the scope of what might eventually become an urban “sectoral -- assessment, filling a gap left by the first National Assessment; assisted USAID in strategic planning for the impact vulnerability dimension of its Climate Change Initiative; and produced some input to the national urban Long Term Ecological Research effort. A full report on the meeting will be available from AGCI in its annual publication Elements of Change.

For more information, contact:
Thomas J. Wilbanks, Global Change and Developing Country Programs; Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN 37831-6184; Phone: 423-574-5515; Fax: 423-576-2943; E-mail: twz@ornl.gov