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Undertake an audit of existing regulations, government policy and administrative procedures to
identify the extent to which they limit effective adaptation actions and adoption of measures
across the community.
16.5.3. Governance
New structures set up under the Climate Change Adaptation Framework, including Regional Committees
need to be used to facilitate more ready access to information and sharing of resources to fund projects
and monitoring.
Resources need to be allocated to undertake important modelling and related studies. This relates to the
development of coastal Digital Elevation Models, flood studies, urban heat analysis, and more detailed
social and economic impact analysis.
When applying a regional approach to climate change adaptation, there needs to be consistency in
decision-making across the region. The decisions of one council can impact adversely on another council
area with regard to its climate change risk profile and delivery of programs and investments.
Consideration should be given to implementing measures within the planning system, such as regional
DAPs or to assign greater powers to a State referral body (e.g. Coast Protection Board), in order to
achieve a consistent approach to climate change adaptation across the region.
16.5.4. Information
Availability of digestible information is commonly cited as a barrier to adaptation. Potential improvement
measures that should be considered further are outlined below.
Improve GIS mapping highlighting vulnerable assets, no go zones, and develop climate change risk
overlays. Develop visualisation tools, which are valuable for assisting communication of risks to decision-
makers and the community. Relevant government agencies develop and distribute appropriate
information/mapping for use in land use planning documents (ie Planning Strategy, Development Plans
and Plans for new significant growth areas).
The scale of projections needs to be downscaled to a local level in order to assist a community’s ability to
plan for future climate risks and develop adaptation measures that best suits the local circumstances.
Information gathering would be facilitated by strengthened coordination within and across government
organisations. A more structured model that assists collation of government and commercial data should
be considered in order to expedite access to comprehensive data sets. Particular data sets that reside
within State government could provide insight into key vulnerabilities. Such data, including stamp duties,
land tax, valuation data etc, should be made accessible subject to appropriate measures.
Preliminary information reconnaissance or audits should be undertaken prior to embarking upon any
regional profiles. This would assist in understanding the custodians of the data and the data limitations
thereby allowing a suitable regional profile to be scoped and a strategy developed to access data.
