As the climate continues to warm, sea levels rise, and extreme events grow more frequent and severe, the assumptions underpinning existing risk management strategies become outdated, meaning these strategies will no longer be sufficient to address the scale and complexity of emerging climate risks.

A climate change risk assessment helps organisations understand how shifting climate conditions may affect their assets, operations, and communities, both now and in the future.

A hazard is defined as a climate‑related physical event or trend (such as heatwaves, droughts, storms, or sea‑level rise) that has the potential to cause harm to people, ecosystems, infrastructure, and economies.

Hazards may occur alone or in combination, and can trigger compounding or cascading impacts, especially when multiple hazards interact.

Examples:

• As sea level rises, increased frequency of inundation of an area during storm event is a potential hazard for a low lying coastal community.
• Rising sea levels combined with storm surge can compound to create more extensive coastal flooding than either hazard alone.

Risk is the potential for adverse consequences for human or ecological systems resulting from the interaction of hazards, exposure, and vulnerability.

Risk can arise from a single climate hazard, multiple interacting hazards, or cascading impacts across systems.

Example: As sea levels rise, storm‑driven inundation can damage coastal roads, disrupt transport, and affect emergency access to create risks across multiple services.

Vulnerability refers to the likelihood that a person, system, or environment will be negatively affected by climate-related changes. Vulnerability is shaped not only by biophysical sensitivity but also by governance, inequalities, access to resources, and social conditions. It includes factors such as how sensitive something is to climate impacts, how susceptible it is to harm, and the extent to which it lacks the capacity to cope with or adjust to future conditions.

Example: Older populations with limited access to healthcare and cooling are more vulnerable during heatwaves due to both physical sensitivity and social factors.

Exposure is the presence of people, ecosystems, infrastructure, assets, or services in places that could be adversely affected by climate hazards. In AR6, exposure is dynamic—it can increase or decrease over time with settlement patterns, development choices, and land‑use change.

Example: A rapidly growing coastal community increases its exposure to storm‑related flooding.

Sensitivity is a component of vulnerability and describes how strongly a system is affected by a climate hazard. Sensitivity depends on the characteristics and criticality of the exposed system. Sensitivity can be determined by the criticality of the service that the system provides.

Example: A coastal access road that provides the only route to a hospital is highly sensitive to flood events because disruption has immediate consequences for community safety.

Adaptive capacity is the ability of a system to adjust to climate impacts, moderate potential damages, seize opportunities, or cope with consequences. Adaptive capacity is influenced by governance, finance, institutions, knowledge, and technology—and that limits to adaptation (both 'soft' and 'hard') can constrain what systems can achieve.

Example: A community with strong emergency planning, adequate resources, and effective governance has higher adaptive capacity to respond to extreme heat events

A risk assessment is a core component of any climate adaptation planning process (Figure 2). The scale and depth of the assessment should be guided by the organisation’s objectives and the resources available to undertake it.

CoastAdapt outlines three levels of risk assessment, each suited to different stages of the adaptation planning cycle and varying needs for detail (see Local Scale Risk).