LCLIP: Local Climate Impacts Profile

LCLIP is a simple tool designed to help organisations to assess their exposure to the weather. It can be used as a standalone tool, or as a step in a risk-based framework such as the Adaptation Wizard.

The LCLIP process shows how prepared an organisation is to deal with severe weather events. For example, one LCLIP uncovered £16.4 million of unplanned costs over a decade due, to emergency provisions, insurance claims and road repairs after weather events.

Understanding your current vulnerability to the weather can be a powerful catalyst to further awareness and action on preparing for the future climate.

Planning


Before you begin, you should consider:

Your main reason for undertaking an LCLIP:

  • are you taking a first step into adaptation activity?
  • do you need to demonstrate the consequences of weather events to colleagues or partners?
  • are you consolidating existing evidence?

What outputs do you need?

Any factors that will determine the scope of the LCLIP:

  • priority geographical areas (e.g. coastal regions, areas of social deprivation)
  • priority sectors or departments
  • the data currently available.

Whether to employ an external person / organisation or whether to allocate internal staff time.

An example of a rough timescale:

  • preparation 1–2 weeks
  • evidence gathering 2–3 weeks
  • interviews 2–3 weeks
  • writing up and reporting 2–3 weeks.

Research

The main component of an LCLIP is a spreadsheet, designed to capture information on newsworthy weather events for a particular location, and that have had an impact on your business or organisation. The initial research focuses on articles that might typically be found in local newspaper reports or online.

The information gathered will contain:

  • a list of consequences that have occurred in a locality over a specified time frame;
  • who within your organisation is required to respond to those consequences;
  • an assessment of the significance of the consequence according to a simple traffic light grading (high, medium, low).

The spreadsheet will also summarise:

  • impacts as a result of the weather
  • the weather detail
  • location of incidents
  • the date of incidents
  • source of the information recorded.

Once completed, the spreadsheet can provide a picture of the vulnerability of your organisation or business to recent or current weather events, as well as an insight into how well prepared that organisation is to deal with the consequences.

Use your exploration of the consequences of an event as a basis for interviews with staff to uncover more detail.

Interviews

Interviewing staff whose work was affected by a specific event is a good way to explore the consequences on the performance of a business or service.

Using information from your completed spreadsheet, identify and contact the relevant staff. Your conversation with the person should aim to:

  • check and add to the information gathered in the media search
  • gather qualitative data, e.g. how well the organisation is prepared for weather events
  • discover any other events similar to those outlined in the spreadsheet
  • identify and collate records/documents that are not otherwise available
  • informally survey ‘corporate attitudes’ to weather, climate change and/or adaptation, and start to understand existing levels of engagement and awareness.

Where possible, capture information about the event, including:

  • staff time required
  • costs
  • reputational impacts
  • the overall significance of this type of event for their work
  • similar kinds of events
  • other ways weather affects their service
  • ‘near misses’
  • thoughts on being better prepared
  • any other reflections on weather, climate or adaptation.

Note where any of this information is missing, as that will help to identify gaps in the current monitoring of events.

Identifying additional information

Interviews may uncover other records that offer insights into the effects of weather on services, for example:

  • financial costs – instances that have had direct or indirect financial costs
  • insurance claims – associated with weather damage
  • telephone query logs – correlated with the weather
  • air quality records – correlated with temperature
  • emergency responses made – correlated with weather events

Longer term changes could include:

  • extended grass cutting in response to increases in growing season
  • extension of staffing in parks in response to greater use
  • changing management regimes of sports pitches
  • changes in the waste stream in relation to weather.

Some impacts on services may not be currently associated with weather and whilst these may not be monitored, staff often have a good understanding of how their services can be affected. These issues or risks can be better identified as part of subsequent workshops or risk assessments based on LCLIP findings.

After the interviews

Write up transcripts as soon as possible after interviews while it is still fresh in your mind. You may wish to send a copy to the interviewee as confirmation of the conversation.

Outputs

The final part of an LCLIP is to bring together your findings into an appropriate format, depending on the nature and structure of your organisation.

You should have, as a minimum:

  • a list of weather events
  • an understanding of what those events meant for your organisation or business
  • one or more headline messages.

Your findings could be presented as:

  • a short report highlighting the main issues for your organisation
  • a briefing note for staff
  • a presentation illustrating the main messages, to be shared within the organisation and partners
  • an event or a series of events to share the outcomes with both internal and external audiences
  • a spreadsheet that breaks the results down e.g. by department, location etc.
  • easy to understand images such as bar charts, pie charts, graphs and photographs
  • an article in the local newspaper / internal newsletter
  • a post on your website and / or intranet
  • an internal report with suggestions for improving the preparedness of the organisation and a possible programme for further investigation.