WM Adapt: Maximising Adaptation to Climate Change in the West Midlands & beyond

Wild Weather World Café events

From May – November 2025, sixteen Wild Weather World Café events were held across priority wards in the West Midlands, in collaboration with the Birmingham Voluntary Service Council (BVSC), bringing together a total of 286 participants. The purpose of the events was to understand local experiences of extreme weather/responses, attitudes toward adaptation, and the priorities of residents.

You can watch a video filmed at one of our Castle Vale World Café about the benefits of community research, and read summary reports for each World Café .

Rapid adaptation pathway assessments (RAPAs)

From January – December 2026, seven neighbourhood scale RAPAs will take place seeking to assess the climate risks facing services, assets and people in each of the WMCA’s wards, and to develop a practical pathway of next steps for addressing these risks.

Public engagement events

• Neighbourhood Futures Festival, Birmingham Settlement Nature & Wellbeing Centre, June 2025
• BIFoR FACE Forest Futures Summit, University of Birmingham, June 2025 - working with A-Level students to develop nature-based climate adaptation solutions
• Helios Exhibition at The Exchange, Birmingham (running until September 2026)
• Video with students at UoB Green Week, April 2026
• Pint of Science, Hare and Hounds, King’s Heath, May 2026

Conferences and publications

• Institute of British Geographers – Royal Geographical Society Annual Conference, University of Birmingham, UK, August 2025
• Canadian Association of Geographers (CAG), University of Victoria, Canada, June 2026

Climate Risk and Vulnerability Assessment

A Climate Risk and Vulnerability Assessment (CRVA) is a spatial assessment of where climate risks across the region might be concentrated. The West Midlands CRVA is based on three factors: climate hazards (like high temperatures and flood risk), socio-economic vulnerability (like income, health, and demographics) and exposure (like population density). The CRVA stacks each of these variables at a spatial scale to give an overall picture of where these factors overlap and in turn, which areas might be disproportionately affected.

Take a look at the existing WM-CRVA maps and methodology that our project is building on.

Baseline and Future Scenario enhancements are underway for the following:

• Urban Heat Island Modelling
• Pluvial Flood Risk Modelling
• Health Modelling
• Economic Modelling

Journal Paper: Modelling temperature variations in Birmingham, UK at the neighbourhood scale: Using ADMS-Urban climate model

Regional Adaptation Network (RAN)

The Regional Adaptation Network (RAN) is a cross-sector, cross-agency forum seeking to connect and build the adaptive capacity of key players who have a role in preparing the West Midlands region for climate change through quarterly meetings.

As of May 2026, the RAN is made up of around160 members from 50 organisations, with meetings seeing an average of 40-50 attendees depending on the topic of discussion. All RAN meetings are recorded and published alongside meeting slide decks so no one misses out.

A RAN Advisory Group is currently being convened to help shape and guide the network going forward. The Advisory Group will comprise of 10–12 RAN members, each representing a key sector or thematic area aligned with the forthcoming Regional Adaptation Plan.

Adaptive capacity assessment

Climate Sense’s Capacity Diagnosis and Development (CaDD) tool has been rolled out to 15 organisations to date, across a range of sectors.

CaDD is an online survey that grades an organisation’s current capacity to identify and manage climate risks and indicates areas for improvement to reach the next ‘stage’ of climate readiness. This survey is helping the WMCA gage where, across the region, adaptation maturity is lacking.

WS1 Neighbourhood adaptation

• x16 community engagement workshops delivered in priority wards across the West Midlands from June to December 2025
• Planning the delivery of 7 adaptation pathway developments for one ward in each of the WMCA's constituent authority areas.

WS2 Climate Risk and Vulnerability Assessment data enhancements

• Modelling of future warming situations
• Urban heat island baseline modelling
• Surface water flood risk baseline modelling
• Economic impact assessment formula established and data identified
• Health impacts of climate hazards via a new Climate Health Explorer tool

WS3 Building regional adaptive capacity

• Regional Adaptation Network launched in March 2025 – first set of four quarterly meetings delivered
• RAN composes of 140+ members from across 50 organisations. Average turnout rate of ~40 attendees per meeting
• Climate Sense's adaptive capacity assessment tool has been used by 16 organisations

Building a resilient and equitable future for Enfield

The WM-Adapt Team are joining forces with LocalMotion and Enfield Climate Action Forum (EnCaf) to apply some of the successful work from our project to help build a resilient and equitable future for Enfield, North London, through EN-Adapt, with Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Impact Acceleration Account (IAA) funding. Read the EnAdapt project summary with LocalMotion. Watch an interview with researcher Dr Hali Healy and EnCaf on Community Resilience.