Climate resilience is increasingly an attribute of competitive global cities. Cities that are most responsive to change will continue to prosper. To achieve this, governance structures and decision-making approaches that promote flexible and/or robust adaptation action are required. This thesis introduces a framework for urban adaptation planning that links medium-term risk management with the development and appraisal of long-term adaptation pathways. A long-term plan informed by the appraisal of a range of plausible pathways provides the opportunity to retain the flexibility to respond to future uncertainties, whilst also demonstrating how a city could manage future climate risk. This provides stakeholders with confidence that long-term risk is adequately considered, even if there is not a need to act immediately. To demonstrate how adaptation pathways can support adaptation decision-making in an urban system, the approach and methods developed as part of this thesis are applied in London. Adaptation pathways in response to water scarcity, surface water flood and heat risk were developed, and their appraisal presented as pathways diagrams. These diagrams provide a visual representation of the sequencing of decision points and plausible adaptation actions that may be implemented in the future. Pathways diagrams present climate risk and adaptation information for decision-makers in a salient and actionable manner. The pathways responding to individual risks in London are then brought together to demonstrate how an integrated assessment framework may be used to appraise city-scale adaptation pathways that respond to multiple climate risks. The growing emphasis within adaptation planning on approaches that can react flexibly to change increases the need to better understand the dynamics of climate risk and embed learning about the effectiveness of adaptation actions. To complement the pathways and adaptation decision-making research presented in this thesis, a framework that links adaptation monitoring and evaluation (M&E), risk assessment and decision-making is presented and explored to highlight the potential benefits of, and mechanisms for, adaptation M&E to inform and strengthen iterative risk-based adaptation planning. Demonstrated for the Thames Estuary, where concepts of adaptation planning have been pioneered but the opportunities of linking to monitoring and evaluation have not been extensively explored, we show how the framework can highlight actions and factors that are contributing to improving adaptation outcomes and those that require strengthening. This thesis contributes to the literature on urban climate change adaptation planning under conditions of uncertainty. This thesis also contributes to the evidence base needed to justify long-term planning and realise the benefits of climate risk reduction through the implementation of flexible, long-term integrated urban adaptation plans.

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree Master of Technology: Business Administration in Project Management in the Faculty of Business at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology 2014 / This research seeks to investigate the relationship between the use of Operational Research (OR) tools or techniques or the lack thereof, and the possible impact on decision-making amongst management of the City of Cape Town’s (CoCT) Water and Sanitation Department (WSD) and its impact on service delivery. The CoCT is the municipality, which governs the city of Cape Town, its suburbs and exurbs, and falls under the South African local government sphere. The Department is responsible for ensuring water quality. WSD extracts and analyses water samples to identify bacteria or chemicals that may be present, whilst taking action to resolve problems when necessary. For actions to be taken to resolve problems, decisions are taken, and these decisions determine how problems are resolved to deliver quality services to the public on time and in a cost effective manner. OR is a scientific approach to managerial decision making which eliminates guesswork and emotions from decision making. OR is also described as a discipline that focuses on application of information technology for informed decision-making. The research question this study set out to answer is to what extent do managers at the CoCT’ s WSD use OR. It also seeks to discover the relationship between OR and decision-making, whether any relationship between decision-making at the WSD and service delivery exists, and whether there is any link between politics and decision making in the organisation. This research investigated the efficiency of current decision-making tools that are utilized at the WSD. A questionnaire was developed and used as a tool to acquire inputs to satisfy the research question. The analysed data lead to recommendations for the WSD to support and improve on its existing decision-making tools. This study is based on material that was collected from a wide range of journals, extending from regular OR literature to many application journals, articles and published books.