ISBN: 978-0-85825-911-9 Page 374 Climate Change Adaptation: The role of research to support effective investment decisions under uncertainty R.D. McKellar 1 , R.J. Cox 2 and D. Stock 1 1 National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility Griffith University Gold Coast Qld 4222 AUSTRALIA 2 Australian Climate Change Adaptation Research Network for Settlements and Infrastructure School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of New South Wales Sydney NSW 2052 AUSTRALIA Email: r.mckellar@griffith.edu.au The National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility (NCCARF) was established by the Commonwealth Governmentto ensure Australia is in a position to make sound decisions about climate change adaptation investments. NCCARF’s mission is to generate the biophysical, social and economic information needed by decision-makers in government, and in vulnerable sectors and communities, to manage the risks of climate change, by leading the research community in a national interdisciplinary effort. Climate change adaptation is about decisions, investments and actions made by stakeholders; under significant levels of enduring uncertainty. NCCARF addresses the challenge of uncertainty faced by climate change adaptation decision-makers by facilitating and supporting the identification of prioritised research topics, commissioning research to address these topics and communicating the research findings quickly and efficiently to people and organisations who can benefit from them.NCCARF also synthesises existing information, making it more available to decision makers. In addition to research into matters of interest to particular industry or community sectors, NCCARF’s research also is concerned with cross-sectoral issues; uncertainty itself is one of the key topics for NCCARF’s research portfolio. NCCARF’s research model provides a sound approach for generating information that is relevant to key decision-makers in government, business and the community. This paper describes NCCARF’s approach and model in the context of its ‘settlements and infrastructure’ theme, and outlines the research program relevant to this theme. 1. INTRODUCTION Since 1950 Australia has experienced a warming between 0.4 and 0.7°C, with more heatwaves, more rain in the north-west and less rain in the southern and eastern regions and an increase in the intensity of droughts. There is now widespread acceptance that human activities are contributing significantly to climate change and that this change is producing significant physical effects. BoM (2012) reported: • Both natural and human influences have affected climate over the past 100 years. • It is very likely (at least 90 per cent likelihood) that most of the observed global warming since the mid-20 th century is due to increases in greenhouse gases from human activities. • Human activities have also influenced ocean warming, sea-level rise, and temperature extremes. • There is evidence of changes in extreme temperatures globally. • The warming around Australia is consistent with the global pattern and cannot be explained by natural variability alone. IPCC (2012) reported that observed changesin climate extremes have reflected the influence ofhuman induced climate change in addition to naturalclimate variability. IPCC (2012) noted the importance of non-climatic factors such as settlement patterns, urbanization, and changes in socioeconomic conditions when a community’s exposure, vulnerability and adaptive capacity in managing extreme events and disasters in addressed. Coumou and Rahmstorf (2012) argue that “for some types of