Chapter 7: Indicators and monitoring

A popular paradigm states: What cannot be measured cannot be managed. The programmatic and practical objectives of the city and members of the New York City Climate Change Adaptation Task Force are to develop Flexible Adaptation Pathways for the region’s critical infrastructure. These objectives will require ongoing and consistent monitoring of a set of climate change indicators. Monitoring of key indicators can help to initiate course corrections in adaptation policies and/or changes in timing of their implementation. The relevant indicators are related to changes in the climate, climate science, climate impacts, and adaptation activities. Thus, these indicators need to be devised and tracked over time to provide targeted quantitative measures of climate change impacts, and adaptation in order to provide useful information to decision makers in regard to timing and extent of adaptation actions.