FRACTAL’s long-term goal is to increase the resilience of southern African cities by ensuring that decision-making processes are strengthened and include climate knowledge. Our approach is transdisciplinary, iterative and cyclical. This style of learning is key to developing useful outcomes that have a measurable impact during and beyond the project’s lifetime.
As a result, FRACTAL is made up of multiple types of ongoing activities including 1) primary research through capacity development; 2) local city engagements known as Learning Labs; 3) regional networking, 4) data collection and production and 5) policy/communication activities.
The project is made up of three interconnected work clusters:
WORK PACKAGE 1: Unpacks the city specific contexts, asking what the urban climate change risks and impacts are, how resilient the cities are and what decisions are being taken for adaptation and development.
WORK PACKAGE 2: Aims to understand the decision-making space in the FRACTAL cities and looks for opportunities to better incorporate climate information into local decision-making contexts.
WORK PACKAGE 3: Advances understanding of physical climate processes that govern the regional system (observed and simulated). From this it develops robust and scale relevant climate information.