Chairs at the CCR
The Chair for Urban Climate Resilience is researching the question of how to design climate-resilient municipalities (cities, communities, districts). In this context, climate resilience refers to reducing social vulnerability and to strengthening social resilience in dealing with the consequences of climate change.
Climate resilience combines measures to adapt to the consequences of climate change (adaptation) and to combat its causes (mitigation). For municipalities, efforts must focus on those social groups most vulnerable, such as the elderly, chronically ill, and the socio-economically marginalised. Fundamentally, climate resilience entails the search for new forms of coexistence and economic activity that sustain the well-being of all while preserving the conditions of our common livelihood on earth.
At the Chair for Urban Climate Resilience, Prof. Dr. Markus Keck and his team are currently working on the following three core areas:
- Urban environments
- Climate and conflicts
- Urban food systems
The Chair for Urban Climate Resilience is an active part of the Institute of Geography at the University of Augsburg.
The team at the Chair of Resilient Operations researches sustainable and resilient concepts in supply chain management and logistics, as well as other areas of application in operations research. Due to climate-induced changes, permanent adaptation processes are needed in operational and public sectors. The chair is concerned with the question of how (innovative) concepts in the above areas can be implemented and improved in order to ensure the efficient use of available resources and the development of sustainable solutions. Through national and international cooperations with universities and companies we are working on application-orientated research projects using quantitative methods (operations research, data- and simulation-based optimisation). The chair offers an international and interdisciplinary working environment at the Centre for Climate Resilience.
The chair’s main areas of research include the following:
- Sustainable food supply chains
- Innovative supply concepts
- Climate resilient logistics concepts in urban areas
The Chair of Resilient Operations is an active part of the Faculty of Business and Economics at the University of Augsburg.
At the Chair of Public Law and Crisis Resilience, Prof. Dr Sina Fontana and her team are researching climate resilience from the perspective of public law, including its international and comparative dimensions.
- State responsibility in the context of climate change
- The impacts of climate change, especially of climate-induced migration
- Vulnerability to the impacts of climate change
The Chair of Public Law and Crisis Resilience is an active part of the
Faculty of Law.
Social-ecological systems are under immense stress. Renewable resources like forests, fisheries, and agricultural land are a focal point of these processes, both as a direct consequence of climate change and because of the incentive to exploit common property. At the same time, these resources are the livelihood of millions of people, particularly in the global south. It is therefore essential to develop effective and resilient measures to protect natural resources and promote their sustainable use in the face of climate change.
For this purpose,
Florian Diekert’s research group is using economic experiments, statistical analyses, and theoretical models. Four research projects illustrate this approach.
- Do people react differently to the experience of an adverse event depending on whether it was caused by humans or by chance? The answer to this question is of theoretical economic interest, but it also has very practical implications for the design of policy recommendations.
- Do fishermen follow the fish when they move to another location due to climate change? The answer to this question, which is found by combining a large dataset of official catch reports with an oceanographic model, influences the design of adaptive catch regulations for sustainable fisheries management.
- How does the distribution of power within a group affect whether it adheres to existing rules in an economic experiment? The answer to this question indicates the productive and resilient design of teams and organisations.
- How do early warning systems about potential tipping points in ecological systems lead to better management? The answer to this question, which can be answered with the help of abstract models, shows that early warning systems should be used.
At the Chair of Political Science with a Focus on Climate Policy, we research climate resilience from a global perspective. Vulnerability to climate change is analysed as a socially produced precarity that often has its roots in colonialism, which continues to exert its effects on the current day (coloniality). In our discourse analysis research, we examine which social groups and countries are considered “vulnerable” as a result of knowledge and classification processes and which are considered “climate resilient.” We contrast this with the perspectives of those affected by climate change and their understanding of what they need to become “climate resilient.”
The team at the Chair of Political Science with a Focus on Climate Policy works on three main research areas:
- The “future rights” of those affected by the impacts of climate change
- Participatory climate futures
- Digitalisation for the Sustainability Transformation
The Chair of Political Science with a Focus on Climate Policy is a part of the Institute for Social Sciences at the University of Augsburg. Prof. Dr Angela Oels is the deputy managing director of the Institute for Social Sciences.
The Chair of Climate Finance is concerned with questions to do with the topic of sustainable finance, particularly climate finance and corporate finance. We conduct empirical research on (1) the connection between sustainability assessments and the risk return profile of companies, (2) the recognition and management of financial risks generated by the sustainable transformation, and (3) the effectiveness of steering effects from regulatory frameworks in the context of the sustainable transformation.
- Sustainable asset management
- Sustainability evaluations
- Pricing externalities
The research group Climate Resilience and Human-Made Ecosystems studies the impacts of climate change on land use and agriculture and adaptation in the context of global challenges such as food and nutrition security.
The two themes of our research are:
- Regional and global climate change impacts
- Smallholder agriculture and adaptation
The Chair for Climate Resilience and Human-Made Ecosystems is an active part of the Institute of Geography and the Faculty of Applied Computer Science at the University of Augsburg.
In research and teaching, the Chair of Environmental Sociology with a Focus on the Social-Ecological Transformation, Resilient Design, and Climate, is concerned with the reciprocal relationship between society and nature. In particular, social-ecological connections and the implications of climate change for society are examined. Points of reference include global social inequality research, social ecology, political ecology, the social metabolism, critical development theory, as well as post-colonial and feminist approaches. Our regional focus areas are Western Europe, in particular Germany, and South America, in particular Argentina, Brazil, and Chile.
The following areas form the focus of the Chair of Environmental Sociology at the Centre for Climate Resilience:
- Societal participation in the production of knowledge about climate resilience
- Climate adaption and property ownership conflicts
- Climate resilience and decentralised renewable energy infrastructure
The Chair for Environmental Sociology with a Focus on the Social-Ecological Transformation, Resilient Design, and Climate is an active part of the Institute for Social Sciences at the Faculty of Philosophy and Social Sciences at the University of Augsburg.