Link to external tool
Use in decision framework
The Impact Chain Editor Plus (ICE+) is an interactive web application for designing Impact Chain Diagrams (ICDs) related to the impacts of climate change. An Impact Chain describes a cause-effect relationship among elements that contribute to the consequences of a given combination of a climate hazard and an exposed object. Impact Chain diagrams make the relationships between these elements visible. Impact Chains are a good foundation for a qualitative Vulnerability Assessment, characterising the potential climate change risk imposed on the area under study. A better understanding of this risk and cause-effect relationships allows to identify entry-points for adaptation measures and areas where actions are needed first. The ICE+ facilitates the creation of a standardised graphical representation of Impact Chains.
The guideline should be understandable for a variety of stakeholders, but the persons addressed by this tool at first hand are the initiator and the coordinator or manager of a city’s overall risk-based Vulnerability Assessment project or the person responsible for the climate change adaptation planning.
The development of Impact Chain Diagrams takes place usually in joint workshops with experts and stakeholders. These will provide the input required for creating Impact Chains. This is part of the actions described in IVAVIA Module 2. Typically, the workshop result is an Impact Chain or a collection of Impact Chains for certain hazard/exposure combinations, documented in paper or as photos of pinboards. The elements of the Impact Chain can be typed in the ICE+.
It does assume, however, that the user has a basic knowledge in climate change risk assessment (e.g., provided by the IPPC AR5 reports) and is familiar with the development of Impact Chains. A guideline for developing Impact Chains is provided by IVAVIA, a systemic methodology for conducting a risk-based Vulnerability Analysis.
Based on a paper or photo documentation of an Impact Chain as created in a stakeholder workshop, the user of ICE+ can create standardised graphical elements and simply type in the labels, like names of hazards or names of indicators. ICE+ automatically creates the layout of the graphical elements and draws connections where they are unambiguous. In addition, users can create some connections also manually. ICE+ also supports automatic fitting of the diagram in its display window. The effort required for creating Impact Chain Diagrams with ICE+ is much less than using general-purpose graphics tools.
ICE+ is localised in seven languages, such that many users can work in their mother tongues. The tool is implemented as a web application running in a browser. The browser Chrome offers best compatibility.
The output of the tool are Impact Chain Diagrams. The user can save the work in a native format (a .json file) and resume working on the Impact Chain Diagram later. The saved file can be downloaded and stored in the RESIN project space. The final version of ICE+ will also allow exporting a graphical format. For the time being, screenshots can be used as an alternative.
The main elements to describe cause-effect relationships are based on the risk components identified in IPPC AR5 reports. The elaboration of these elements is the outcome of a collective interpretation of impact chains by the parties involved in their development.
ICE+ is a result of the EU H2020 project RESIN and was developed by Fraunhofer IAIS in Sankt Augustin.
Conditions for use