
About the Project
The Provincial Climate Risk Diagnostics (PCRD) Project seeks to develop a comprehensive, robust, and accessible data repository and analytics application for provincial local government units, to aid in risk-informed planning, decision-making, and investment programming. PCRD supports the continued work of the national government’s Risk Resiliency Program (RRP), led by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR). UN-Habitat in partnership with the DENR and funded by the World Bank under the “Accelerating Climate Investment in the Philippines” component of the RRP, developed the PCRD Tool and piloted its use in two target provinces.
The PCRD Tool can be used to support provincial planning, with the ability to support cross-province and, where useful, LGU-level planning and decision-making. It can likewise link and support climate risk and resilience tracking at the national level.
Project Outputs
Project Outputs
The methodology builds on the existing tools used by local government unit in assessing and planning for climate change resilience building, more specifically the Climate and Disaster Risk Assessment (CDRA). The methodology also builds on the earlier work by The World Bank on developing a provincial climate vulnerability diagnostics. The key value addition of PCRD was the risk dimension and the inclusion of information on likelihood of occurrence of the hazards such as climate change scenarios.
The PCRD Tool is an Excel-based, GIS-compatible tool that makes use of climate risk determinants following the IPCC AR5 and AR6 frameworks, and covers Hazards, Exposure, Vulnerability, and Severity of Consequence of impacts. The tool delivers Risk analytics on the scale of the province (Basic) or even at the smaller scale (Basic+), depending on the data entered in the Tool. Its interactive user interface allows users to navigate data layers to examine the different components of climate risks, risks under different climate scenarios, and to engage in scenario analysis with a limited set of built-in adaptation and resilience interventions.
The learnings from the two provinces, along with multistakeholder feedback and expert inputs, have been distilled into a Short Note that provides recommendations on how the PCRD Tool can be used and integrated into the local planning process, particularly for resilience-building. The recommendations provided can be used in a policy brief to the GOP on climate resilient investments.
Results of application of the Tool in the provinces of Southern Leyte and Bukidnon were developed as provincial risk profiles. The Risk Profiles contain all the diagnosis results, including hazards, exposure, vulnerability, and risk. The documents demonstrate the usability of PCRD, and its effectiveness in translating results into a cohesive report that can serve as basis for decision-making, prioritization, and resource allocation.
Planning for Resilience
(note: this is a placeholder section for the landscape/challenge when on data and analytics for local climate action planning and investment)
54% of the Philippines’ total population is living in urban areas as of 2020 (Philippines Statistics Authority, 2022).
In the Asia Pacific region, around 742 million urban dwellers are facing high or extreme multiple hazards; this number could reach nearly 1 billion by 2030. Climate change will intensify the urban heat island effect.
– UN-Habitat and UN ESCAP, 2018 (Climate Change and National Urban Policies In Asia And The Pacific)
The Philippines ranks 4th among countries most affected by extreme weather events from 2000 to 2019. – Global Climate Risk Index, 2021
The PCRD Tool promotes the use of already required planning data and process for LGUs, particularly Provincial Governments, but provides a different frame of how the data shall be organized, processed, and analyzed in view of the risk assessment methodology.
Beyond the PCRD Project
Aside from the four project outputs, the PCRD also provided the following support to national and local governments.
Using the PCRD Tool and provincial risk profiles as an input for developing investment portfolios for risk and resilience (IPRRs). IPRR, with the aid of the PCRD Tool, intends to support the GoP specifically on formulating appropriate climate actions through climate-responsive investments for the GoP commitments at COP26.
Capacity-building component intended to develop capacities of selected DENR technical personnel on the use of the PCRD Tool and its applications, including the IPRR formulation process. This involved the finetuning of the capacity building training design, in preparation for the DENR-initiated national roll-out of the PCRD Tool in DENR’s regional and provincial offices.
Translated the PCRD Tool into the City/Municipal level Climate and Disaster Risk Assessment (CDRA) to ensure methodological and analytical consistency and alignment.
Support extended to the Province of Southern Leyte, involving the use of the Tool and Risk Profile in the proposal preparation and eventual implementation of a project under the global Adaptation Fund.


