Sustainable adaptation and mitigation in regions and cities: Review of decision-support methods

Pollution mitigation and environmental adaptation are two major strategies to fight for environmental sustainability. Both adaptation and mitigation require enormous resources, investments, and careful planning. Most related studies focus on coordinating adaptation and mitigation policies at global international scales. However, a variety of adaptation and mitigation actions occurs at local and regional levels. The authors survey various decision-support approaches used to justify rational adaptation and mitigation activities focusing on middle level management policies relevant to regions and large cities. Such decisions heavily depend on the economy, geography, and resources of a region. This review describes adaptation and mitigation activities at regional level and discusses classification, advantages, and limitations of related models, modeling methodologies, their logistics and data support. Both quantitative and qualitative methods and models are discussed. The authors emphasize the importance of multi-disciplinary modeling of urban adaptation and mitigation in interaction with other areas of city planning and management.