FRACTAL overview
In the 21st century, addressing climate change necessarily includes building urban resilience by ensuring that people, infrastructure and economic activities are able to withstand and function well under a new set of conditions. Africa's future is dominated by a growing number of city residents. This creates complex climate risks and vulnerabilities, such as water scarcity, health threats, transport disruptions and electricity shortages, that connect cities with distant places they rely on (such as hydro-power plants in other districts or neighbouring countries). Climate change substantially complicates the development policy and planning landscape. These decision-making challenges are aggravated by the lack of scientific climate information that is readily accessible and applicable at the city regional scale.
FRACTAL (initiated in June 2015) is a 4-year project coordinated by the Climate Systems Analysis Group (CSAG) at the University of Cape Town. The overarching aim of the FRACTAL project is to advance scientific knowledge about regional climate responses to human activities (such as burning fossil fuels, changing land surface cover, etc.) and work with decision makers to integrate this scientific knowledge into climate-sensitive decisions at the city-regional scale (particularly decisions relating to water, energy and food with a lifetime of 5 to 40 years).
FRACTAL is designed to work across disciplines within the scientific community and foster strong collaboration between researchers, city government officials and other key decision makers in southern Africa. The FRACTAL project operates in Windhoek, Maputo, Lusaka, Cape Town, Durban, Blantyre, Gaborone and Harare.
During the first year of FRACTAL, important relationships have been established in each of the cities in which the project is working. Research and engagements have also been undertaken to contribute to objectives of FRACTAL. Team members have been challenging themselves to work in a transdisciplinary manner, learning many lessons along the way. On 24 June 2016, team members met to discuss this progress, share lessons learned and provide information about the plans for Year 2.
FRACTAL is funded by the UK’s Department for International Development (DfID) and Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) through the Future Climate for Africa (FCFA) program.
Project Partners
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FRACTAL research consortium members: |
FRACTAL city partners: |
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University of Cape Town: Climate System Analysis Group (CSAG), African Climate & Development Initiative (ACDI) and African Centre for Cities (ACC) |
University of Zambia |
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Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) Oxford |
Lusaka City Council |
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Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre |
University of Namibia |
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ICLEI Local Government for Sustainability |
City of Windhoek |
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Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) |
Eduardo Mondlane University |
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START |
Maputo Municipal Council |
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Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (SMHI) |
City of Cape Town |
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Met. Office Hadley Centre |
University of KwaZulu Natal |
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Aurecon |
eThekwini Municipality |
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National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) |
Chinhoyi University of Technology |
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Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory |
University of Botswana |
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European Commission (EC) Joint Research Centre |
Malawi Polytechnic |
News nuggets
FRACTAL seeks to constantly engage with relevant communities around the world on topics related to cutting-edge thinking on climate science, climate change adaptation and resilient development, particularly in the city-region context. For updates on FRACTAL-related activities and news, see below.
FRACTAL attendance at the Resilience Scoping Dialogue
Two FRACTAL representatives attended the Resilience Scoping Dialogue in stellenbsoch on 4 & 5 August 2016, organised by the Centre for Complex Systems in Transition (CST), in collaboration with Southern African Program on Ecosystem Change and Society (SAPECS) and the Stockholm Resilience Centre. The dialogue was organised around four key objectives: i) foster a deep understanding of resilience and resilience thinking; ii) explore and share how resilience ideas are being used in practice in Southern Africa; iii) scope the possibilities and needs for building a regional partnership on resilience thinking; and iv) develop an agenda for how resilience concepts and practices can be used towards realizing transformative sustainable development pathways in Africa. It is envisaged that the outcome of the two-day workshop will be the establishment of a “Complexity and Resilience Thinking Network” (name to be confirmed), which will serve as a platform for sustained engagement, sharing of resources and create future opportunities for training and supportive workshops to build and develop regional capacity to engage with and operationalize the notion of resilience.
Read a reflection from the colloquium through the CSAG blog here.
Development of the FRACTAL Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) framework
A working group has been developed within FRACTAL to develop a Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) framework. The main objectives of the framework are to enable reflection and learning within the consortium that allows for adaptive management on the pathways towards impact, and assess the overall progress of FRACTAL towards the overarching aims. This framework will be evolutionary as lessons that will be learned will be fed back into the MEL framework, overall project management and implementation of activities. The MEL framework will incorporate aspirations to capture learning at a city, project and broader (e.g. across FCFA consortia) scale. Furthermore, MEL activities will assess the level of transdisciplinarity within FRACTAL.
FRACTAL annual event
The FRACTAL annual event is set to take place on 2 & # November 2016 at Monkey Valley Resort, Noordhoek, Cape Town. Partners from around the world will gather to reflect on the progress of the project and plan for the coming year (2017). Importantly, FRACTAL is organising a joint learning session with Uncertainty reduction in Models For Understanding deveLopment Applications (UMFULA), another consortium within FCFA.
Further resources
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Read some outputs from FRATCAL:
- Building Resilience in African Cities: A Think Piece
- Dialogue for decision-making: unpacking the ‘City Learning Lab’ approach
Read about related FCFA projects:
- FRACTAL project website
- Read "Africa's Climate: Helping decision-makers make sense of climate information"
- Read "Co-producing climate knowledge – Great in theory, but how about practice?"
- Read "Three ways for cities to adapt to climate change"
- Go to the "Climate Risk and Vulnerability: A Handbook for Southern Africa (2nd Edition)"
- Read about the Reconciling Adaptation, Mitigation and Sustainable Development for citiES (RAMSES) project
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