# Introduction Climate change is intensifying natural hazards and their impacts across European regions, increasing pressures from river and pluvial flooding, drought and water scarcity, heat stress, wildfires and related cascading effects such as erosion, slope instability and water-quality degradation. In this context, regional and local actors increasingly need operational methods—not only strategic narratives—to assess vulnerabilities, prioritise actions and support the implementation of adaptation measures. The **ARCADIA Assessment Toolkit** is a technical, practice-oriented guide designed to help public authorities and practitioners integrate **Nature-based Solutions (NbS)** and **Blue–Green Infrastructure (BGI)** into climate adaptation planning and investment. It consolidates a harmonised set of **Climate Risk Assessment (CRA) workflows** co-designed with Innovation Labs and technically verified with regional counterparts, providing stepwise procedures to move from problem framing and data requirements to indicator production and scenario-based evaluation. More information on these Innovation Labs can be found on the [ARCADIA project website](https://www.arcadia-adaptation.eu/index.php/the-project/co-innovation-labs/). The methodological backbone follows a **Hazard–Exposure–Vulnerability** logic and supports a consistent comparison between **baseline** and **NbS** scenarios. Rather than treating NbS as generic “good practices”, the toolkit shows how interventions can be represented as explicit changes in the system (e.g., land cover, retention/infiltration features, management practices) and how those changes propagate through the workflow to measurable outputs and indicators. While individual tutorials may showcase region-specific toolchains, the core emphasis is on the workflow structure—inputs, processing steps, assumptions, data checks, and scenario-comparison rules—so the approach remains transferable. The Assessment Toolkit is conceived as a **living resource**. It is organised to guide users from general methodological pages (risk logic, profiles, indicators and data guidance) to region-specific tutorials that document prerequisites, required datasets, expected outputs and known limitations. The tool kit is also designed to progressively connect to shared data and metadata services, enabling users to combine high-resolution local datasets with interoperable, open European sources where appropriate, and to strengthen reproducibility as common data spaces evolve. This resource primarily benefits **regions and local authorities** that use CRA outputs to support adaptation planning, prioritisation and NbS/BGI investment decisions. The direct users are expected to be technical practitioners (public technical staff, agencies, consultants, research partners) with competence in GIS/data preparation and the ability to execute the relevant analysis chain; tutorial pages provide the most specific guidance on intended users, prerequisites and typical usage. --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://arcadia-15.gitbook.io/cra_toolbox_2026/ctb-introduction-introduction.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.