California’s growing exposure to climate hazards requires robust methods for characterizing adaptive capacity that can support transparent, evidence-based planning and decisions. In collaboration with Farallon Strategies, Eagle Rock Analytics developed the Adaptive Capacity Index (ACI): a scalable framework for California to provide a standardized assessment of community adaptive capacity for climate resilience decision support. Built upon the California Climate Risk and Adaptation Index (Cal-CRAI), the ACI integrates 119 quantitative indicators spanning governance, the built environment, the natural environment, and socioeconomic domains to characterize conditions that influence a community’s ability to prepare for, respond to, and recover from climate impacts.

The Adaptive Capacity Index (ACI) provides a scientifically vetted, transparent framework for evaluating community adaptive capacity across California. A standardized baseline enables consistent comparisons while supporting defensible planning and assessment. The ACI allows users to tailor climate hazard analyses (e.g., extreme heat, wildfire) to specific planning objectives without changing the underlying socioeconomic methodology. This balances customization with methodological rigor and comparability.

This work is in partnership with Farallon Strategies.