A climate risk assessment brings together climate science and an understanding of the social, economic, and environmental settings that shape vulnerability and response.

Climate projections and scenarios explore how hazards such as sea‑level rise, extreme sea levels, storms, or temperature extremes may change over time. Importantly, the assessment also explore how these changes affect assets, systems, and communities, the consequences of disruption, and the capacity to anticipate, respond, and adapt.

By taking this broad approach, you can avoid the temptation to focus on climate data when starting your risk assessment. Instead, you can begin by clarifying what matters most and where vulnerability already exists. Then you can draw on climate information that directly informs decisions about priority risks and responses.

Climate change risk assessments need to be informed by robust data and information that align with the purpose and scale of the assessment. For high-level assessments it is often sufficient to draw on existing maps and qualitative information, whereas local assessments are likely to require more detailed data to underpin decision-making.

Climate risk assessment integrates climate data with contextual (non‑climate) data, selected to suit the decision context and level of risk.

Climate data describes how relevant hazards may change under different future scenarios and is typically used to outline plausible ranges of future conditions.

Contextual data translates these hazards into real‑world impacts, providing information on asset condition and design limits, service dependencies, social vulnerability, economic exposure, ecological thresholds, and past events.

Looking at past coastal hazard events is a practical starting point. Previous flooding, erosion, storm, or inundation or other extreme events can help you identify which hazards matter most in your area and where impacts have already occurred.

This helps narrow the focus to the most relevant climate drivers and reveals how systems perform under stress, including existing vulnerabilities, service disruptions, and critical thresholds.

Climate scenarios can then be used to test how these known risks might change in the future, such as whether they intensify, become more frequent, expand to new areas, or emerge beyond historical experience. They also help to consider the role of adaptation and response capacity.

Many coastal communities are already experiencing exposure to a range of climate‑related hazards, with some locations facing particularly high and potentially severe impacts. To plan and prioritise effective adaptation responses, practitioners need access to robust, fit‑for‑purpose data that clearly identifies key hazards and the areas most at risk.

Data typically required by local councils and other decision‑makers to assess coastal climate change risk includes:

• regional climate change projections
• projected sea level rise and mapping of historic and future areas at risk of coastal inundation
• flood- or fire-prone areas in the local government area or surrounding areas
• floodplain risks from intense rainfall events
• areas exposed to cyclones or east coast lows
• mapping of areas susceptible to erosion and recession.

Key sources of data are described in Table 1.

Understanding how climate‑driven coastal hazards translate into risks for communities, assets and the natural environment requires access to a broad and integrated evidence base. In practice, local councils need a combination of climate, physical, environmental and socio‑economic data to support a defensible climate change risk assessment.

Data types commonly required include:

• property and boundary information in coastal areas exposed to hazard
• type, number and location of major assets and infrastructure
• socio-economic profile of the population in the coastal areas exposed to hazard
• key businesses and facilities operating in the coastal area
• ecosystems, refuges, fauna and flora present, particularly endangered species, ecological communities and assemblages.

Most of this information is likely to be accessible from local or state sources. However, there are a number of datasets managed at the national level which could be useful in a risk and vulnerability assessment. Table 3 provides a summary of relevant national datasets.

Contextual data plays a critical role in understanding the significance of climate impacts.

Data types commonly required include:

• property and boundary information in coastal areas exposed to hazard
• type, number and location of major assets and infrastructure
• socio-economic profile of the population in the coastal areas exposed to hazard
• key businesses and facilities operating in the coastal area
• ecosystems, refuges, fauna and flora present, particularly endangered species, ecological communities and assemblages.

Your state and local government is likely to hold many sources of data that may be relevant to your assessment.

However, there are national datasets suggested in the following tables that can support practitioners to determine where exposure exists, which thresholds may be exceeded, who or what is most affected, and how systems respond under stress.

Depending on your context, other suggestions from the ABS include:

• Index of Relative Social Disadvantage (IRSD, a subset of SEIFA)
  • focuses specifically on disadvantage (low income, unemployment, low education), often preferred for climate vulnerability mapping.
• Aged population and disability data
  • considered groups within the Australian population that are more vulnerable to heatwaves, flooding and evacuation constraints.
• Housing stress and tenure (ABS and AURIN_
  • Renters and households in housing stress often have lower capacity to adapt or recover from climate impacts.
• Health and wellbeing indicators (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare)
  • Baseline health status affects heat stress risk, disaster mortality and recovery capacity.
• Accessibility and remoteness (ARIA - ABS / Infrastructure Australia)
  • Remoteness influences access to emergency services, healthcare and disaster recovery assistance.

For best practice climate risk assessment, exposure datasets should be used in alignment with hazard and vulnerability data, with clear documentation of scale, assumptions and limitations, particularly where national datasets are applied to local planning decisions.

Key ecological and environmental datasets required to support climate risk assessment, focus on identifying sensitive ecosystems, biodiversity values and ecological thresholds that may be affected by climate change.

Table 5 combines nationally consistent scientific datasets with Indigenous ecological datasets, recognising Indigenous Country, Indigenous Protected Areas and ranger‑managed lands as critical sources of ecological knowledge, stewardship and adaptive capacity. Together, these datasets support place‑based, culturally informed assessments that recognise both environmental values and Indigenous connections to Country in climate risk and adaptation planning.