In recent years, billions of dollars have been pledged worldwide for climate adaptation: taking action to prepare for and adjust to the current and projected impacts of climate change. But key questions remain on where and how that funding should be spent. As a pioneer in tools that support the decision-making of governments, NGOs, and the private sector, the Notre Dame Global Adaptation Initiative (ND-GAIN) has provided critical information on vulnerability and readiness to inform analysis, investment, and policy for more than a decade.
Launched in 2011 by the Global Adaptation Institute in Washington, D.C., the Global Adaptation Index (GAIN) moved to the Environmental Change Initiative at the University of Notre Dame two years later. Revamped as ND-GAIN’s Country Index, the tool has been used across the highest levels of global policy and international finance, becoming a standard reference tool for organizations looking to invest their resources for the greatest impact.
Today, ND-GAIN’s free and open-source tools include not only the Country Index, but also city-focused tools, case-based information, and independent studies. With more than 2.5 million views, hundreds of thousands of downloads, and thousands of citations, ND-GAIN users span diverse sectors within national and international organizations.
ND-GAIN is now poised to usher in a new era of advanced decision-support, which will deliver dynamically updated multiscalar data and sector weighting estimates built on machine learning models. This advancement would include the application of measurement techniques from ND-GAIN’s latest pilot, the Global Urban Climate Assessment (GUCA), using remotely sensed data and analysis to bring ND-GAIN to the subnational scale.
“Here at Notre Dame, we believe that 'caring for our common home' requires more than just good intentions; it requires the best possible tools to protect the most vulnerable,” said Danielle Wood, director of ND-GAIN and associate professor of the practice at the Environmental Change Initiative. “Ushering in a new era of ND-GAIN will ensure that our commitment to protecting communities is backed by the kind of dynamic, actionable insights that turn vulnerability and adaptation information into policy, action, and community resilience."
Country Index as a revolutionary tool, for 15 years and counting
ND-GAIN’s flagship tool, the Country Index, was specifically designed to help decision-makers identify both where adaptation projects were most needed and most likely to succeed. Using more than two decades of data across 45 indicators, it annually ranks 185 countries based upon their climate vulnerability and their readiness to successfully adapt to climate-related stressors.
Vulnerability is evaluated across six life-supporting sectors: food, water, health, ecosystem services, human habitat, and infrastructure. Readiness is measured through economic, governance, and social indicators. Together, these scores help decision-makers identify not only where the greatest risks lie but also where there are opportunities for strengthening adaptation capacity.
“The ND-GAIN Country Index was the first and is still one of the only global indices to include environmental and socio-economic indicators to capture the many dimensions of climate vulnerability,” Wood explained. “As such, it is designed to capture the relationship between the environment and human flourishing.”
The reach of the Country Index is extensive, informing the strategies of influential organizations across the globe. ND-GAIN metrics buttress widely-used knowledge dashboards maintained by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), two specialized agencies of the United Nations (UN) with a focus on raising the global standard of living.
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The IMF applies Country Index data as key indicators for macroeconomic risk assessment, evaluating how climate change affects national budgets, debt sustainability, and economic growth.
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The World Bank integrates ND-GAIN's vulnerability and readiness scores into its Climate Risk Country Profiles for the Climate Change Knowledge Portal, a central hub for climate data used by global development practitioners. By layering this data alongside projected physical climate changes, policymakers can assess how shifts will intersect with a nation's existing social and economic infrastructure.
Additional UN programs consult ND-GAIN data to inform global adaptation strategies, moving beyond disaster response and toward proactive resilience-building.
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The UN Development Programme (UNDP) integrates the Country Index’s climate vulnerability rankings into country profiles related to its “Climate Promise” initiative, the world’s largest offer of support to countries on their national climate pledges.
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Decision-making at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is informed by policy briefings and National Adaptation Plans that cite Country Index rankings. The UNFCCC administers the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD), which offers targeted support to the world’s most vulnerable developing nations.
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ND-GAIN served as an official technical partner for The Business Case for Responsible Corporate Adaptation, a report which was jointly spearheaded by the UN Global Compact, UN Environment Programme, and the UNFCCC secretariat.
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The United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) cross-references ND-GAIN’s country rankings to highlight humanitarian needs in their Humanitarian Action for Children reports.
Several non-governmental organizations also turn to the Country Index to inform their humanitarian efforts. To manage a vast portfolio spanning nearly 100 countries, Catholic Relief Services (CRS) has consulted the Index’s vulnerability and readiness scores to categorize and prioritize their efforts. With access to high-level data, local CRS chapters are empowered to advocate for their communities in matters of food and water security as well as health risks.
As an organization focused on the world’s most vulnerable populations in more than 70 countries, Oxfam refers to ND-GAIN data in identifying vulnerable regions and advocating for the fair distribution of climate adaptation finance from organizations like the UN.
"What strikes me isn't just how many organizations consult ND-GAIN data, but how it is woven into their work,” Wood reflected. “Whether it is UNDP embedding our metrics into national climate profiles or Oxfam utilizing our insights to push for equitable climate finance, these applications underscore the vital role our research plays in the global response to climate change."
Zooming in to the city level
As the Country Index matured, it became clear that in order to measure how climate risk varies within a country, national-level data needed to be supplemented by local information. In 2015, with funding from the Kresge Foundation, ND-GAIN built a new tool to help address the need for city-level analysis — the U.S. Urban Adaptation Assessment (UAA).
Researchers designed the UAA to measure the climate risks and social vulnerabilities, including flooding, extreme heat, extreme cold, drought, and sea-level rise, at the city and subcity level, collated within a visual platform. Covering 278 urban areas across the United States and Puerto Rico, the UAA allows users to explore the connection between vulnerabilities to climate disasters, adaptive capacities, and how these are distributed within a city. As the first urban decision-support in this space, the UAA has served as a framework modeled by others in the U.S. and beyond.
Building on this work, ND-GAIN’s most recent pilot tool extends city-level analysis to urban areas around the world. The Global Urban Climate Assessment (GUCA) assesses climate vulnerability and resilience using both remote sensing and secondary data, providing comparable metrics across multiple global cities.
Within the GUCA framework, vulnerability is evaluated through physical hazards like flooding, extreme heat, and landslides, and the city's sensitivity to those hazards, including potential vulnerability from specific populations—such as children, seniors, migrants, or low-income residents—as well as characteristics of the urban area itself, such as the rate of urban expansion. Resilience, on the other hand, is measured through a city's ability to withstand shocks and adapt over time. Key factors include disaster planning, critical infrastructure, strong governance, and economic stability — recognizing that well-prepared cities can respond more effectively to climate-related challenges.
ND-GAIN is currently looking to scale the GUCA measurement techniques around the globe, enabling a better understanding of hotspots for climate risk worldwide.
“As more people migrate to urban environments, the need to identify and target funding for climate adaptation in the most impacted cities is becoming an even more widespread and urgent concern,” Wood said. “Based on feedback gathered from our worldwide partners, our team at Notre Dame is eager for the pilot to evolve into a tool with greater reach and application.”
In addition to building new tools and maintaining existing analysis, ND-GAIN also conducts bespoke analyses for external partners and produces adaptation briefs that showcase successful adaptation interventions.
What’s coming next
ND-GAIN is looking to enter a new phase: a future of decision-support informed by insights from both GUCA and the Country Index and enabled by machine learning and automation advancements. By moving toward dynamic updates, multiscalar estimates, integration of social information, and outcome-anchored modeling on critical issues like migration pressure, economic stability, and food security, ND-GAIN will continue to advance understandings of adaptation globally.
In the short term, the Country Index will receive an update this summer, incorporating the new Business Ready data from the World Bank, an updated quantitative assessment of the global business environment.
“While looking toward the future, ND-GAIN remains committed to its role as a steward of open-access data to ensure that those serving the world’s most vulnerable communities have the information they need,” Wood said. “By integrating remotely sensed data and advanced modeling, we can give global leaders the clarity to invest where it will have the greatest impact. It’s a natural extension of Notre Dame’s mission to be a powerful means for doing good in the world: using world-class innovation to foster a more resilient, just, and sustainable future.”
To learn more about ND-GAIN’s work and how to get involved, please visit the ND-GAIN website, or contact the ND-GAIN team by emailing ndgain@nd.edu.
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