Increasing attention is being paid to limits of adaptation to climate change in cities. There is a gap regarding the role of governance in the emergence of these limits. Managed retreat in cities is the main object of study—an illustration of a point beyond which adaptation is no longer possible. Most managed retreat programs often stagnate due to political and legal tensions. GOAL first identifies rules of behavior and decision-making procedures that may limit actors in society. This is achieved by analyzing policy instruments through computational methods. The results from topic modeling are used to develop typologies of rules of behavior in managed retreat, which are then incorporated into agent-based modeling. Second, the governance system limits are examined in qualitative comparative analysis of a global open-access database of managed retreat cases. Emerging framework is tested in a case study in Australia. After extensive validation, findings are communicated to policymakers.

2025

2029