From Impact Chains to Decision-Support: Designing CRISP, a Climate Risk Planning Tool for Agri-Food Systems

Kathrin Renner , Massimiliano Pittore, Piero Campalani , Osana Bonilla-Findji, Laura Cramer , Philip Thornton , Alessandro Mosca, Amanda Gosling , Leah Gichuki, Maike Voss , Marc Zebisch 

Systematically integrating climate risk considerations into development planning remains a persistent challenge, particularly where a lot of information needs to be gathered and practical, accessible tools and databases are lacking. Existing climate risk assessment approaches are often complex, resource-intensive, or not designed for specific sectoral contexts. To address this gap, the Climate Risk Planning and Managing Tool (CRISP), a web-based platform designed to structure and present existing climate risk knowledge in a format accessible to practitioners for early-stage project design and decision-making was developed.
CRISP is centred on a modular Impact Chain framework that visually plots how climate Hazards interact with Exposure and Vulnerability factors leading to cascading Impacts mitigated by Adaptation Options. Covering 23 agri-food systems, these expert-validated Impact Chains are embedded in a flexible, transparent and interactive platform designed for usability. Rather than generating new data, CRISP curates and organises dispersed information from scientific and policy sources, guiding users in formulating context-specific adaptation strategies.
The platform provides end users with interactive Impact Chain visualisations, featuring content selection, automated report generation, and embedded instructions, as well as a searchable repository of over 1200 additional resources for climate risk screening. In addition, the platform offers programmatic access to Impact Chain data through a CRISP knowledge graph built leveraging semantic technologies. This graph is structured according to the conceptual design, data structuring methodology, and technical architecture of CRISP illustrating how Impact Chains can serve as a bridge between high-level climate risk concepts and concrete planning needs. By improving access to structured climate risk knowledge, CRISP supports evidence-based and practicable climate adaptation planning in the agricultural sector.