The focus of the Global Programme of Research on Climate Change Vulnerability, Impacts, and Adaptation (PROVIA) Research Priorities are on vulnerability, impacts, and adaptation (VIA), rather than climate science per se, and the VIA topics depend to a varying extent on the state of climate knowledge.
Since there remains significant uncertainty about how some key climate drivers may change (e.g., the future evolution of tropical cyclones and stability of polar land and sea ice), a common theme is the importance of building capacity for adaptation, resilience, and risk management under uncertainty in both developing and developed countries.
To develop the Research Priorities, input was gathered from expert and policymaker communities through separate solicitation pathways. The expert prioritization of research topics began with a gap analysis of existing literature. The gap analysis produced an initial list of 172 priority topics for VIA research based on a broad range of sources including recent intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(IPCC) Working Group II Reports, peer-reviewed articles, books, reports, and white papers, as well as conference, workshop and meeting proceedings and presentations.