‘It's not only my Issue, but also a Community Issue’: an Atlas of Design Actions for Commoning Flood Adaptation

Against the urgency to address climate change, a diversified response to floods is crucial for enhancing resilience. This paper argues for adopting a systemic approach to flood adaptation, focusing on actions that span different strategies, risk types, scales, and actors. The Atlas of Flood Adaptation Design Actions is introduced as a tool to facilitate participatory decision-making, and it is applied in a community co-design workshop held in the Maribyrnong River Basin, Australia, which experienced significant flooding in 2022. The workshop brought together local community members, technical experts, and public authorities to develop scenarios for flood adaptation and mitigation. Using the Atlas, participants identified and mapped potential adaptation Actions, fostering discussions on hybrid adaptation solutions that combine both forms of public and private adaptation. The Atlas is framed within the concepts of commoning and infrastructuring; under these lenses, the Atlas is positioned as a dynamic infrastructure that fosters engagement and knowledge exchange. The paper emphasizes the need for decentralized governance and highlights the value of commoning and infrastructuring practices in shaping flood adaptation.