Assessing the effectiveness of climate adaptation action is the focus of intense debate across scientific and policy arenas. Measurement is essential for effective adaptation management and operation, and indicators and metrics (I&M) have a pivotal role. Surprisingly, there are very few systematic efforts to understand the advances in the provisioning of adaptation I&M. Here we analyse 137 publications and 901 I&M sourced in the scientific literature to measure adaptation to climate change, particularly, in urban areas where governments are increasingly placing efforts to prepare populations and infrastructures. A lack of common terminology, standardisation, and reference guidelines has resulted in a field that is complex to track and understand. Furthermore, such complexity has led to diverse, context-specific and sometimes competing approaches to developing I&M. We argue that current I&M proposals are highly technical, not sufficiently grounded on real needs, and have little potential to collectively support effective urban climate change adaptation.

Sociohydrology is a field that focuses on coupled human water interactions, bringing about new methods and approaches of assessing and evaluating water-related risk and hazards. Memory has been established in this field as an important factor used to quantify and describe the dynamics of societal attitudes towards environmental challenges. Multiple methods and applications of memory have been published in the years following the field’s inception. With a potentially large amount of variation and nuance, it is important to organize and analyze trends and typologies of the different methods and approaches that have been used to evaluate memory within sociohydrological studies. In this literature review, we synthesize papers within the field of sociohydrology with three objectives: (1) to present the different methods and approaches adopted to assess memory in sociohydrological models, (2) identify possible associations between the different methods and approaches in regards to vulnerability and adaptive capacity, and (3), introduce a conceptual framework of methods and approaches for assessing memory in sociohydrological systems. By identifying the current trends, approaches, and applications of memory, this paper may assist in identifying potential research gaps and clarify future research directions in the nexus between memory and sociohydrological components.