Synthesis Report
URBAN CLIMATE RESILIENCE
The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme [FP7/2007-2013] under grant agreement n° 282679.
This report forms project deliverable 2.1
URBAN-NEXUS Synthesis Report: Urban Climate Resilience
Contents
1. ABOUT THIS REPORT ...... 2
1.1 Audience ...... 2
1.2 Purpose of the report ...... 2
1.3 Report preparation ...... 2
1.4 Concurrent reports and initiatives ...... 3
1.5 Use of terms ...... 3
1.6 Questions for the dialogue café...... 3
1.7 Acknowledgements ...... 3
2. SUMMARY ...... 4
3. KEY FINDINGS ...... 6
4. AN OVERVIEW OF URBAN CLIMATE VULNERABILITY AND RESILIENCE ...... 8
4.1 The challenge of climate change for cities ...... 8
4.2 The concept of vulnerability ...... 9
4.3 Urban vulnerability to climate change...... 10
4.4 Resilience ...... 13
4.5 Critical evidence gaps for decision-makers ...... 14
5. EVIDENCE FROM RESEARCH AND PRACTICE ...... 16
5.1 Risk and uncertainty ...... 16
5.2 Governance ...... 21
5.3 People ...... 26
5.4 Place ...... 31
6. ABOUT URBAN-NEXUS ...... 38
6.1 The project consortium ...... 38
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1. About this report
1.1 Audience This is the first in a series of synthesis reports produced by URBAN-NEXUS. These Reports are intended mainly for municipalities, policy-makers and businesses engaged in urban issues. They may also be of interest to organisations, institutions and networks involved in decision-making and developing partnerships to tackle problems encountered in urban sustainable development and management. This includes public sector agencies, utilities, the private sector, civil society organisations and community groups.
1.2 Purpose of the report The synthesis reports will help inform debate and discussion as part of an ongoing “structured dialogue” across a network of urban researchers, professionals and actors on developing integrated approaches to the challenges and opportunities of sustainable urban development. The main forum for supporting a rich exchange and learning environment will be a series of “dialogue cafés” held in different European cities during the course of the project. These will encourage participants to identify and prioritise common issues and develop partnerships to help promote and deliver innovative, effective and integrated responses to improving urban sustainability.
Each Synthesis Report will address a different theme. The theme for this report is Urban Climate Resilience. It is intended to stimulate discussions at the first URBAN-NEXUS dialogue café that will be held 29th-30th May 2012 in Glasgow. The discussions will form a follow-up report due late summer, 2012, which will feed into subsequent thematic synthesis reports on health, land-use, urban governance, and data and monitoring. This will engender an evolving dialogue and foster integrated approaches to urban sustainability that become intrinsic to decision-making processes and partnership activity.
1.3 Report preparation Climate change was identified as a priority research area as part of the work undertaken by the EU predecessor research project, URBAN-NET, in developing a strategic research framework for sustainable urban development. The URBAN-NET study was based on partners’ collective knowledge and evidence pooled from across Europe as part of a comparative assessment of national and regional research programmes. The current report considers research, mainly European, undertaken in the four years since the URBAN-NET Framework was published. It also considers evidence from cities, towns and partnerships of practical interventions and strategies adopted to create resilience to climate change. This information was collected from the URBAN-NEXUS consortium, the strategic partners and a wider network of contacts. Examples of case studies and research are presented throughout the report to illustrate relevant sections. A complete list and summary details of all of the information provided is available as an annex to this report.
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1.4 Concurrent reports and initiatives The following European initiatives and projects concerning urban climate change adaptation emerged during the preparation of this report:
• the European Environment Agency’s report on “Urban adaptation to climate change in Europe”1; • an EC-funded DG CLIMA project on “Adaptation Strategies for European Cities”2; and • the EEA initiative, European Climate Adaptation Platform3 (CLIMATE-ADAPT), which will eventually integrate urban content from the preceding project.
With the above in mind, this report focuses more specifically on European research rather than policy and implementation. Case study material collected beforehand is still included.
1.5 Use of terms For ease of reading, the terms “urban” and “city” are used interchangeably throughout this document and no specific distinction is drawn between either term with regard to distinct morphologies or administrative boundaries.
1.6 Questions for the dialogue café In preparation for the URBAN-NEXUS Dialogue Café on ‘Urban Climate Resilience: Partnership Approaches’, being held 29th and 30th May 2012 in Glasgow, we would like delegates to consider the following questions.
• With which of the key messages do you agree/disagree? • Does the report cover the theme appropriately? What is missing and what should be covered in more depth? • What do you find most encouraging or interesting in the report? • What do you find most challenging in the report?
1.7 Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank everyone who contributed case study material.
June Graham (Programme Coordinator) & Sacha Rawlence (Researcher)
Sniffer, May 2012 (on behalf of URBAN-NEXUS)
1 Published 14th May 2012 http://www.eea.europa.eu/publications/urban-adaptation-to-climate-change 2 http://eucities-adapt.eu. 3 http://climate-adapt.eea.europa.eu/
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2. Summary
We open with some key findings based on our overall personal impression of the evidence available from recent research and practice. Next, we provide an overview of urban resilience to climate change which outlines the critical role for cities in responding to climate change, both in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and in adapting to climate change impacts. We discuss the concepts of climate ‘vulnerability’ and ‘resilience’ in an urban context. This section on resilience also identifies areas and knowledge gaps that are discussed in later sections of the report.
The next section presents preliminary surveys of research and practice on the four key topics of
• Risk & Uncertainty; • Governance; • People; and • Place.
For each topic we suggest areas for more detailed consideration in future URBAN-NEXUS activities on the themes concerning health, land-use, integrated urban management and data & monitoring.
Risk & Uncertainty This first topic concerns the problems of assessing climate risks at a city level. Modelling climate change and predicting future trends at different spatial and temporal scales introduces a range of uncertainties, including feedback loops and potential tipping points in the natural environment and environmental processes and unknown impacts from socio-economic drivers which will influence future emission trajectories. These uncertainties are compounded by a range of data and monitoring issues associated with e.g. local data collection, verification, interpretation, accessibility etc. These issues will be considered in more detail as part of the URBAN-NEXUS activities and dialogue on “Data and Monitoring”.
Governance Understanding how uncertainty influences policy and decision-making and how communications can help effect positive behaviour change is an important element of our second topic on Governance. As a cross-cutting issue, climate change highlights the need for new approaches to governance in order to overcome the lack of coordination and integration, both vertically within traditional governmental hierarchies and also horizontally across the public, private and third sector. This also requires greater participation and genuine involvement by the different sectors, citizens, communities and individuals who are at risk and/or contribute to the risks.
Greater intergovernmental cooperation will also be required to address issues that need trans- boundary approaches, as the climate and impacted ecosystem services do not respect administrative boundaries. Current fragmentation of research, policy and practice between mitigation and adaptation also needs to be addressed. In order for governance to achieve the above changes and effect real progress.We conclude that the integration of social sciences and associated skills are vital in influencing key decision-making processes and behaviours. These governance issues will inform the future work of URBAN-NEXUS on integrated approaches to urban management.
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People Governance may be thought of as being fundamentally about people and how people live and carry on their social, cultural, personal and economic activities in a place. People and place are of course inextricably linked and are the final two topics to be considered. A changing climate will have direct effects on people’s health and quality of life and will also bring indirect risks to broader social and economic activities, both as a result of impacts on the local urban fabric, infrastructure and services and also as climate impacts influence markets and ecosystem services further afield.
People’s vulnerability and their ability to respond to climate change impacts are not determined solely by geographical location or physical attributes. They are significantly influenced by a range of social factors such as mobility, perceptions and agency to act. Economic factors also play a substantive role in determining the vulnerability and adaptive capacity of households and communities. The third section outlines some of the research gaps regarding the impacts on people and it will inform development of the URBAN-NEXUS “Health and Quality of Life” theme.
Place How we develop and redevelop land, build and modify infrastructure, design, (re)configure the urban fabric plays host to how the changing climate is impacting and will impact urban lives. The impacts of climate change on place, discussed in the fourth and final section, include: flooding, as a result of rising sea-levels, river flooding (fluvial) or surface water flooding from the urban drainage network as a result of heavy rainfall (pluvial), landslides, drought, subsidence and the urban heat island effect. All of these have implications for the social, cultural and economic activities that take place in cities. The design and use of urban space and infrastructure is a fundamental driver in how resilient our cities are to climate change. Urban greenspace offers a relatively low-cost solution to managing a range of impacts such as flooding, drought, urban heat island effect etc., while bringing wider health and quality of life benefits and favouring economic investment. Greater understanding of the multiple benefits offered by greenspace and how to overcome barriers to greenspace provision will be given more consideration in the URBAN-NEXUS theme of “Competing for Land”.
The report closes with some questions intended to stimulate discussions during the Dialogue Café on Urban Climate Resilience: Partnership Approaches, being held 29th and 30th May 2012 in Glasgow.
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3. Key findings
KF1: There is a wealth of scientific and business research on climate change but a relative dearth of coordinated studies that adopt an integrated, i.e. multi-sector and multi-governance, urban perspective. This is despite cities and urban regions increasingly being seen as the ”prime movers” in terms of our ability to curb and conquer climate change. An integrated perspective is more common at a regional or national scale while urban relevant research is often sector specific, such as transport or building studies. Risk-assessments are often spatially defined on national, regional or environmental scales e.g. a river basin.
KF2: The majority of urban climate change research, policy and practice appears to be concerned with mitigation, energy efficiency, new developments, eco-towns etc. This is influenced by policy and economic drivers such as peak oil, fuel security and the global carbon market. As historic emissions have already locked in an element of unavoidable climate change, there is growing recognition of the need to adapt and improve resilience to climate change. It is recognised that adapting to climate change requires local knowledge and approaches. Nevertheless, more integrated research and knowledge exchange at a European and transnational level would help to improve understanding of, and hopefully catalyse, the economic, environmental, institutional and social changes needed to minimise adverse impacts and bring new opportunities and benefits to society from a changing climate.
KF3: There is a potentially confusing array of “urban sustainability models”, many of which omit any climate resilience considerations. Application and implementation may be hampered without translation for local users. However, an abundance of different urban climate vulnerability metrics and indicators risks causing greater confusion and a divergence of approaches that demand disparate data sets. This dependency on data collection, assimilation, verification and interpretation is resource intensive for already over-stretched municipalities, particularly smaller cities. There is scope for data exchange amongst researchers, professionals and practitioners but this requires ownership, access arrangements and data harmonisation across different systems and platforms. , which can be problematic. This can be a problematic, lengthy and costly process.
KF4: It is important to integrate the social sciences into cross-disciplinary research on urban climate resilience. Many of the activities associated with adapting to climate change and building urban resilience are dependent on decision-making processes, behaviour change, and good communications. This is particularly the case for the inherent risks and uncertainty surrounding climate change. Responding to climate change requires strategies that address the physical dynamics of systems and the social and institutional contexts. We also need psychological and communication approaches to understand and influence behaviour changes in the midst of great cultural diversity, beliefs and values and across all tiers of society and governance. More “people-centred” forms of engagement are essential. This means using cultural studies, social psychology, education tools, communication methods etc. to help raise greater awareness, promote positive behaviour changes, strengthen cooperation, enable multi-level governance and support public dialogue.
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KF5: There appears to be more emphasis on research and technological measures for flood prevention, than on drought alleviation and associated risks from lower rainfall such as subsidence and wildfires. There are numerous technical solutions and options being developed for flooding. This may reflect a dominance of research agendas from more flood prone parts of Europe in the north and west. However, many cities, even in those regions not commonly considered to be at risk of drought, face water shortages. This could be a consequence of placing emphasis on what is perceived to be the most probable or pressing impact associated with a geographic region e.g. flooding in northern Europe and drought in southern Europe. Climate scenarios indicate that a multiplicity of impacts will be co-located, hence the need to take a strategic, integrated approach that considers all probable risks, their interactions and dependencies.
KF6: Just as the climate and climatic projections are changing, improving resilience must be understood as a continually evolving proces. It will be most successful if strategies are continually reviewed and revised to incorporate new knowledge about city vulnerabilities and potential impacts from interventions local and globally. Priorities need to be periodically reviewed and re-evaluated. A resilience strategy is a useful tool only to the extent that it is revisited over time and generates further action. The process of developing urban climate resilience — bridging sector gaps, raising awareness, creating new knowledge, improving coordination and, in particular, enabling organisational, institutional and individual development — is intrinsically more valuable than any stand-alone strategy.
KF7: Building resilience at the city scale requires more partnership working and collaborative approaches. No single organisation will create resilience alone. It requires a core team of local stakeholders from a diverse range of organisations, who are able to; agree on collective priorities, coordinate the work and keep abreast of new knowledge to inform and promote adaptation strategies. Implementing effective action requires ownership and direct engagement with a range of stakeholders. The most important characteristic is not technical expertise but the ability to coordinate across organisations in an open manner; work with diverse groups of people; recognise the validity of their insights, their knowledge, and their contribution and engagement in developing effective strategies.
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4. An overview of urban climate vulnerability and resilience
4.1 The challenge of climate change for cities Human population and our economic activity is increasingly concentrated in cities. Urban areas must be at the heart of addressing climate change, both to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to limit further change, and to improve resilience by adapting to unavoidable changes predicted as a result of past emissions. Across the globe, many cities are developing comprehensive programmes to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Fewer cities, however, are making coordinated efforts to adapt and build resilience to climate change. This is despite evidence that urban areas across Europe are struggling to cope with current extreme weather events, which climate projections indicate will increasingly become the norm. Due to historic emissions of greenhouse gases, a certain amount of global climate change is inevitable over the coming decades, irrespective of emission reduction efforts. Adaptation needs to be considered as an equal and integral partner to mitigation. The current split between adaptation and mitigation efforts is discussed in section 5.2.2 on governance.
CLIMATE-FRIENDLY CITIES: A handbook on the tasks and possibilities of European cities in relation to climate change4
This handbook summarises methods and instruments available to European towns and cities from a city government perspective. The aim is to encourage cities to align recommendations on climate change to their specific conditions and circumstances. The target audience comprises decision- makers, politicians and professionals but it should also be of interest to the wider stakeholder community.
Key messages and recommendations are backed up by numerous practical examples and case studies. They are presented on a range of urban-relevant climate issues, such as: partnerships and multi-level governance; planning integrated strategies; spatial structure, urban-rural co-operation; disadvantaged social groups and social effects; architectural solutions, awareness and lifestyle. The handbook discusses a range of issues from governance to integrated strategic planning, and was initiated by the Hungarian EU Presidency.
The following ten key messages, from a study commissioned by the Committee of the Regions5, highlight the vulnerability of cities and the need to emphasise the important role of adaptation in an integrated approach to urban climate resilience. These messages also highlight critical issues of governance and uncertainty which are discussed in sections 5.1 and 5.2.
4 Ministry of Interior, Hungary – VΆTI Hungarian Nonprofit Ltd. for Regional development and Town Planning (2011), ‘Climate-Friendly Cities – A Handbook on the Tasks and Possibilities of European Cities in Relation to Climate Change’, Ministry of Interior, Hungary – VΆTI, Budapest. 5 Ecologic Institute (Berlin/Vienna), AEA group, ICLEI (Local Governments for Sustainability), European Secretariat and the Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe (REC), (no publication date, c. 2010). ‘Adaptation to Climate Change: Policy instruments for adaptation to climate change in big European cities and metropolitan areas’, Committee of the Regions, European Union.
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1. Cities are dynamic and complex systems. Climate change will interact with existing urban problems: a. Some problems will get worse b. Some new problems will emerge 2. Vulnerability to climate change is more acute in cities than in rural areas. 3. Urban climate change adaptation strategies must be developed to integrate with - and build upon - existing sectoral and cross-sectoral agendas at the city level. 4. However, old solutions will not solve new problems; urban adaptation requires innovation, learning and new governance structures. 5. Complexity and uncertainty present real barriers to decision-makers on the ground, particularly given the complex interaction of vulnerabilities at the city level. 6. No single type of measure is able to eliminate vulnerability to climate change; a portfolio approach, for example combining institutional, technological, infrastructure, educational and lifestyle responses, is likely to be most effective. 7. A wide variety of stakeholders need to be involved in conception, design, implementation and evaluation of urban adaptation strategies at city level. 8. Cities need leadership, group-working, effective forms of knowledge transfer/ exchange and integrated research to begin the process of adaptation. 9. Opportunities exist; a renaissance in urban design and management could create sustainable and resilient cities. 10. An iterative approach is required in order to achieve progress in the short term as well as the required step changes in urban management.
4.2 The concept of vulnerability Vulnerability is a central concept within numerous fields of research and policy, including natural hazards and disasters, poverty, development and food security. Understanding vulnerability to climate change is about trying to determine who will be harmed and what will be negatively affected.
“Vulnerability is the degree to which a system is susceptible to, and unable to cope with, adverse effects of climate change, including climate variability and extremes. Vulnerability is a function of the character, magnitude, and rate of climate change and variation to which a system is exposed, its sensitivity, and its adaptive capacity.” IPCC, Fourth Assessment Report, 20076.
The above definition draws on three main criteria:
• Exposure - the degree to which a system is exposed to significant climatic variations such as sea level rise, temperature or precipitation;
6 Parry, M.L., Canziani, O.F., Palutikof, J.P., van der Linden, P.J. and Hanson, C.E. (Eds) (2007). ‘Contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - Appendix I: Glossary’, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA. http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/annexessglossary-p-z.html
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• Sensitivity - the degree to which a system is affected, either adversely or beneficially, by changes in climate. For example, in a city that is exposed to sea level rise, built-up areas will be more sensitive than areas such as parkland that are used for recreation; and
• Adaptive capacity - the ability of the system to adjust to such changes, to ‘moderate potential damages, to take advantage of opportunities, or to cope with the consequences’ (IPCC, 2007).
Vulnerability, then, is the key concept when considering how urban societies, infrastructure and systems will be affected by climate change. It is complex and loosely defined, although the factors that determine it (exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity) have been identified. In order to make and inform policy, it is necessary to be able to assess vulnerability and to consider how it varies between different places and people.
4.3 Urban vulnerability to climate change Urban areas are particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. This is due to the density of infrastructure, population, services and economic activity. The type of impact varies in relation to geography and topography. For example, low-lying coastal cities are more at risk from a rise in sea- level; and cities in the south of Europe, on the whole, face a greater risk of drought than those in the north, with some notable exceptions such as London. The severity of impact is strongly influenced by urban physical characteristics such as city design, planning and the urban fabric and infrastructure. For example, the urban heat island (UHI) effect will vary with differences in building density, urban configuration and aspect and also the surface fabric and composition e.g. the type and extent of green and blue infrastructure. Difference in climate sensitivities also plays a part. While heat waves will be more extreme in the cities of southern Europe, less heat-tolerant populations in northern Europe will be sensitive to even moderate temperature changes. Most European cities have been developed, designed and built to cope with the historic climate record, not the future climate trends and extremes predicted by climate scientists. Moreover, cities’ increasingly sophisticated and interdependent supply chains and transportation logistics - for water, energy, workforce, food and consumables - introduce intrinsic weaknesses, irrespective of any increased exposure to climate hazards. These characteristics further compound risks and create greater susceptibility to disruption.
There is no agreed method for quantifying urban vulnerability to climate change. “The most common way to overcome this constraint and to make the concept of vulnerability operational is to use indicators.... The general gaps relevant for developing climate change vulnerability indicators concern conceptual gaps, methodological questions, data concerns, and application gaps.” 7
7 Schauser, I., Otto, S., Schneiderbauer, S., Harvey, A., Hodgson, N., Robrecht, H., Morchain, D., Schrander, J., Khovanskaia, M., Celikyilmaz-Aydemir, G., Prutsch, A. and McCallum, S. (2010). ‘Urban regions: Vulnerabilities, Vulnerability Assessments by Indicators and Adaptation options for Climate Change Impacts – Scoping Study’, ETC/ACC Technical Paper 2010/12.
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Enhancing cities’ capacity to manage their vulnerability to climate change in Sweden8
This FORMAS-funded project aims to enhance institutional capacity to assess society’s vulnerability to climate change in cities and regions. The project will apply three methods: double exposure, climate vulnerability index and downscaled socioeconomic scenarios. It will also use a number of tools to project bio-geophysical impacts of climate change. The methods and tools, developed by international research, emphasise different aspects of vulnerability. The project also uses participatory methodologies to study how the vulnerability methods and impact tools are used within municipal and regional administration, i.e. in the decision processes that they are intended to support.
The project outputs include an integrated vulnerability assessment tool and criteria for robust decision making designed for planners within municipal and regional administrations.
The scoping study on urban vulnerability by the European Topic Centre on Air and Climate Change8 set out to assess the feasibility of developing climate change related vulnerability indicators for urban areas, to support EU spatial development policy. Part of the study included a comprehensive review of the available literature and research, to identify knowledge gaps on vulnerability to different climatic threats. Their mapping of the extent of current knowledge and gaps is reproduced in Table 1. The main knowledge gaps in relation to exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity largely relate to data projections and scenario developments at urban relevant scales and are discussed further in section 5.1 on uncertainty and risk assessment.
ENSURE9 ENSURE is a European funded project which offers a new methodological framework for an integrated multi-scale vulnerability assessment based on a comprehensive, integrated and interdisciplinary understanding of risks and vulnerability.
Currently available indicators lack a socio-economic dimension, and other problems include (limited) availability of data, and incomplete published methodologies. The UK Adaptation Sub-Committee has taken a different approach. It reports “significant progress in developing a suite of outcome- focussed indicators that might have some success in providing a measure of the UK‘s real preparedness for climate impacts, rather than the checklist or process-oriented metrics that have been suggested previously”10.
8 Project contact is Anna Jonsson ([email protected]) at Linköping University. 9 http://www.ensureproject.eu/ensureproject.html 10 AEA (2011). ‘Provision of research to identify indicators for the Adaptation Sub-Committee’, Final Report, ED56687- Issue Number 3.
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Table 1: From ETC/ACC Technical Paper 2010/12, 201011 Extent of knowledge available on ... Climatic Gaps impact /issue Causes Vulnerable Components Components Components and systems, determining determining determining effects on vulnerable exposure sensitivity adaptive urban groups and capacity areas macro-regions Higher Intensively Identified (focus Clear causes, past Intensively Suggestions difficult to project temperatures, studied and on vulnerable and projected studied and exist, but little future changes heat wave and well known groups and health data available well known data available, in sensitivity health effects damage) components, no projections and Adaptive problems past data Capacity available Decreased Studied but Identified, but Clear causes, Intensively Suggestions Mainly studied for precipitati less in urban less in urban difficult reaction studied, very exist about agriculture, on, water areas areas (focus on chain, past data many and adaptation tourism, scarcity sectors and available, but different measures, but biodiversity. and vulnerable difficult to project components, little Indirect effect on drought systems, mainly past data quantitative cities is little in the Med., available data available, researched economic no projections damages) Wildfires Studied but No focus on Clear circum- Components Suggestions Urban areas are less for specific groups or stances, are identified available relate not in focus of urban areas systems, mainly difficult (related to to mitigation of the Mediterranean, reaction chain, topography, fires and assessments economic as well past data fuel load) but protection although as health impacts available but none specific to before and affected. difficult to urban areas during the fire project Heavy Intensively Identified Clear causes, Intensively Few Vulnerable groups precipitation studied and (vulnerable difficult reaction studied, very suggestions difficult to and fluvial well known groups and chain, past data many and exist, but little determine, floods effects systems, health available but different data available, difficult and economic difficult to components, no projections projections damage) project past data available Intensive Studied and Identified Clear causes, Little studied, Suggestions Impacts depend precipitation well known (drainage system, difficult reaction few important exists regarding on local circum- and urban effects health and chain, past data components, increased stances and are drainage leading economic available but past data efficiency of difficult to to floods damage) difficult to project available urban drainage estimate and to predict
Sea level rise Intensively Identified (focus Clear causes, past Intensively Suggestions Vulnerable groups and storm studied and on coastal regions and projected studied, many regarding not determined in surge-driven well known and economic data available and regional general detail, socio- flooding effects damage) variable adaptive economic factors components, capacity and rarely investigated past data adaptation available options
11 Schauser, I., Otto, S., Schneiderbauer, S., Harvey, A., Hodgson, N., Robrecht, H., Morchain, D., Schrander, J., Khovanskaia, M., Celikyilmaz-Aydemir, G., Prutsch, A. and McCallum, S. (2010). ‘Urban regions: Vulnerabilities, Vulnerability Assessments by Indicators and Adaptation options for Climate Change Impacts – Scoping Study’, ETC/ACC Technical Paper 2010/12.
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Extent of knowledge available on ... Climatic impact /issue Causes Vulnerable Components Components Components Gaps and systems, determining determining determining effects on vulnerable exposure sensitivity adaptive urban groups and capacity areas macro-regions Saltwater Studied but Identified, but Clear causes, Studied, Few adaption Limited data intrusion into less in less in urban very difficult components options related available on aquifers urban areas areas (focus on reaction chain are identified, to water uses geographic systems and but but difficult to and distribution of coastal region, projections project management the impact economic difficult exist, damages) Mass movements Studied but No focus on Complex causes, Suggestions Only generic Urban areas are and erosion not specific specific very difficult exist related to suggestions not in focus of for urban vulnerable reaction chain, geo-physical about the assessments (effects might be areas systems or past data structures, adaptation indirect) groups, mainly available but very weak link to measures exist, mountains, and difficult to project urban areas weak link to on economic urban areas damages Wind storms Studied Identified, focus Clear causes, Some Very few Occurrence, mainly in on vulnerable difficult reaction components are suggestions strength and North and systems and chain, past data identified exist effects of storm is difficult to Western economic available, not related to built project Europe damages possible to structures project Vector – borne Studied but Suggestions exist, Difficult reaction Intensively Suggestions Urban areas are and other not specific focus on chain, past data studied, very exist but little not in focus of diseases for urban vulnerable groups available but many data available, the assessments (effects might be areas and health difficult to project components, no projections indirect) damage past data available
4.4 Resilience The concept of ’resilience’ is closely related to that of ‘vulnerability’. The IPCC (2007)12 defines resilience as ‘the ability of a social or ecological system to absorb disturbances while retaining the same basic structure and ways of functioning, the capacity for self-organisation, and the capacity to adapt to stress and change’. Resilience may be considered as being the converse of vulnerability. It could be argued that the ultimate aim of adaptation policy is to progress from vulnerability (the potential for loss or harm) to resilience (the potential to recover or rebound).
12 M.L. Parry, O.F. Canziani, J.P. Palutikof, P.J. van der Linden and C.E. Hanson (Eds) (2007). ‘Contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - Appendix I: Glossary’, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA. http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/annexessglossary-p-z.html
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emBRACE - Building resilience amongst communities in Europe13
This project addresses urban resilience, also touching on governance and data/ indicators.
The emBRACE project aims to improve the pan-European framing of the resilience concept. The project uses interdisciplinary, socially inclusive and collaborative methods. It will develop a conceptual and methodological approach to clarify how the resilience capacity of a society confronted with natural hazards and disasters can be characterised, defined and measured. Based on a systematic evaluation of a broad literature base, the project will first develop an initial conceptual framework. Existing datasets will be interrogated to identify variables that provide indications of resilience, and which are consistent with the framework. The framework and data will then be ‘tested’ and ground truthed by means of several carefully-chosen European case studies (in the Czech Republic, England, Germany, Italy, Poland, , Switzerland, and Turkey) which will be differentiated by hazard, governance setting, socio-demographic-economic context, and scale. Recommendations on indicators to measure resilience will be based on practical experience and grounded theories.
Many studies that have tried to measure adaptive capacity have used broad-brush economic or demographic proxies, such as gross domestic product (GDP), levels of education and access to resources. Adaptive capacity is often seen in terms of economic development on the basis that greater economic resources enable people to adapt more easily. In contrast, Grothmann and Patt (2005)14 make a distinction between ‘objective’ adaptive capacity (e.g. time, money, knowledge, entitlements, relevant support) and ‘perceived’ adaptive capacity which recognises that motivation and perceived abilities are important determinants of decision-making and subsequent action. So, they maintain, “while a region or area may score highly on an objective measure of adaptive capacity, socio-cognitive variables are an important factor that may influence the actual degree of vulnerability”.
4.5 Critical evidence gaps for decision-makers Scientific capabilities, for projecting future climate change and the resulting impacts, are growing rapidly. Economic studies, such as the Stern Review15, have helped elucidate the potentially enormous costs to society of not taking action to address climate change. There are still large uncertainties when it comes to ‘downscaling’ these projections and estimates to levels that are useful to local decision-makers. This inherent uncertainty in climate change trends and impacts feeds through to vulnerability assessments and decision-making tools. Policy-makers and stakeholders need decision-making processes that can accommodate not only scientific gaps but also gaps in our understanding of socio-cultural attitudes and behavioural responses. Section 5.1.4
13 http://embrace-eu.org/ This data was supplied in a template submitted by Sylvia Kruse, Research associate, Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL), [email protected] 14 Grothmann, T. and Patt, A. (2005). ‘Adaptive capacity and human cognition: the process of individual adaptation to climate change’, Global Environmental Change, 15, pp. 199–213. 15 Stern, N. (2006). ‘Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change’, HM Treasury, London. http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/6520.htm
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considers the impact of uncertainty on decision-making. This is further complicated by the back- drop of changing demographics and economic uncertainty. Understanding and managing climate change risks at the urban scale requires:
• common understanding and interpretation of likely future climate change scenarios and risks; • strong leadership to develop promising and shared visions of how cities can create sustainable development pathways; and • open, multi-level governance to manage decision-making which delivers equitable, effective and flexible solutions that offer long-term resilience in the face of short-term political agendas. See section 5.2 on governance.
More information to inform long-term policy decisions is needed on16 :
• the costs and benefits associated with different adaptation options; • the trade-offs between location-specific social, environmental and economic factors; and • optimal timing of different options for effective adaptation investment and risk management.
Stadtklimalotse (Urban climate pilot)17
The challenges for local policymakers have been addressed in Germany by the Stadtklimalotse project.
This is an online decision support tool for urban climate change adaptation. It is aimed at planners and policy makers from small and medium sized towns and cities, who need quick and easy access to information. It is mainly focused on German and German speaking audiences. However, most of the measures are applicable for any city or town. International best practice examples are included. The database of urban climate change adaptation measures contains 138 measures in ten fields of action (energy, health, tourism, water, infrastructure, transportation, green spaces, air quality, agriculture, forestry), 330 links to legislative texts and 61 examples for planning and implementation of measures; further background information on climate change research; and an integrated tool for a quick urban vulnerability assessment. These are used to guide the reader through the process of adaptation, raise key questions in a structured manner, and suggest methods and examples. It does not attempt to make direct recommendations for action.
This has been applied in Stuttgart as an integrated regional approach to adaptation, encompassing the city and surrounding towns – see section 5.2.4 on lessons learned from experience of governance.
16 Ramieri, E., Hartley, A., Barbanti, A., Duarte Santos, F., Gomes, A., Hilden, M., Laihonen, P., Marinova, N., and Santini, M. (2011). ‘Methods for assessing coastal vulnerability to climate change’, European Topic Centre on Climate Change Impacts, Vulnerability and Adaptation, ETC CCA Technical Paper 1/2011. 17 www.stadtklimalotse.net/english/ information provided by Mark Fleischhauer, Senior Research Fellow at TU Dortmund University, Institute of Spatial Planning (IRPUD), [email protected]
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5. Evidence from research and practice
This chapter discusses the main findings from an assessment of recent European research and practical examples of initiatives, strategies and projects on building urban climate resilience. It is presented on the basis of four subthemes: risk and uncertainty; governance; people; and place.
5.1 Risk and uncertainty 5.1.1 Introduction Our understanding of climate change is hampered by many unknowns, ignorance and bias. The complexity and seemingly chaotic nature of the climate system challenges the construction of reliable projections about the magnitude and pace of change. This means that the risk assessment of climate impacts and vulnerability is subject to considerable uncertainties. Scientific uncertainties associated with modelling projected impacts, data collection, verification etc., married with uncertainties surrounding socio-economic influences on greenhouse gas emissions and on the vulnerabilities of people and place, hamper decision-making (Yohe and Oppenheimer, 2011)18. Improved understanding, characterisation and communication of uncertainty are critical to the development of robust policy options and stimulating positive changes in peoples’ attitudes and behaviour.
The climate of Europe is strongly influenced by the North Atlantic Ocean circulation.
Thermohaline circulation (THC) of the Atlantic Ocean helps to moderate Europe's climate, bringing warm water from the equator to the continent’s shores. The THC is often referred to as the ‘ocean conveyor belt’ since large volumes of water are transferred between different regions. It is also known as the Meridional Overturning Circulation (MOC).
There is concern that climate change may impact the THC, possibly even shutting it down. The consequences for Europe could be dire. Reliable quantification of the variability and stability of the THC and its atmospheric implications is therefore a major challenge in climate research, not only for the purpose of assessing the likelihood of rapid climate changes, but also to assist planning in both the public and private sectors .
THOR19, "Thermohaline Overturning – at Risk?" has established an operational system that will monitor and forecast the development of the North Atlantic THC on decadal time scales. It will assess its stability and the risk of a breakdown in a changing climate.
18 Yohe, G. and Oppenheimer, M. (2011). ‘Evaluation, characterization, and communication of uncertainty by the intergovernmental panel on climate change—an introductory essay’, Climatic Change, 108: 629–639. 19 THOR is a European Commission FP7 funded collaboration project http://www.eu-thor.eu/
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5.1.2 Data availability A common concern for decision-makers is the lack of spatially and temporally disaggregated data. This is needed to model climate projections, assess climate risks and implement effective strategies and policies at the city level. However, data availability is highly variable and sometimes costly to obtain. Research is underway on methods for downscaling regional climate change model outputs to spatial and temporal scales that are useful for urban planning, despite data gaps20 21.
Data needs: an urban socio-ecological atlas
The Urban Atlas Portal22 is a collaboration between twelve cities around the world: Bangalore, Canberra, Cape Town, Chicago, Helsinki, Istanbul, New Delhi, New Orleans, New York City, Phoenix, Shanghai and Stockholm. The aim is to develop new tools for understanding the social-ecological capacities to provide access to and sustain ecosystem services. The Urban Atlas maps the spatial extent of selected ecosystem services and biodiversity, and to what extent different socio-economic groups have access to these services.
This is the first time users are able to compare cities of different size and wealth to see how varying social contexts, customs and norms, can affect urban ecosystems and vice-versa23. It should offer a starting-point in addressing the reported lack of data that is comparable between cities.
In addition to concerns about the common challenge of missing or unreliable data and the consequent uncertainty of models, the OECD and Development Global Science Forum24 highlight other issues including:
• the trend to build more and more complex models which can be difficult or slow to build, expensive, and not necessarily more effective than simpler models;
• the challenges of (and need for) integrating a variety of separate research disciplines (physical, social, applied sciences) and different modes/traditions of data definition in model-making;
• the challenges of scale and the need to formulate a clearly defined spatial focus (urban regions, peri-urban and suburban domains, urban cores, precincts and sites);
• the challenges of creating comparability in the face of the variety of current responses and activity;
20 Mehrotra, S., Natenzon, C. E., Omojola, A., Folorunsho, R., Gilbride, J., and Rosenzweig, C. (2009). ‘World Bank Commissioned Research: Fifth Urban Research Symposium - Cities and Climate Change: Responding to an Urgent Agenda’. Marseille, France. 21 SUDPLAN http://cordis.europa.eu/projects/93723_en.html 22 http://www.urbanatlasportal.org/UAP/ 23 http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/urban_resilience/P4/ 24 Delegation of Australia to the OECD (2009). ‘Developing effective models of urban environments to address the challenges of sustainability and climate change’, Project Proposal – Update draft September 2009.
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• the dynamic nature of urban systems, and the need for models that confront this including life-cycle analysis.
The EEA stresses the need for more data on the cost of climate change impacts and adaptation, and better methodologies for understanding the complexity of the economic consequences of climate change25.
5.1.3 Uncertainty The EEA categorises three types of uncertainty26:
1. incomplete knowledge e.g. of climate systems; 2. insufficient observed trends leading to low confidence in the results of models, which can be due to an absence of data or insufficient (spatial or temporal) resolution; and 3. uncertainty in future socio-economic developments e.g. demographic, technological and socio-economic developments.
Some of the causal links and factors which introduce uncertainty into climate predictions are illustrated in table 1, from Pidgeon and Fischer (2011)27. The middle column shows the causal chain leading from the anthropogenic sources of climate change to their impacts. The four charts show estimates for different effects in that chain, linked (by arrows) to causal factors that introduce uncertainty into theses estimates. In the top-left chart, different assumptions about future human activities lead to different estimates of total emissions. The other three charts show uncertainties in cumulative emissions depending on uncertainty about climate feedback (top right), climate sensitivity depending on uncertainty about radiative forcing (bottom right), and change in global cereal production depending on uncertainty in temperature rise and carbon fertilisation (bottom left). Interactions between elements in the chain also create further significant uncertainties.
5.1.4 Uncertainty and decision-making The UK Government’s progress report on climate change adaptation28 states that climate risks are not yet embedded into strategic decisions: “Investment planning does not factor in the full range of climate uncertainties... Embedding climate change more fully into decision-making could reduce the legacy of future adaptation costs.” The report describes “uncertainty” as including both future climate projections and socio-economic scenarios, and calls for the full range of economic, social and
25 EEA (2008). ‘Impacts of Europe's changing climate — 2008 indicator-based assessment, Chapter 8 – Data gaps, uncertainties and future needs’, Report 4/2008, pp193-207. http://www.eea.europa.eu/publications/eea_report_2008_4 26 EEA (2008). ‘Impacts of Europe's changing climate — 2008 indicator-based assessment, Chapter 8 – Data gaps, uncertainties and future needs’, Report 4/2008, pp193-207. http://www.eea.europa.eu/publications/eea_report_2008_4 27 Pidgeon, N, and Fischoff, B. (2011). ‘The role of social and decision sciences in communicating uncertain climate risks’, Nature Climate Change, Vol 1, April 2011, http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v1/n1/full/nclimate1080.html 28 Adaptation sub-committee (2011). ‘Adapting to climate change in the UK – measuring progress’.
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environmental risks to be considered. Similar findings are reported for Scotland but with even greater problems arising from a lack of data availability and problems of data disaggregation29.
Figure 1: Sources of uncertainty in climate assessments 30
The latest UK Climate Projection model (UKCP09) takes a probabilistic approach31 to addressing the uncertainty issues, by decision-making based on three sources of uncertainty:
• natural climate variability; • uncertainty in the climate models; and • uncertainty in future emissions.
Although this approach has proved more challenging, it has forced deeper understanding and awareness of climate variability and impacts amongst decision-makers32.
Planners and decision-makers have to accommodate projected changes across many realms; demography, economics, technologies, etc. Each of these has a notoriously high degree of uncertainty (inherently higher than climate change modelling) and any dependent decisions are subject to assumptions and limitations. In the case of climate change adaptation, these assumptions and limitations will be dependent on the knowledge, or the lack thereof, on the rate of climate change, impact variability and the availability and effectiveness of global emission reduction measures.
29 http://www.theccc.org.uk/reports/adaptation/asc-scotland 30 Pidgeon, N, and Fischoff, B. (2011). ‘The role of social and decision sciences in communicating uncertain climate risks’, Nature Climate Change, Vol 1, April 2011. http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v1/n1/full/nclimate1080.html 31 http://ukclimateprojections.defra.gov.uk/content/view/1981/500/ 32 Pers. Comm. Joe Hagg, Senior Scientist – Climate Change, SEPA/Adaptation Scotland, February 2012.
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PREPARED
PREPARED 33aims to promote the systematic evaluation of uncertainties in urban water systems. Assessing uncertainties is necessary to improve the quality of measurements; to improve modelling, by accounting for uncertainties in model structures, inputs, parameters and outputs; and to help decision-making.
5.1.5 Communicating uncertainty The EEA believes that uncertainty must be acknowledged and discussed: “Ignoring uncertainty increases the risk of inappropriate action to tackle the challenge of climate change and its impacts on the environment, the economy and human well-being”34.
A special issue of the journal Climatic Change features ideas for communicating scientific uncertainty35. The contributing authors assert that the oversimplification of uncertainty in the IPCC Assessment Reports can be misinterpreted leading to overconfidence in climate projections and risk assessments36. They argue that the IPCC should make low-probability, high-consequence outcomes more vivid and be clearer about areas where there is vigorous dispute among scientists37. Concerted efforts are needed to explore and characterise uncertainty and eliminate bias from the consensus building process. The difference between statistical uncertainty and scenario uncertainty also needs to be made clearer35.
Communicating clearly and transparently on what is and is not understood about climate change by the scientific community is an important value shared by the contributing authors. Failure to communicate clearly can have dire consequences for the nature of reporting on climate research:
“However careful and painstaking the process by which the IPCC and other climate assessments are carried out, their policy-relevance will be greatly constrained if the critical work they do is defined in the eyes of policymakers and the public by politically savvy detractors who mischaracterise scientific uncertainties and exploit the media’s fascination with reporting alleged controversy.” Ekwurzel et.al, 2011.38
33 http://www.prepared-fp7.eu/prepared-home2 34 EEA (2008). ‘Impacts of Europe's changing climate — 2008 indicator-based assessment, Chapter 8 – Data gaps, uncertainties and future needs’, Report 4/2008, pp193-207. http://www.eea.europa.eu/publications/eea_report_2008_4 35 (2011) ‘Special Issue: Guidance for Characterizing and Communicating Uncertainty and Confidence in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’. Climatic Change 108. 36 Curry, J. (2011). ‘Reasoning about climate uncertainty’, Climatic Change 108:723–732. 37 Socolow, R. H. (2011). ‘High-consequence outcomes and internal disagreements: tell us more, please’, Climatic Change 108:775–790. 38 Ekwurzel, B., Frumhoff, P. C. and McCarthy, J. J. (2011). ‘Climate uncertainties and their discontents: increasing the impact of assessments on public understanding of climate risks and choices’, Climatic Change 108:791–802.
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5.2 Governance 5.2.1 Introduction ICLEI (the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives) refers to climate change as being “… an exam in good governance and management, requiring strong political leadership and commitment. Extreme weather events regularly highlight deficient adaptive capacity within urban systems and management – damage to technical infrastructure and buildings, disruption of municipal and health services, poor social cohesion and emergency management – which can be considered as failures of previous political decisions and administrative actions” 39. The urban governance of climate protection involves changes to the relations between levels of the state, and new network spheres of authority. This challenges traditional distinctions between local, national and global environmental politics. Improved governance is likely to differ from former approaches.
5.2.2 Participation Local government authorities cannot effectively address the massive challenges posed by climate change without the widespread grassroots involvement of a variety of actors in civil society, such as citizens’ groups, students and neighbourhood associations. These non-governmental stakeholders can play key roles in both contributing to the development of sound government policies, and in ensuring that such policies are effectively implemented. Of equal importance is the need for well trained, knowledgeable and engaged professional urban businesses (including engineering, urban planning, architects, construction and services or utilities companies) to assist and advise local authorities and to provide efficient services and invest in effective infrastructure.
The OECD conference on competitive cities expanded on the need for a change of approach to governance. It reported that “as city governments move to implement climate change policies, existing relationships with certain economic sectors and other partners will need to be redefined. Governments will need to make decisions on every aspect of policy – from deciding whether to institute top-down or bottom-up controls to the exact nature of the policy tools... City governments face special considerations with regard to their exact jurisdictional authority, available capacity for implementation and enforcement, and co-ordination with the private sector and other affected parties40.”
The need for participation by non-governmental stakeholders is being explored by a research programme underway at the UK’s Tyndall Centre. The programme focuses on the role of “non-state actors in multilateral climate diplomacy as well as non-state climate governance in the transnational arena”. It also “seeks to better understand the interface between the intergovernmental negotiating process and transnational networks of business, civic, indigenous and local government actors”. This aims to advance understanding of “non-state actors’ significance for governance, transparency, legitimacy, effectiveness and the symbolic value of international cooperation“41.
39http://www.iclei-europe.org/fileadmin/templates/iclei- europe/files/content/ICLEI_IS/Topics_pages/WS_4_Background_Document_Adaptation_November_2010.pdf 40 OECD (2008) ‘Competitive Cities and Climate Change’, OECD Conference Proceedings, Milan, Italy, 9-10 October 2008. http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/12/38/42554913.pdf 41 http://www.tyndall.ac.uk/research/governance/nsa
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5.2.3 Coordination and integration The lack of coordination and integration across urban governance structures, both vertically and horizontally, is a key issue for the implementation of local climate policies and action plans. It can hinder institutionalisation within the local administration and integration with other sector plans (such as energy, transport and land use). Responsibility for local climate change policy often lies within environmental departments. This can raise co-ordination and integration problems if the environmental department or agency does not have the authority to implement comprehensive policies. A lack of internal co-ordination within metropolitan governments may therefore pose serious problems for adaptation policies42. This is compounded where more than one authority has a role in decision-making and implementation, e.g. where action is needed at a regional or transnational scale such as in river management and water resource planning for large catchments such as the Danube.
To overcome the problems of fragmentation, the OECD43 recommends more cooperation and collaboration. At present local governments make and implement a wide range of policy decisions, making use of economies of scale to reduce excessive fragmentation and inefficiencies. Conversely, as municipal governments are often confined by physical boundaries that may not best reflect the needs of the metropolitan region, multi-agency and other co-operative governance frameworks become necessary. Effective climate change responses at the local level will therefore require greater intergovernmental collaboration also.
Another integration issue is the observed split between policies that address mitigation and adaptation. The IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report on climate change impacts, adaptation and vulnerability calls for improved understanding of the synergies between adaptive capacity and climate change mitigation. It asks how policies intended to enhance one could reinforce the other44. This question is asked in the light of the seemingly disproportionate volume of research and initiatives concerned with low carbon and energy reduction in comparison with studies on adaptation. This may be due to the greater scope for cost-savings offered by carbon efficiency measures and economic incentives driven by monetisation of carbon under the EU emissions trading scheme. The lack of an integrated approach to mitigation and adaptation runs the risk of incentivising approaches, policies and behaviours for one driver that exacerbates or constrains the other. For example, revisions to building standards, intended to reduce carbon emissions from the building stock, that do not take account of changing climate conditions may cause longer-term problems for the health and comfort of the occupants under future climate conditions.
42 Kern, K. and Alber, G. (2008) ‘Governing Climate Change In Cities: Modes Of Urban Climate Governance In Multi-Level Systems’, Chapter 8 of OECD Conference Proceedings, Milan, Italy, 9-10 October 2008, http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/12/38/42554913.pdf 43 OECD (2008) ‘Competitive Cities and Climate Change’, OECD Conference Proceedings, Milan, Italy, 9-10 October 2008. http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/12/38/42554913.pdf 44Parry, M.L., Canziani, O.F., Palutikof, J.P., van der Linden, P.J. and Hanson C.E. (Eds) (2007). ‘Contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - Technical Summary to Climate Change 2007: impacts, adaptation and vulnerability’, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA. P78.
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Spatial adaptation strategies to climate change: model region Stuttgart45
The region of Stuttgart has had an integrated strategy for climate mitigation and adaptation supported by concrete measures for many years. The aim is for the regional climate strategy to serve as an integrating concept for the region, engaging multiple departments and administrative levels.
The main activities include:
• Supporting clustering initiatives and demonstration projects • Establishing a centre of competence for (regenerative) fuel cells • Advising communities on measures for climate protection • Organising events, fairs and international projects • Promoting electric transportation and new mobility technologies. There are also numerous actions concerning town and traffic planning. This project is supported by the Stadtklimalotse decision-support tool (see section 4.5).
A further area of fragmentation lies between policy and research. A comparison of national adaptation strategies conducted in 200946 identified an urgent need for new climate adaptation research that connects innovative science with local, regional and sectoral policy needs. Factors driving the development of adaptation policy vary across European countries, but a common issue is institutional barriers. Institutional barriers are likely to be bigger impediments to adaptation than the technical feasibility of specific adaptation measures. A new, multi-level governance framework addressing urban development policies will be critical for meeting the challenge of climate change. City and regional leaders will need to work with others to design strategies for addressing local climate change risks. Central governments can complement efforts by assisting cities to better respond to climate change and by providing scientific assessments that justify intervention. Likewise, local governments are needed as partners to implement nation-wide climate change response policies, while at the same time designing their own policy responses that are tailored to local contexts.
The OECD47 describes alternative modes of climate governance, including self-governing, governing through enabling, governing by provision and governing by regulation. They also discuss the relevance of these governance modes for both mitigation and adaptation policies. If we fail to make use of the opportunities to incorporate urban adaptation strategies into broader social, cultural and economic decision-making processes across all spheres of governance, there will be adverse consequences for urban populations and economies
45 This information was supplied by Babette Scurrell at Bauhaus Dessau. The project contact is Prof. Dr.-Ing. Stefan Siedentop at the University of Stuttgart, [email protected] . http://www.region- stuttgart.org/vrs/main.jsp?navid=68 ; http://www.region-stuttgart.org/vrs/main.jsp?navid=438 46http://www.peer.eu/publications/europe_adapts_to_climate_change/ 47 OECD (2008) ‘Competitive Cities and Climate Change’, OECD Conference Proceedings, Milan, Italy, 9-10 October 2008. http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/12/38/42554913.pdf
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Resilis, a project for cities’ organisational resilience, France48
Resilis brings together policy and research domains by taking a systems approach to multi-level governance. It is a collaborative research project about the management of human and technical urban systems for cities’ organisational resilience. The project aims to develop innovative organisational and methodological solutions to improve urban resilience, using three types of measures:
• A better multi-scale and multi-actor governance, • Building up the populations’ self-reliance, and • An optimized management of technical networks. The main objective is to design methods and tools dedicated to local authorities, network managers and populations, in order to adapt and design social and technical urban systems able to cope with and absorb disturbances.
An illustration of the urban system, by J. De Rosnay49. City inputs and outputs, with associated impacts on the environment, generating feedback loops which affect the city. Work and taxes are part of an internal feedback loop.
We clearly need new and improved means of communication and interpretation that take account of cultural, emotional, and values-based behaviours; and approaches that foster open and democratic deliberation and decision-making. Emerging technologies, particularly in the field of communications and information, bring both challenges and opportunities for accountable and inclusive governance. Greater integration of social sciences and humanities into climate change research agendas could offer invaluable insight and innovative approaches to support decision- making under new governance structures and also support positive behaviour change.
If we take an integrated approach to increasing our resilience to the impacts of climate change, real social, economic and environmental benefits could be realised. Elements that could comprise such an integrated approach to building urban climate resilience might include: poverty alleviation; improved public health and valued human capital; healthy functioning ecosystems and
48http://www.resilis.fr/en Template supplied by Vincent Cousin, Industrial Advisor, Advancity, [email protected] 49http://www.resilis.fr/en/index/menu/menuid/64; English version taken from http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/macroscope/Chap1.html.
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environmental assets; and the adaptive design, planning and management of the built environment, including land-use planning and (re-)development, infrastructure and the urban fabric and function, much of which is discussed further in the following sections on People and Place.
5.2.4 Lessons learned from practice An interdisciplinary research review of literature and practice concludes that effective urban development programs, which incorporate climate change responses, must take a multidimensional approach to risk assessment50. Cities, the review argues, need to undertake risk assessment in order to decide for themselves what is the right mix between mitigation and adaptation, to avoid the commonly-occurring mismatches between needs and responses in regard to who should mitigate, how much to adapt, and why. This need for clarity in decision-making is reflected in a survey of people impacted by climate change in Canada (by floods) and Australia (by drought): people associate very different causes, impacts and actors to climate change and adaptation – i.e. whose job it is and what hinders action51. The Clean Air Partnership studied six early adapters to climate change: London, New York, Boston, Halifax, Vancouver and Seattle52. It identified several factors that supported successful adaptation strategies, of which the following have a direct bearing on governance:
• “Knowledgeable and committed political or executive champions”, and the “Creation of a specific inter-agency or inter-departmental organisation to lead the adaptation process to ensure the collaboration of relevant stakeholders” as witnessed in the cases of London and Seattle; • “the collaboration of a local community of strong researchers prepared to work with local governments on climate impacts and adaptation”. These include academic, government and private sector researchers and was witnessed in all six case studies; and • dedicated staff and budgets as witnessed in the case of London and New York.
A report from Infrastructure Canada on the development of disaster resilient communities identifies a number of barriers to adaptation53. These include governance-related issues of gaining (and holding) the attention of local policy makers, and coordinating local government department policies and practices.
50 Mehrotra, S., Natenzon, C. E., Omojola, A., Folorunsho, R., Gilbride, J., and Rosenzweig, C. (2009). ‘World Bank Commissioned Research: Fifth Urban Research Symposium - Cities and Climate Change: Responding to an Urgent Agenda’. Marseille, France. 51 Lynam, T. (2012). Stockholm Seminar on the ‘Social understandings of climate change and social adaptation to climate change’. http://www.stockholmresilience.org/seminarandevents/stockholmseminars/previousseminars/2012/ss2012/ makingsenseofclimatechangeandadaptation.5.7b7173c2134634aef76800024775.html 52 Clean Air Partnership (2007). ‘Cities Preparing for Climate Change: A Study of Six Urban Regions’ http://www.cleanairpartnership.org/pdf/cities_climate_change.pdf 53 Henestra, D., Kovacs, P., McBean, G. and Sweeting, R. (2004). ‘Background Paper on Disaster Resilient Cities’, Toronto: Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction. http://www.dmrg.org/resources/Henstra.et.al- Background%20paper%20on%20disaster%20resilient%20cities.pdf
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5.3 People 5.3.1 Introduction People’s vulnerability to climate change impacts is affected by individual, social and economic circumstances54, 55. A conceptual model of vulnerability to climate change was outlined in 1999 as the first step in appraising and understanding the social and economic processes which facilitate and constrain adaptation56. The model put social and economic well-being at the centre of analyses, reversing the scientific tendency to base assessments on the resilience of natural resources or ecosystems. It argued that whilst the socio-economic and biophysical processes that determine vulnerability are manifest at the local, national, regional and global level, the degree of vulnerability itself is associated with individuals and specific social groups. Over a decade later, we are only just beginning to see broader social and economic issues being given consideration in research into the causes and consequences of climate change for people.
5.3.2 Health risks Climate change poses a range of health risks, outlined in Figure 2, some of which will compound pre- existing health problems. Increasing temperatures associated with climate change can have direct impacts on human health, particularly respiratory problems57. The WHO expects that rising air temperatures will exacerbate urban air pollution which already causes 1.2 million deaths per year58. Air pollution in urban areas is a major environmental health concern for Europe. Although there is much uncertainty about the relationships between health, weather and climate, even small changes in seasonality could affect a large number of people with respiratory complications and have a significant aggregate impact on health services. Climate change may affect exposure to both indoor and outdoor irritants and pollutants. Indoor irritants include mould/fungi, damp in modern building materials, cockroaches and dust mites. Outdoor exposure to irritants such as pollen that induces hay-fever may change in duration or onset. Local and national differences in pollen sensitivity make the forecasting of future health impacts difficult.
54 Romero Lankao, P. and Tribbia, J. (2009). ‘Assessing patterns of vulnerability, adaptive capacity and resilience across urban centers’, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Mexico. Also published at http://www.pacificdisaster.net/pdnadmin/data/original/UCAR_2009_Romero.pdf 55Bartlett, S., Dodman, D., Hardoy, J., Satterthwaite, D. and Tacoli, C. (c. 2009) ‘Social aspects of climate change in urban areas in low- and middle-income, Contribution to the World Bank Fifth Urban Research Symposium on Cities and Climate Change: Responding to an Urgent Agenda http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTURBANDEVELOPMENT/Resources/336387-1256566800920/6505269- 1268260567624/Satterthwaite.pdf 56 Adger, W. N. and Kelly, P. M. (1999). ‘Social Vulnerability to Climate Change and the Architecture of Entitlements’, Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change, Volume 4, Numbers 3-4, 253-266. 57 European Environment Agency (2008) “Impacts of Europe's changing climate — 2008 indicator-based assessment” 58 World Health Organisation (2009). ‘Protecting health from climate change – connecting science, policy and people’.
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Figure 2: Schematic summary of main path ways59
Research by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation60 suggests that people’s vulnerability to extreme heat is a complex outcome of contextual factors and social processes:
• exposure to high temperatures at home, at work or in local communities because of the design and fabric of their housing or urban environment, or type of employment;
• sensitivity to heat stress, influenced by their respiratory, physical or mental health, age or relative acclimatisation to heat;
• capacity to adapt to circumstances in order to anticipate, escape or treat heat stress – e.g. ability to pay for air-conditioning, physical access to local cool outdoor spaces, or type of housing tenure (council tenants, some private tenants and care home residents may not have options to adapt their accommodation);
• self-perception of vulnerability, willingness to act to avoid heat stress, and awareness of heat stress and how to prevent it;
• social networks and their ‘visibility’ or connection with the outside world (e.g. with social services);
59 McMichael, A. J., Woodruff, R. E. and Hales, S. (2006). ‘Climate change and human health: present and future risks’, The Lancet, Vol. 367, Issue 9513, pp 859-869 60 http://www.jrf.org.uk/publications/vulnerability-heatwaves-and-drought-adaptation-climate-change
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• transience, lack of local knowledge or inflexibility, which may reduce people’s chances of receiving support during heatwaves.
The increased risk of river and coastal flooding has significant health consequences, causing deaths, injuries, outbreaks of infectious disease, and psychosocial problems. Floods may disrupt water treatment and sewage disposal systems, with a consequent increased risk of water-borne diseases.
The EEA expects an increase in water- and food-borne diseases as temperatures rise56. For example, increasing temperatures are associated with rises in cases of salmonella poisoning from food and from bathing-water quality; water-borne diseases arise from changes in rainfall patterns; floods carry germs; and droughts lead to stressed supplies and possible sanitation issues.
Health effects of flooding in the UK61
In June and July 2007, the wettest weather since British records began swept across the country, flooding dozens of cities. The reported health effects included drowning; acute stress, depression and other mental health problems; asthma attacks resulting from exposure to mould in flood- damaged buildings; and diarrhoea. This all happened despite the well-developed infrastructure and emergency services, demonstrating that their current configuration – in the UK and potentially in other countries – does not offer sufficient protection in the face of extreme weather.
The EEA anticipates an increasing range (in terms of both latitude and altitude) of disease-carrying insects62. Consequently, changes are needed to current monitoring and public health measures. The present methods for modelling projections are felt to be inadequate: “Few studies incorporate adequate assumptions about adaptive capacity [among others]”. According to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, climate change will influence the distribution and transmission of communicable diseases in a number of ways63. These include impacts on the actual disease pathogens themselves or changes in the distribution of vectors, such as ticks and mosquitoes, which may carry the diseases. Other factors are changes in people’s behaviour that increase their exposure to risks, such as spending more time outdoors in areas where insects live.
5.3.3 Social aspects of vulnerability Limitations of data, tools and methodologies are barriers to local decision-makers identifying socially vulnerable people and targeting appropriate responses. For example, in assessing social vulnerability to flood risk, “it is important to know the characteristics of the population at risk, not just the number of properties in an affected area... Demographic change and climate change will significantly increase the number of people at risk”64.
61 Rosenzweig C., Solecki, W. D., Hammer, S. A. And Mehrotra, S. (Eds ) (2011). ‘Climate change and cities: first assessment report of the Urban Climate Change Research Network (ARC3)’, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York. P191. 62 EEA (2008). ‘Impacts of Europe's changing climate — 2008 indicator-based assessment’, Report 4/2008. http://www.eea.europa.eu/publications/eea_report_2008_4 63 ECDC TECHNICAL DOCUMENT (2010), ‘Climate change and communicable diseases in the EU Member States’, Handbook for national vulnerability, impact and adaptation assessments 64 Joseph Rowntree Foundation (2011). ‘Pluvial (rain-related) flooding in urban areas: the invisible hazard’.
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Municipality of Budapest, package of measures for summer heat65
The Municipality of Budapest and district Local Governments have formed a partnership with the Metropolitan Public Place Cleaning Company, Metropolitan Gardening Company, public administration offices, libraries, doctors’ surgeries, shopping malls and hypermarkets. In order to reduce city temperatures, street surfaces are watered once or twice each day. Public health information about heat and hydration is disseminated via public sector organisations’ websites. Practical steps to reduce impacts on health include the distribution of drinking water, the provision of taps and sprinklers in the parks, and allowing residents to visit air-conditioned public buildings to cool down during the day.
When these measures were implemented in the summer of 2011, there was a significant decrease in the number of ambulance call-outs on extremely hot days.
Those with a greater understanding of how to identify vulnerable people, including the research community, non-governmental organisations, social services, spatial planners, public health and climate change/sustainability teams, may not be sufficiently engaged in informing local responses to climate change risks. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation suggests that an explicit consideration of social justice issues, coupled with clearly defined roles for key agencies and more effective working by the many stakeholders involved across sectors and organisations, is likely to improve outcomes for vulnerable people66. The key message is that adaptation initiatives must build resilience among those most vulnerable to climate change in order to contribute to the goals of achieving social justice and sustainable development. Table 2 illustrates the health impacts of a number of climatic threats on groups with specific vulnerabilities.
65 Template supplied by Miklos Marton, Project Manager at the Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe, [email protected]. 66 Joseph Rowntree Foundation (2011). ‘Vulnerability to heatwaves and drought: adaptation to climate change’, http://www.jrf.org.uk/publications/vulnerability-heatwaves-and-drought-adaptation-climate-change
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Table 2 Climate impacts on specific vulnerable groups67
Climatic threat / issue Higher temperatures Heat Sea level rise and Heavy precipitation Heavy Wind storms Vector- and water- Land slides wave storm surge-driven and fluvial floods precipitation borne diseases, flooding and urban atopic diseases drainage floods Elderly High vulnerability due to physical Greater risk of drowning; High post-disaster Tend to be reluctant to More susceptible to Likely to have post fragility (cardio-vascular diseases may lack physical or vulnerability: more evacuate or leave waterborne infections traumatic stress in & respiratory conditions, financial resources for often in need of dwelling despite warning; the aftermath of diabetes);increased by social effective response emergency shelter (lack No reliable results may lack physical and/or landslides (Sarno, isolation during &after event of social and financial financial resources for Italy) resources) effective response Sick Particularly high risk for those Post-flood morbidity (and mortality) is significantly Immuno-compromised with renal & cardiovascular higher for flood victims who suffer from pre- people are affected conditions, diabetes existing health problems No reliable results No reliable results disproportionately by No reliable results waterborne infections Disabled No reliable results (Elderly) persons with disabilities more at risk due to lack of physical resource for effective response (e.g. No reliable results No reliable results No reliable results No reliable results move to higher level)
Young Higher risk due to physical Probably more likely to fragility (children 0-4) No reliable results No reliable results No reliable results No reliable results be affected by No reliable results waterborne diseases
Group Low Higher vulnerability due to More likely to live in High post-disaster vulnerability: less likely to More likely to live in Probably more likely to Low & middle income hold insurance; less educated: more often income poorer health status; more likely vulnerable locations poorly built houses, be disproportionately countries: more likely to live in neighbourhoods with (also applies to some dissatisfied with damage compensation insufficient financial affected due to limited to settle in hazardous groups greater exposure to heat stress affluent people who reserves for purchasing access to sound health physical environment, prefer coastal estates); supplies before/ services services (e.g. regular e.g. marginal land, less mobility for after an event; less vaccination) hillsides evacuation mobility for evacuation Ethnic More likely to live in Less likely to live in More likely to live in More likely to rely on High post-disaster minorities neighbourhoods with greater flood-prone coastal flood-prone /low-lying information from peers, vulnerability: exposure to heat stress areas (reduces urban areas No reliable results which can lead to No reliable results difficulties in vulnerability) ineffective disaster obtaining adequate preparedness and affordable h i
67 See Schauser et.al; (2010) footnote 7
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Individuals’ vulnerability to heat appears to have a very strong social dimension. Many of the contributing factors coalesce within disadvantaged communities. While temperature can be mapped and modelled within urban environments, the extent to which people are vulnerable to heat stress is difficult to assess without detailed local knowledge. There may also be links between people’s vulnerability to drought and their vulnerability to high temperatures. An understanding of vulnerability to both of these hazards draws attention to the ways in which people on low incomes, in particular locations, with particular medical conditions or mobility restrictions, may be the least protected and therefore the hardest hit.
Targeted responses to hot weather in Toronto68
Toronto’s Heat Alert and Response System is considered to be a prime example of climate change adaptation. A Heat Alert is called, and broadcast on local media, when hot weather is forecast that has a greater than 65% chance of contributing to excess deaths.
The Hot Weather Response Plan coordinates the efforts of several municipal and community agencies to provide heat-related services to vulnerable populations. These include children, the elderly, those with pre-existing illnesses, and the homeless. Response measures include opening cooling centres and extending the hours of swimming pools. Local targeting is achieved by an integration of health data with social and geographic data using GIS. This can combine, for example, physical factors that are likely to increase exposure to heat (such as surface temperature) and factors that may affect people’s resilience to heat (including age).
Although not concerned specifically with urban social issues arising from climate impacts, many of the research and policy gaps identified in a Sniffer report relate to urban populations69. These include impacts concerning potentially higher crime rates, employment and education. Other issues needing further exploration and action include the impact of global climate change on migration (climate refugees) and more focus on promoting community-led adaptation, including action by the private sector and voluntary organisations.
5.4 Place 5.4.1 Introduction The impacts of climate change on place are largely dependent on three main factors: geography, topography and land-use. We cannot change geography or topography but we can change how we use land. The configuration of our towns and cities; how we plan, design and (re)develop urban infrastructure; the materials and urban fabric that we use are all factors that influence urban climate resilience and future energy needs of cities.
68 Rosenzweig C., Solecki, W. D., Hammer, S. A. And Mehrotra, S. (Eds) (2011). ‘Climate change and cities: first assessment report of the Urban Climate Change Research Network (ARC3)’, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York, P205. 69http://tinyurl.com/7rgo4vt
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The UK Committee on Climate Change warns that land-use planning decisions can be a double-edged sword: “Land use planning decisions can directly help to increase resilience to climate risks, but can also lock future generations into a development pathway that increases vulnerability or one that will be very costly to maintain or reverse” 70. The Committee notes that, although national and local policies appear to be having an effect, there is no data on the amount of development that is still happening in areas of flood risk or behind eroding coastlines.
5.4.2 Flooding Approximately half of the European population lives 50 km or less from the coast71, with 19% (86 million) living within a 10 km coastal strip72 – see Figure 3 below. It is likely that such numbers will increase in the future, especially in the more densely populated urban regions, putting more people and assets at risk from rising sea level.
Figure 3: Population concentrations71
70 ASC (2011). ‘How well is Scotland preparing for climate change?’ First report to the Scottish Government by the Adaptation Sub-Committee of the UK Committee on Climate Change, Chapter 5, ‘Analysis of progress in the priority areas’. 71 ESTAT (2009). ‘Statistics in Focus’, 47/2009. 72 EEA (2006). ‘The changing faces of Europe's coastal areas’, EEA Report No 6/2006, European Environment Agency, Copenhagen. http://www.eea.europa.eu/publications/eea_report_2006_6
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Flood risk will also increase for settlements in low-lying areas (more common in deprived areas of cities), homes with a ground floor, and the absence of SUDS (Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems) which are easier to fit in new-build and urban development rather than for existing settlements73.
Flood resilient technologies that can be used to protect buildings include barriers, protection walls and flood products. Much of the existing technology is typically temporary in nature and requires human intervention such as a householder or local authority team. The development of smart products that work within flood resilience systems and can be modelled and implemented as part of national regulations and policy is the basis of the SMARTesT project74. More than two thirds of European cities have to deal with flood risk management issues on a regular basis. Early Warning Systems (EWS) can play a crucial role in mitigating flood risk by detecting conditions and predicting the onset of a catastrophe before it occurs, and by providing real time information during an event. The UrbanFlood project75 is investigating the use of sensors within flood embankments to support an online early warning system, with real time emergency management and routine asset management. The EWS framework will link sensors via the internet to predictive models and emergency warning systems, to assess their condition and the likelihood of failure.
Urban regeneration and sustainable urban drainage76
The neighbourhood of Augustenborg (Malmö, Sweden) has experienced periods of socio-economic decline in recent decades, and frequently suffered from floods caused by overflowing drainage systems. Augustenborg underwent a significant regeneration between 1998 and 2002, in part to improve flood risk management. Significant physical changes in infrastructure took place as a result, focusing on the creation of sustainable urban drainage systems, including ditches, retention ponds, green roofs and green spaces. The project has resulted in a successful outcome as the rainwater runoff rates have decreased by half, and the increase in green space has improved the image of the area.
Complementing the development of early warning systems, FloodProBE77 is focusing on cost- effective flood protection and damage mitigation measures for urban areas. FloodProBE will develop, test and disseminate technologies, methods, concepts and tools for risk assessment and mitigation, focussing particularly on the adaptation of new and existing buildings (retrofitting) and on infrastructure networks.
73 Joseph Rowntree Foundation (2011). ‘Pluvial (rain-related) flooding in urban areas: the invisible hazard’. 74 SMARTEST FP7 http://www.floodresilience.eu/en 75 UrbanFlood http://urbanflood.eu 76 http://www.grabs-eu.org/membersArea/files/Executive_summary.pdf 77 http://www.floodprobe.eu/
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5.4.3 Drought and associated risks The Joseph Rowntree Foundation has summarised multiple ways in which hot and dry weather can cause disruption to the economy, society and the environment78. They include:
• Water shortages (domestic, agriculture, industry, fire and rescue) when combined with low precipitation and high water use; • Increase in the number and severity of wildfires (grassland and forest); • Failure of transport networks due to buckling rails and overheating of train and tram power sources; • Failure of power supplies due to overheating of electricity sub-stations and lack of cooling water; • Impaired water quality, caused by evaporation leading to concentration of water pollution and low flows in water courses; • Increased hospital admissions and pressure on care services; • Psychological impacts, increased violence and social unrest.
Drying out of the subsoil during periods of drought can lead to subsidence, causing structural damage to properties and infrastructure. According to the insurance industry, property damage from soil movement is equivalent to that incurred from flooding and it eclipses the costs incurred by most other natural hazards in some European regions. The risk of soil subsidence is not only increasing but it is also spreading to new geographic areas in Europe79. Extreme drought can lead to acute shortages and recurrent rationing of water, causing political and social competition over water resources. Extreme drought can also have a huge impact on local economies, leading to the closure of businesses, schools and leisure facilities. Measures intended to alleviate water shortages, such as water metering and charging, may create more social and health problems due to problems of water affordability.
Seasonal changes in water availability will also influence groundwater dynamics, and the water balance of groundwater systems. This occurs especially in mountain regions, where small variations in temperature can have a critical influence on rainfall, snowfall and snowmelt80.
A catalogue of European adaptive initiatives for the water sector has been compiled by PREPARED81, to support the implementation and development of solutions for addressing climate change impacts on the urban water sector. An online version will follow to help cities, utilities and other stakeholders plan new investments and build connections and alliances with other planners and engineers. Suggested technologies to assist adaptation in the water sector are detailed by UNEP82.
78Joseph Rowntree Foundation (2011) ‘Vulnerability to heatwaves and drought: adaptation to climate change’, http://www.jrf.org.uk/publications/vulnerability-heatwaves-and-drought-adaptation-climate-change 79 Swiis Re (2011) ‘The hidden risks of climate change: an increase in property damage from soil subsidence.’ 80 GENESIS FP7 http://www.genesis-fp7.eu/ 81 PREPARED FP7 http://www.prepared-fp7.eu/ 82 UNEP (2011). ‘TNA Guidebook Series: Technologies for Climate Change Adaptation – The Water Sector’. http://tech-action.org/Guidebooks/TNA_Guidebook_AdaptationWater.pdf
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5.4.4 Urban fabric and infrastructure Buildings and infrastructure are vulnerable to climate change impacts, from flooding, storms and subsidence to the urban heat island (UHI) effect, all of which can cause acute damage and also accelerate long-term degradation of the urban fabric. Without more frequent routine maintenance and management, the health and safety risk from damaged buildings and infrastructure will increase. A study of the Norwegian coastal city of Bergen83 anticipates accelerated atmospheric corrosion of building facades based on an annual average temperature increase of 20C and increase in precipitation of twenty per cent, leading to higher maintenance costs. It recommends adaptation measures including the reduction of air pollutants, monitoring of degradation, adjustment of building standards and guidelines, and use of more suitable materials and building techniques.
Adaptation measures to reduce the UHI include those that can be applied to individual buildings, such as green roofs and walls, and those that are addressed by planning at a neighbourhood or city scale. An URBAN-NET pilot study on the UHI effect confirmed the potential for using geometry to mitigate daytime thermal stress. TOPEUM84 reports on observations and first experimental results from a field measurement campaign at the neighbourhood/urban scale. The ultimate goal of the project is to investigate the influence of urban design and architectural parameters in the resulting urban climate and consequent energy usage. “Whilst the general cause of overheating of cities is known, it is not well understood how much influence different urbanisation characteristics and building materials have on the intensity of urban overheating.”
Reducing the UHI effect in Tokyo85
Tokyo’s Metropolitan Government has addressed the UHI in its environmental masterplanning since 2002. Measures undertaken include urban planning to improve the flow of wind through the city, installing pavements that block heat and absorb moisture, roadside tree plantings, and increasing the greening of the roofs and walls of buildings.
There have been numerous studies assessing the effectiveness of different applications of urban greenery (street trees, green walls), and various cities encourage their uptake through planning policy.
83 Grøntoft, T. (2011) ‘Climate change impact on building surfaces and facades’, International Journal of Climate Change Strategies and Management, Special issue on ‘Municipalities addressing climate change: a case study of Norway’ Vol. 3 No. 4, 2011, pp. 374-385. 84 Neophytou, M., Forkaides, P., Panagiotou, I., Ioannou, I., Petrou, M., Sandberg, M., Wigo, H., Linden, E., Batchvarova, E., Videnov, P., Dimitroff, B. And Ovanov, A. (2011). ‘Towards optimization of urban planning and architectural parameters for energy use minimization in Mediterranean cities’, Proceedings of the World Renewable Energy Congress, 8-13 May 2011, Linkoping, Sweden. 85 Rosenzweig C., Solecki, W. D., Hammer, S. A. And Mehrotra, S. (Eds) (2011). ‘Climate change and cities: first assessment report of the Urban Climate Change Research Network (ARC3)’, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York. P240.
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5.4.5 Greenspace for increased resilience Suggested roles for greenspace in climate adaptation include: surface water management; stormwater absorption (street planters can absorb 75% of stormwater); wetlands in floodplains to reduce river flooding impacts, coastal greenspace to shelter against floods and erosion, and mitigation of the UHI effect84. To counteract the UHI in Freiburg, planning regulations require new buildings to be aligned with the prevailing winds and parking areas on the windward side of buildings to be ‘green’ rather than paved. This increases ambient moisture levels, helps to ‘flush out’ air pollution and provides natural cooling. Urban greenspace offers general quality of life improvements by providing shading and leisure and recreation space. It also brings multiple benefits for urban biodiversity such as providing green corridors and supporting ecosystem services. A comprehensive list of greenspace interventions and their multiple, beneficial impacts is given on pp10-12 of the greenspace scotland report84.
Barriers to greenspace provision include:
• Limited knowledge regarding why and how to adapt; by planners, decision makers and the public;
• Cynicism; • Policy gaps - Chicago, Portland and Toronto all have policies requiring or encouraging green roofs, whilst other cities may not;
• Limited resources – more focus is needed on the costs of alternative actions and of doing nothing;
• Conflicts over land-use, especially for valuable urban land84.
The North American urban agriculture experience86
This project demonstrates the multiple benefits of greenspace. It describes local growing to combat the difficulty of accessing healthy, local and reasonably-priced food, to combat the UHI effect, and to serve as stormwater abatement. An example is given of an Urban Agriculture Plan for Oakland (California), which includes an inventory of vacant land, and a tax credit for such land put into agricultural use.
The GRaBS (Green and Blue Space Adaptation for Urban Areas and Eco-towns) project aims to fill a gap in planning: “Green infrastructure including gardens, parks, productive landscapes, green corridors, green roofs and walls and blue infrastructure such as water bodies, rivers, streams, floodplains and sustainable drainage systems, play a vital role in creating climate resilient development – a role, which is currently not sufficiently recognised and utilised and lacks integration in mainstream planning87”. The GRaBS website includes a database of 15 case studies and describes “the processes that have supported the implementation of adaptation responses in a range of urban
86 http://blogs.worldbank.org/sustainablecities/the-north-american-urban-agriculture- experience?cid=ISG_E_WBWeeklyUpdate_NL 87 http://www.grabs-eu.org/
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areas across the world. The case studies therefore identify and highlight key factors in different areas (e.g. governance, stakeholder relationships, science and research) that influenced the success of adaptation responses in different locations” 88. There is a summary paragraph for each case study, some of which are included in the Annex to this report. Governance and data issues are identified as prominent barriers to adaptation.
GreenKeys: knowledge exchange across 12 European cities89
GreenKeys promotes urban greenspaces to improve the quality of life and increase the sustainability of cities. It is a partnership between 12 municipalities with eight research partners.
Pilot projects in each city involve local stakeholders to identify ways of increasing accessibility, social/ recreational value and ecological benefit. Examples of best practice from these pilots will be exchanged throughout the network. The plan shown here is for Leipzig.
Encouraging investment in green and blue infrastructure will become increasingly difficult in a worsening financial climate. Critical literature reviewsof greenspace and quality of life have highlighted a lack of research evidence quantifying the economic and social value of greenspace90. In an attempt to address this greenspace scotland has investigated the potential for applying the Social Return on Investment (SROI) approach to demonstrate and quantify the multiple benefits and impacts of greenspace and the activities which they attract. Their pilot study, ’Social Return on Investment of urban nature sites’91 applies SROI to four urban nature sites to assess their value, and suggests refinements to the method for future studies. The SROI method may strengthen arguments in support of greenspace provision for urban climate adaptation and other co-benefits.
88 http://www.grabs-eu.org/membersArea/files/Executive_summary.pdf 89 http://www.greenkeys-project.net/en/home.html 90 For example, http://www.greenspacescotland.org.uk/default.asp?page=465 91 greenspace scotland and SNH (2011) ‘Developing the role of greenspace in climate change mitigation and adaptation’, http://www.greenspacescotland.org.uk/greenspace-and-climate-change.aspx
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6. About URBAN-NEXUS
URBAN-NEXUS enables knowledge transfer and stimulates dialogue to form long-lasting partnerships amongst researchers, practitioners, policy makers, civil society and SMEs. It promotes integrated approaches to sustainable urban development.
URBAN-NEXUS is a Coordination and Support Action funded by European Framework Programme 7 from 1st September 2011 until 31st August 2014.
[email protected] www.urban-nexus.org.eu
6.1 The project consortium Co-ordinator Netherlands Institute for City Innovation Studies Mistra Urban Futures Netherlands – Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden Sniffer, UK
EUROCITIES, Europe
UAB – Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain
ICLEI – Sustainability FORMAS – Swedish Research Management and Urban Council for Environment and Governance, Europe Spatial Planning, Sweden
UWE – University of the ADVANCITY West of England, UK French Ministry of Industry, France
ASDE – Agency for
Sustainable development and Euro-Integration, SIRS – Information Bulgaria System and Spatial Reference, France
REC – Regional REC,
Bauhaus Dessau Foundation, Germany Environmental Centre for Central and Eastern Europe, Hungary
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Synthesis Report: Annex of Case Studies URBAN CLIMATE RESILIENCE
URBAN-NEXUS Synthesis Report: Urban Climate Resilience, Annex of Case Studies,
1. General approaches to adaptation and resilience ...... 5
1.1 Generic tools and guidelines ...... 5
1.1.1 Stadtklimalotse (Urban climate pilot) ...... 5
1.1.2 Wiki on adaptation to climate change, Germany ...... 5
1.1.3 REGKLAM – development and testing of an integrated regional climate change adaptation programme for the model region of Dresden ...... 6
1.1.4 SUPER - Sustainable Urban Planning for Ecosystem services and Resilience, in Europe and South Africa ...... 7
1.1.5 Gothenburg Free Port, Sweden ...... 7
1.1.6 emBRACE - Building Resilience Amongst Communities in Europe ...... 9
1.1.7 Enhancing cities’ capacity to manage their vulnerability to climate change in Sweden 9
1.1.8 Climate adaptation as a new challenge for urban development in Switzerland ...... 10
1.1.9 A coordinated approach to adapting cities to climate-induced risks in Sweden ...... 10
1.1.10 Climate change adaptation indicators in the UK ...... 11
1.2 Case studies ...... 11
1.2.1 Climate adaptation in Fredrikstad, Norway ...... 11
1.2.2 Climate change adaptation in Basel, Switzerland ...... 12
2. Assessing risk and uncertainty ...... 12
2.1 Generic tools and guidelines ...... 12
2.1.1 Extreme weather events and the handling of storm-water in Sweden ...... 12
2.1.2 ClimateXChange, Scotland - significance, risk and uncertainty ...... 13
2.1.3 Comparative risk assessment in Davos and Zurich, Switzerland ...... 13
2.1.4 Risk assessment in Bulgaria ...... 13
2.2 Case studies ...... 13
2.2.1 Cities preparing for climate change: a study of six urban regions ...... 13
2.2.2 EIONET 2010 cities project scoping study ...... 14
3. New governance approaches ...... 14
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3.1 Generic tools and guidelines ...... 14
3.1.1 Solidarity City , Germany ...... 14
3.1.2 Distributed urban risk governance, increasing society’s adaptive capacity for climate change in Sweden ...... 14
3.1.3 Resilis, a project for cities’ organisational resilience, France ...... 15
3.2 Case studies ...... 15
3.2.1 Cities preparing for climate change: a study of six urban regions ...... 15
3.2.2 The A9 Project ...... 15
3.2.3 Climate-ready Clyde ...... 16
4. Adapting to health impacts ...... 16
4.1 Generic tools and guidelines ...... 16
4.1.1 Risk assessment and risk management of drinking water supply ...... 16
4.2 Case studies ...... 17
4.2.1 Municipality of Budapest, package of measures for summer heat ...... 17
4.2.2 Targeted responses to hot weather in Toronto ...... 17
4.2.3 Health effects of flooding in the UK ...... 18
5. Reconsidering land use and water for adaptation strategies ...... 18
5.1 Generic tools and guidelines ...... 18
5.1.1 Research into urban nature and green space structures in the context of climate change, in Germany ...... 18
5.1.2 Outdoor thermal comfort in European cities ...... 19
5.1.3 ‘Vertical green’ as a building material in Sweden ...... 19
5.1.4 R&D on sustainable construction for the London Olympics ...... 20
5.1.5 The influence of city trees on microclimate in Sweden ...... 20
5.1.6 Green infrastructure for ecological sustainability and human wellbeing in Sweden ... 20
5.1.7 Modelling climate change impact on coastal flooding and erosion in Sweden...... 21
5.2 Case studies ...... 22
5.2.1 Reducing the urban heat island (UHI) effect in Tokyo ...... 22
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5.2.2 ZFarm: urban farming with zero acreage in Berlin ...... 22
5.2.3 Architectural solutions to extreme weather ...... 23
5.2.4 Green and Blue Space adaptation for urban areas and eco-towns (GRaBS) ...... 23
5.2.5 Solanova Project, Dunaújváros, Hungary ...... 25
5.2.6 GreenKeys: knowledge exchange across 12 European cities ...... 25
5.2.7 The North American urban agriculture experience ...... 26
6. Projects for later dialogue cafés ...... 26
6.1 Mitigation and adaptation ...... 26
6.1.1 Generic tools and guidelines ...... 26
6.1.2 Case studies...... 30
6.2 Innovative approaches to governance ...... 33
6.2.1 Governing the transformation of local infrastructure systems in Sweden ...... 33
6.2.2 Gendered structures of climate change response in Sweden ...... 33
6.2.3 Winning hearts and minds, UK...... 34
6.3 Collaborative approaches ...... 34
6.3.1 ClimateXChange ...... 34
6.3.2 Advancity’s competitiveness cluster on sustainable cities, Paris region ...... 34
6.3.3 Innovative projects for sustainable cities in France ...... 35
6.3.4 SME projects in Bulgaria ...... 35
6.3.5 REC Conference Centre, Szentendre, Hungary ...... 36
6.3.6 USE Efficiency ...... 36
6.3.7 The Energy Academy, Manchester ...... 36
6.4 Technological leverage...... 37
6.4.1 Local Energy Management Agency, Gran Canaria ...... 37
6.4.2 ‘Innovation in Design, Construction and Operation of buildings for People’ (IDCOP), UK 37
6.4.3 GREENOV renovation cluster ...... 38
6.4.4 Luas light rail system in Dublin...... 38
Page 3 of 39 URBAN-NEXUS Synthesis Report: Urban Climate Resilience, Annex of Case Studies,
6.4.5 Assessing the benefits of urban forest, Canada ...... 39
6.5 Integrated information tools ...... 39
6.5.1 Bulgarian Spatial Data Infrastructure (BSDI) ...... 39
6.5.2 Data needs: an urban social-ecological atlas ...... 39
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1. General approaches to adaptation and resilience
1.1 Generic tools and guidelines
1.1.1 Stadtklimalotse (Urban climate pilot)1 This is an online decision support tool for urban climate change adaptation, aimed at planners and policy makers from small and medium sized towns and cities, who have a need for quick and easy access to information. It is mainly focused on German and German speaking audiences; however, most of the measures are applicable for any city or town, and international best practice examples are included. The database of urban climate change adaptation measures (Version 4.0 beta; as at January 2012) contains 138 measures in 10 fields of action (energy, health, tourism, water, infrastructure, transportation, green spaces, air quality, agriculture, forestry), 330 links to legislative texts and 61 examples for planning and implementation of measures; further background information on climate change research and an integrated tool for a quick urban vulnerability assessment. These are used to guide the reader through the process of adaptation, raise key questions in a structured manner, and suggest methods and examples – it does not attempt to make direct recommendations for action.
This has been applied in Stuttgart (see section 1.11.2.3) as an integrated regional approach to adaptation, encompassing the city and surrounding towns.
1.1.2 Wiki on adaptation to climate change, Germany2 To prepare municipalities for adaptation to the consequences of climate change, Climate Alliance is developing guidelines in the form of a web-based guide for municipalities and an emergency support kit to deal with extreme occurrences. The aim of the guidelines is to help cities and municipalities in the development of an adaptation strategy and in the initiation and implementation of local adaptation activities. The information contained in the guidelines will be made available as a Wiki within an internet-based tool. The aim is for volunteer authors to develop the guidelines. Particularly specialists from the over 450 German Climate Alliance municipalities are invited to actively participate.
1 www.stadtklimalotse.net/english/ Mark Fleischhauer, Senior Research Fellow at TU Dortmund University, Institute of Spatial Planning (IRPUD)
2 Dr. Andreas Kress, Senior project manager at Climate Alliance, [email protected]
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1.1.3 REGKLAM – development and testing of an integrated regional climate change adaptation programme for the model region of Dresden3 The overall aim of the project is to ensure quality of life, and at the same time make use of economic opportunities in order to increase the competitiveness of the region in future.
The objectives are:
• To develop an Integrated Regional Climate Change Adaptation Programme (IRKAP) based on regionalised climate and economic scenarios, specific adaptation options and cooperation with implementing stakeholders;
• To initiate and accompany the implementation of key projects and further adaptation measures; and
• To consolidate a regional network of stakeholders.
The project is organised in four modules, which integrate several thematically discrete subprojects. All work is oriented towards the IRKAP, and the establishment of a regional adaptation network as the central output of REGKLAM.
The main product of the REGKLAM project is the IRKAP. The programme considers possible climatic and societal changes and their future consequences, and provides tangible adaptation options which address various stakeholders in the Dresden Model Region. It is developed by a continuous communication process between the scientific partners from different disciplines and the stakeholders of the region. Scenarios and adaptation measures are summarised in a manner, which is accessible to decision makers and other stakeholders. The programme is an informal instrument, which aims at fostering the implementation of adaptation measures at various decision-making levels, including industry, regional and local administration, and the state government. It is based on six strategic issues (buildings, open space and urban structures; water systems; agriculture and forestry; regional economy; nature conservation; public health), which are identified and developed in close cooperation with stakeholders from the major fields of activity in the region.
The main challenges are:
• Urban regional climate change adaptation – connection between practice and research;
• Complex issues – urban region as a laboratory for inter- and transdisciplinary research;
• Researcher – a player in the local development arena;
• Urban region as a living research laboratory – governance, participation, cooperation, transfer; and
• Application oriented basic research – redefining evaluation criteria, new forms of scientific excellence.
3 http://www.klimzug.de/en/98.php ; http://www.regklam.de/1/home/ Tobias Geyer, Regional Office for Coordination City of Dresden; Alfred Olfert, Scientific Project Management, Leibniz Institute of Ecological Urban and Regional Development, Dresden
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1.1.4 SUPER - Sustainable Urban Planning for Ecosystem services and Resilience, in Europe and South Africa4 SUPER is exploring how to integrate ecosystem services into urban spatial planning to improve promote urban resilience. The project strives to lay a foundation for innovation in urban planning and governance that enable cities to navigate change, build local capacity to respond to disturbance and prepare for uncertainty and foster a transition to more sustainable urban trajectories. Through in-depth case studies in three cities (Stockholm, Istanbul, and Arnhem-Nijmegen) with a reference city of Cape Town (South Africa) and in combination with comparative cross-city studies.
The partners are committed to developing theoretical frameworks that are of strategic use in professional practice. This calls for pan-European collaborative research that can lead by example, and that can deliver first class interdisciplinary-based scientific research with new knowledge exchange between science and practice.
Partners and ongoing work
Ecologists and spatial planners from the three city-regions collaborate together with academic and professional partners are developing knowledge, planning practices and policies that can address two key dimensions of urban resilience:
• the inclusion of diverse ecological processes and functions in planning for metropolitan landscapes, and
• the integration of the many human relationships, physical spaces, urban form and design, and the institutions that are integrally connected to the urban fabric and which support social- ecological links in urban development.
The concepts of resilience and ecosystem services have proven to be very useful theoretical constructs to bridge the disciplinary divide between urban planners and ecologists. Partners are involved in outreach activities, including workshops and public performances. Researchers are working with urban planners in completing a manual for municipal- and regional spatial planning for implementing ecosystem services in strategic planning. A television documentary, “Green Urban Commons” on urban gardening and food production is coming soon.
1.1.5 Gothenburg Free Port, Sweden5 This transdisciplinary project emphasises the need for holistic planning strategies to avoid unintended consequences of urban adaptation measures.The overall aim is to develop knowledge and methods that enable an integrated assessment of the impact of climate induced risks on society.
Specific objectives are to:
4 http://www.beijer.kva.se/research_under.php?id=30 Johan Colding of the Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences 5http://www.gvc.gu.se/Forskning/klimat/stadsklimat/gucg/current-projects/adapting-cities-to-climate- induced-risks/ Sofia Thorsson, Associate Professor, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Gothenburg, Sweden
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i) Analyse the role of land use, vegetation and urban morphology for reducing the risks of extreme weather (heat waves, flooding, landslides, changes in pollution situation);
ii) Evaluate socio-economic impacts of climate change and different adaptation measures;
iii) Develop and propose innovative adaptation strategies to manage climate induced risks .
The free-port area in Gothenburg, Sweden, provides a case study to refine the individual scientific methods and interdisciplinary and intersectoral cooperation and integration. Methods will include statistical downscaling of meteorological data, thermal comfort and air quality modelling, stratified vulnerability analysis and natural risk and multicriteria analysis. The project brings together experts in urban climate, atmospheric science, natural risk assessment, stratified vulnerability and multi- criteria analyses, with local city planners in an integrated research effort. Plans for climate adaptation will be developed and proposed. Stakeholder involvement will promote transfer of knowledge and applicability of results.
Figure 1: Four scenarios for the Free Port
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1.1.6 emBRACE - Building Resilience Amongst Communities in Europe6 The emBRACE project aims to improve the pan-European framing of the resilience concept. Using interdisciplinary, socially inclusive and collaborative methods, it will develop a conceptual and methodological approach, to clarify how the resilience capacity of a society confronted with natural hazards and disasters can be characterised, defined and measured. Based on a systematic evaluation of a broad literature base, the project will first develop an initial conceptual framework. Existing datasets will be interrogated to identify variables that provide indications of resilience, and which are consistent with the framework. The framework and data will then be ‘tested’ and ground truthed by means of several carefully-chosen European case studies (in England, Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, Switzerland, Italy and Turkey) which will be differentiated by hazard, governance setting, socio-demographic-economic context, and scale.
Indicators to measure resilience will be recommended, based on practical experience and grounded theories. A wide range of stakeholders and experts will be incorporated into different knowledge-sharing groups. A key differentiator of the emBRACE project approach is its seeking out of those people and groups not normally included; not as subjects of research but as partners in the research and experts in their own right (e.g. through Peer-To-Peer Learning Exchanges with grassroots groups).
1.1.7 Enhancing cities’ capacity to manage their vulnerability to climate change in Sweden7 Vulnerability to climate change is a critical factor for both adaptive capacity, and for the possibility of achieving sustainable development. Even though the climate system is global, most impacts of climate change will be experienced locally. A changing climate will also affect city planning, in that areas may become unsuitable for development due to increased risk of flooding and landslides. Cities and regions, thus, will increasingly get a key role in assessing the requirements for adaptation.
This project aims at enhancing the institutional capacity to assess society’s vulnerability to climate change in cities and regions. The project of will apply three methods: double exposure, climate vulnerability index and downscaled socioeconomic scenarios, as well as a number of tools that are used to project biogeophysical impacts of climate change. The methods and tools, developed by international research, emphasise different aspects of vulnerability. The project also uses participatory methodologies to study how the vulnerability methods and impact tools are used within municipal and regional administration, i.e. in the decision processes that they are meant to support.
A group of key stakeholders will be involved throughout the project duration. The outputs will be an integrated vulnerability tool, and criteria for robust decision making designed for planners within municipal and regional administration.
6 http://embrace-eu.org/ Sylvia Kruse, Research associate, Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL) 7 FORMAS project 2006-2234, Anna Jonsson, Linköping University
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1.1.8 Climate adaptation as a new challenge for urban development in Switzerland8 Cities are appropriate areas for climate protection as well as for adaptation to climate change. On one hand this is where many of the emissions harmful to the climate are produced, whilst on the other hand urban regions are especially vulnerable to the effects of climate change. There is a lack of information on the need for action and potential for adaptation in Swiss cities, as adaptation to climate change is presently discussed mainly in terms of natural hazards (e.g. floods, avalanche, mudflows). For other potential effects of climate change - for instance heat islands and fresh air corridors, availability of fresh water as drinking water, cooling and processing of water, or provision of electricity - there exist only a few analyses and strategic concepts for urban development.
In this project led by the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL, Economics and Social Science, representatives of twelve big Swiss cities were interviewed by telephone, concerning their strategies and measures for adaptation to climate change. The respondents were representatives of urban planning and environmental departments. The aim of these interviews was to identify, from the viewpoint of the cities, the major challenges of climate change and to systematically record the existing activities of the cities. Best practices and pilot projects were highlighted.
1.1.9 A coordinated approach to adapting cities to climate-induced risks in Sweden9 There is a strong need for the establishment of resilient cities, which can absorb changes, manage climate induced risks and recognise environmental, social and economic development in an integrated manner. The aim of this transdisciplinary project is to:
1) Analyse the role of land use, vegetation and urban morphology for reducing climate change induced effects and risks (floods, landslides, heat waves, extreme air pollution events),
2) Evaluate socio-economical impacts, and
3) Develop and propose innovative adaptation strategies.
Three urban districts in Göteborg urban area will be selected for case studies: Masthuggskajen (existing environment), Frihamnen (developing area) and Papyrus (large developing area). Methods will include thermal comfort and air quality modelling; natural hazards risk assessment; stratified vulnerability and multi-criteria analysis in an iterative participative stakeholder approach. The consortium includes experts in outdoor thermal comfort, atmospheric science, geo technique and socio-economy as well as local actors working with urban development in Göteborg. By introducing knowledge and research normally not integrated at an early stage in
8 http://www.wsl.ch/fe/wisoz/projekte/klimawandel_staedte/index_DE ; http://www.are.admin.ch/dokumentation/00880/index.html?lang=de&download=NHzLpZeg7t,lnp6I0NTU042l 2Z6ln1acy4Zn4Z2qZpnO2Yuq2Z6gpJCEdH94fGym162epYbg2c_JjKbNoKSn6A-- Sylvia Kruse, Research associate, Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL) 9 FORMAS projects 2010-358 and 2010-1706, Sofia Thorsson, Associate professor, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Gothenburg, Sweden
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the planning process, goal conflicts and synergies between different aspects can be identified and implemented.
1.1.10 Climate change adaptation indicators in the UK This is a partnership between Sniffer10 and ClimateXChange11, testing out a new collaborative approach between a commercial consultancy and an academic consultancy. The overall aim of the project is to help inform the future development and use of adaptation-related indicators by building on previous indicator work, including the June 2011 AEA report commissioned by the Adaptation Sub-Committee (ASC) and related recent reports on climate change ‘preparedness’.
For the purpose of this project, adaption-related indicators will be defined as: “Indicators that focus on both a) planned adaptation to climate change impacts and b) the actual state of adaptation achieved.” Adaptation-related indicators will measure progress and performance in both:
a) Building adaptive capacity, where indicators are needed to monitor the progress in implementing adaptation measures (referred to as process-based indicators).
b) Delivering adaptation actions and outcomes, where indicators are needed to measure the effectiveness of adaptation policies and of society’s activities in general (outcome-based indicators).
A combination of process-based and outcome-based indicators are needed in order to monitor and improve progress in adaptation. These definitions are in line with the definition of adaptation indicators outlined in the 2011 ASC report.
1.2 Case studies
1.2.1 Climate adaptation in Fredrikstad, Norway12 When Fredrikstad municipality unveiled its climate plan in 2007, the city council decided to map Fredrikstad’s vulnerability to future climate change – in addition to efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The municipality wanted to draw up a
10 http://www.sniffer.org.uk/our-work.aspx 11 http://www.climatexchange.org.uk/index.php/cxc-work Ragne Low, Knowledge Officer, ClimateXChange, Scotland 12http://www.regjeringen.no/en/dep/md/kampanjer/engelsk-forside-for- klimatilpasning/library/cases/climate-adaptation-in-fredrikstad.html?id=633495
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strategy to counteract vulnerability where necessary or desirable. By cooperating with the NORADAPT research project, Fredrikstad municipality has received extensive technical input for its work on climate adaptation.
The project report is the first total documentation in the NORADAPT project of a municipal strategy for climate adaptation. It presents a local climate vulnerability assessment based on the methodical approach developed in the project. The twofold approach looks at natural and the societal vulnerability. The vulnerability analysis is extensive and can serve as a model for other municipalities. It is divided into five main topics: plan for the city areas and municipal plan; roads, water and drainage; health and pollution; agriculture and forestry; and biodiversity. Vulnerability under current climate conditions, societal characteristics of vulnerability, future challenges and possible measures are all reviewed.
1.2.2 Climate change adaptation in Basel, Switzerland13 This report was produced by Basel City’s Office for Environment and Energy, in the Department of Economy, Social Affairs and Environment. It describes the likely impacts of climate change on Basel, and presents a scenario for 2050. The need for action, and suggested adaptation measures, are given for a range of sectors including shipping, buildings and infrastructure, urban drainage, air quality and urban climate and Health
2. Assessing risk and uncertainty
2.1 Generic tools and guidelines
2.1.1 Extreme weather events and the handling of storm-water in Sweden14 This project focuses on the identification and analysis of extreme precipitation events in a changing climate in different environmental conditions, together with methods to reduce the associated peak flows and flooding consequences in different environments. It encompasses the following topics:
a) Changed rain intensities,
b) Altered precipitation pattern such as clustering or longer rain duration and consequent implications for design,
c) Runoff following snowmelt in combination with rain, and
d) Impact of combined high receiving water levels and heavy rainfall.
13 The full-text report is available in German on http://www.aue.bs.ch/klimafolgenbericht.pdf . Sylvia Kruse, Research associate, Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL) 14 FORMAS project 2010-121, Lars Bengtsson, Swedish Agricultural University
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The different methodologies employed are largely based on the analysis of existing data. Different climate scenarios will also be used to assess the impacts of future climate change. The extreme situations identified will be applied to combinations of different sustainable urban drainage systems. Direct practical applications in Trelleborg and Malmö, on the Swedish coast, are for high sea levels in combination with rain.
2.1.2 ClimateXChange, Scotland - significance, risk and uncertainty15 ClimateXChange is Scotland’s centre of expertise on climate change. Activities in this particular area are understanding, synthesising and communicating the risk and significance of climate change. These activities, and other work by the centre, will be underpinned by: computational expertise, to estimate statistical and geographical distributions of impacts; and by expertise in the perception and communication of risk to improve understanding of stakeholder responses to the potential consequences of climate change.
2.1.3 Comparative risk assessment in Davos and Zurich, Switzerland16 This pilot project developed a methodology for evaluating climatic risks and opportunities, and their interdependencies. The consistency of the evaluation will allow for cross-sectoral comparisons across Switzerland to identify the highest priorities for adaptation measures.
2.1.4 Risk assessment in Bulgaria17 In response to Bulgarian and European legislation, the UNDP and Bulgarian government funded the publication of a manual on the risk assessment and prevention of disasters. These include flooding, geological or seismic risks, and biological or chemical hazards.
2.2 Case studies
2.2.1 Cities preparing for climate change: a study of six urban regions18 Barriers to adaptation strategies are identified in the six cities of London, New York, Boston, Halifax, Vancouver and Seattle. They include:
• Limited public understanding of the urban impacts of climate change – for which it recommends education;
15 http://www.climatexchange.org.uk/index.php/cxc-work/cxc-coreactivites/cxc-sru Ragne Low, Knowledge Officer, ClimateXchange, Scotland 16 This report is not yet publicly available. An abstract in German is available on http://www.wsl.ch/fe/wisoz/projekte/klimarisiken/index_DE. Sylvia Kruse, Research associate, Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL) 17 Ina Gencheva, Project assistant, ASDE ‘Ecoregions’ 18 http://www.cleanairpartnership.org/pdf/cities_climate_change.pdf May 2007, Clean Air Partnership, in Canada
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• Uncertainty about the extent of climate change impacts, as data are insufficient to drive a detailed specification of adequate adaptation measures;
• Known costs of adaptation raise more objections than the unquantifiable costs of inaction.
2.2.2 EIONET 2010 cities project scoping study19 This study gives summary examples of cities engaged in projects on climate change vulnerability assessment, ‘early adapters’, and outlines adaptation appropriate for different types of vulnerability.
3. New governance approaches
3.1 Generic tools and guidelines
3.1.1 Solidarity City , Germany20 This project is developing recommendations for climate-related activities of local cooperatives. The objective is to raise the profile of the cooperative movement as an alternative mode of local climate governance, in order to maximise civic involvement in local decision-making.
3.1.2 Distributed urban risk governance, increasing society’s adaptive capacity for climate change in Sweden21 Climate change is reducing the capacity of urban institutions and associated security and governance systems to deal with climatic extremes and variability. There is an absence of research on the adaptation capacities of citizens - individuals and households. This project is generating knowledge on the role and potential for a more distributed risk of governance, where institutions’ and people´s local capacities and strategies for climate change adaptation can support and complement each other.
The research will be carried out in close cooperation with Helsingborg and Malmö municipalities and involve citizens living in areas vulnerable to climate change. Adaptation strategies from other countries will be analysed to identify lessons for Sweden.
19 ‘Urban Regions: Vulnerabilities, Vulnerability Assessments by Indicators and Adaptation Options for Climate Change Impacts - Scoping Study’, ETC/ACC Technical Paper 2010/12, December 2010. (European Topic Centre on Air and Climate Change)
20 http://www.solidarischestadt.de/ (in German), Dr. Heike Walk, Head of section, Centre for Technology and Society, TU Berlin 21 FORMAS project 2011-901, Christine Wamsler, Department of Fire Engineering and Systems Safety & Lund University Centre for Risk Assessment and Managment
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3.1.3 Resilis, a project for cities’ organisational resilience, France22 This is a collaborative research project, about the management of human and technical urban systems for cities’ organisational resilience. It aims to develop innovative organisational and methodological solutions to improve urban resilience, using three types of measures:
• improving multi-scale and multi-actor governance,
• developing the populations’ self-reliance, and
• optimising the management of technical networks.
The main objective is to design methods and tools dedicated to local authorities, network managers and citizens, in order to adapt and design social and technical urban systems able to cope with and absorb disturbances.
3.2 Case studies
3.2.1 Cities preparing for climate change: a study of six urban regions23 Using the example of early adapters - London, New York, Boston, Halifax, Vancouver and Seattle – this report emphasises the importance of governance in supporting the implementation of adaptation strategies:
“Knowledgeable and committed political or executive champions”, with individuals named from London and Washington; “Creation of a specific interagency or interdepartmental organization to lead the adaptation process to ensure the collaboration of relevant stakeholders” (from the same two examples). All cases had “the collaboration of a local community of strong researchers prepared to work with local governments on climate impacts and adaptation” – including academic, government and private sector researchers. There were dedicated staff and budgets in London and New York.
Communications and “outreach approaches included dedicated websites, brochures and factsheets, maps of vulnerable areas, newsletters, public presentations, workshops, conferences and other communication tools”, in London, Halifax (Canada), Seattle. Stakeholder engagement successfully achieved buy-in in London and New York, but not in Boston.
3.2.2 The A9 Project24 This project was completed by Adaptation Scotland in 2011. It demonstrated the value of a collaborative, area based approach. It helped familiarise local residents with adaptation tools and processes and laid useful foundations for further assessments and decision-making. Benefits
22 http://www.resilis.fr/en Vincent Cousin, Industrial Advisor, Advancity 23 http://www.cleanairpartnership.org/pdf/cities_climate_change.pdf May 2007, Clean Air Partnership, in Canada 24http://www.adaptationscotland.org.uk/4/88/0/The-A9-Project--Climate-Change-in-the-Central- Highlands.aspx
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included building networks and learning the skills and techniques of adaptation planning. As understanding, confidence and skill levels of practitioners improve, and as more organisations make progress in their own plans, this approach will have increasing value.
3.2.3 Climate-ready Clyde25 This is an area-based project being run by Adaptation Scotland. A series of workshops for public and private sector organisations is helping to build a common view of strategic priorities and possible responses to adaptation challenges in the area.
4. Adapting to health impacts
4.1 Generic tools and guidelines
4.1.1 Risk assessment and risk management of drinking water supply26 DRICKS (the Framework programme for drinking water research at Chalmers) has partnered with Techneau27, the Swedish Water and Wastewater Association28, and the City of Gothenburg for an EU FP7 project in seven countries.
The vital importance of a reliable and safe drinking water supply makes efficient risk management necessary for water utilities. Factors such as human health as well as economic development rely on a safe supply of drinking water. Current risks but also emerging risks due to, for example, climate changes pose a wide range of challenges. Useful tools are thus needed in order to enable proper risk assessments considering the entire supply system, from source to tap. Figure 2: Techneau’s project approach and constituent work areas (WA).
25 http://www.adaptationscotland.org.uk/4/110/0/Area-based-project-Glasgow-and-Clyde-Valley.aspx 26 http://www.dricks.chalmers.se/publikationer.asp.html - with a list of English-language publications. Lars Rosén, Professor at Chalmers University 27 http://www.techneau.org/ 28 http://www.svensktvatten.se/Om-Svenskt-Vatten/Om-oss/In-English/
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A series of risk assessment and decision support tools have been developed, applied, evaluated and communicated to facilitate proper risk assessments of drinking water supplies and an efficient use of available resources for risk reduction. The tools have been developed in research projects in close collaboration with end-users and applied in case studies. Guidance on the tools has been ed to end- users via several training seminars in different countries.
The case study applications are good examples of how to meet the recommendation by the World Health Organisation on managing drinking water risk by preparing Water Safety Plans. The training seminars and case study applications as well as the underlying work of developing the tools have generated an extensive amount of knowledge on risks to drinking water supplies, how to assess these risks and how to reduce them in a cost-effective manner.
Close collaboration with end-users and case study applications are important in developing and evaluating risk assessment and decision support tools. Training seminars have taught end-users how to apply the developed tools and use the results. Case studies and training seminars make it possible to identify and discuss critical issues that may be easily overseen. Such activities are key to adjusting methods to improve their applicability.
4.2 Case studies
4.2.1 Municipality of Budapest, package of measures for summer heat 29 The Municipality of Budapest and district Local Governments have formed a partnership with the Metropolitan Public Place Cleaning Company, Metropolitan Gardening Company, public administration offices, libraries, doctors’ surgeries, shopping malls and hypermarkets. In order to reduce city temperatures, street surfaces are watered every day. Public health information about heat and hydration is disseminated via public sector organisations’ websites. Practical steps to reduce impacts on health include the distribution of drinking water, the provision of taps and sprinklers in the parks, and allowing residents to visit air-conditioned public buildings to cool down during the day.
When these measures were implemented in the summer of 2011, there was a significant decrease in the number of ambulance call-outs on extremely hot days.
4.2.2 Targeted responses to hot weather in Toronto30 Toronto’s Heat Alert and Response System is considered to be a prime example of climate change adaptation. A Heat Alert is called, and broadcast on local media, when hot weather is forecast that has a greater than 65% chance of contributing to excess deaths.
The Hot Weather Response Plan coordinates the efforts of several municipal and community agencies to provide heat-related services to vulnerable populations. These include children, the
29 Miklos Marton, Project Manager, Regional Environment Centre (REC) 30 Rosenzweig C., Solecki, W. D., Hammer, S. A. And Mehrotra, S. (Eds ) (2011). ‘Climate change and cities: first assessment report of the Urban Climate Change Research Network (ARC3)’, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York. P205
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elderly, those with pre-existing illnesses, and the homeless. Response measures include opening cooling centres and extending the hours of swimming pools. Local targeting is achieved by an integration of health data with social and geographic data using GIS. This can combine, for example, physical factors that are likely to increase exposure to heat (such as surface temperature) and factors that may affect people’s resilience to heat (including age).
4.2.3 Health effects of flooding in the UK31 In June and July 2007, the wettest weather since British records began swept across the country, flooding dozens of cities. The reported health effects included deaths by drowning; acute stress, depression and other mental health problems; asthma attacks resulting from exposure to mould in flood-damaged buildings; and diarrhoea. This all happened despite the well-developed infrastructure and emergency services, demonstrating that their current configuration – in the UK and potentially in other countries – does not offer sufficient protection in the face of extreme weather.
5. Reconsidering land use and water for adaptation strategies
5.1 Generic tools and guidelines
5.1.1 Research into urban nature and green space structures in the context of climate change, in Germany32 This project addressed the development of transferable, practice-oriented climate adaptation strategies, for spatial planning and the management of green and open space systems in urban areas. The focus was on the following questions:
(1) What do urban green spaces contribute to cities and urban districts adapting to climate change?
(2) How can nature conservation and green space planning objectives be better implemented in urban development in the light of climate change?
Recommendations have been developed for the design of urban greenspaces and greenspace systems under climate change, and the implementation of greenspace planning measures.
31 Rosenzweig C., Solecki, W. D., Hammer, S. A. And Mehrotra, S. (Eds ) (2011). ‘Climate change and cities: first assessment report of the Urban Climate Change Research Network (ARC3)’, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York. P191. 32 http://www.ioer.de/1/projekte/abgeschlossene-projekte/p282/ Dr Juliane Mathey, Project Leader and Dr Stefanie Rößler, Research Associate, Leibniz Institute of Ecological Urban and Regional Development (IOER)
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5.1.2 Outdoor thermal comfort in European cities33 The overall objective of this European project (Gothenburg, Frankfurt and Porto) is to explore the mitigation of global/regional climate changes by urban features such as land use, urban geometry and vegetation, in order to develop a set of design guidelines and policies on how to maintain health and thermal comfort under changing climate conditions and extreme weather events in different European cities.
The influence of urban geometry, land use and vegetation on outdoor thermal comfort will be analyzed. Areas of high risk will be identified and the effectiveness of different adaption measures, such as built density, amount, type and location of vegetation etc. to reduce heat stress at a neighbourhood and city block scale will be investigated.
Once the significance of land use, urban morphology and street trees on outdoor thermal comfort and effects of regional climate change on outdoor thermal comfort at an urban, neighbourhood and street canyon scale is understood, it will be possible to evaluate and translate this knowledge to provide guidance on how to maintain health and outdoor thermal comfort under changed climate conditions and extreme weather events. The guidelines will help to communicate and implement existing knowledge, optimise design of land use, streets and buildings, and the use of street vegetation for different climate zones.
5.1.3 ‘Vertical green’ as a building material in Sweden34 The amount of vegetation in urban areas can effectively be increased by green walls, without reducing the available surface for construction. Apart from being a beautiful attraction, green walls moisturise the air, reducing the local temperature. Green walls also affect the energy balance of the building.
Outdoor green walls have rarely been used in Sweden and there is a lack of data regarding their installation. Knowledge is also a lacking about their influence on building energy balance and moisture content of facades. Recent advances in simulation software for thermal balances of buildings show the need for adequate input data from green wall systems for calculating the effect on local urban climate. At present the simulations are not accurately treating green walls.
This project will take a bio-technology approach studying both climbing vegetation and green wall modules. Solar powered irrigation and storm-water recirculation will be tested. Guidelines for selecting substrate, plant species and vegetation system and best practices for installation and maintenance will be produced. The research will identify critical steps during the construction and green wall/building integration. Reliable data will contribute to improved simulations of urban micro-climate and building energy balance also in a future changed climate.
33 Sofia Thorsson, Associate professor, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Gothenburg, 34 FORMAS project 2011-230, Tobias Emilsson, Swedish Agricultural University
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5.1.4 R&D on sustainable construction for the London Olympics35 The London Olympic Stadium is said to be the most sustainable ever built. It has been made from materials 75 percent lighter than steel, the most common material used to build other stadiums. Low- carbon concrete was used in its construction, which contains 40 percent less carbon than usual. Steel and concrete use was reduced further by designing the lower part of the stadium in a bowl in the ground. Hardware used to hang the panels will be recycled after the games, and the fabric is to be reused and recycled.
The Aquatics Centre features a number of key low carbon features including a striking ceiling above the pool made up of 30,000 sections of sustainably-sourced Red Lauro timber. The venue’s wave- shaped roof has an aluminium covering, half of which is recycled. The temporary seating stands on either side of the roof are made of steel and phthalate-free uPVC wrap. The 866,000 ceramic tiles installed in the pools, poolside and changing rooms, were delivered by train to the Olympic Park, helping to reduce transport emissions.
5.1.5 The influence of city trees on microclimate in Sweden36 This FORMAS project aims to answer the question of whether the size of a single tree, or the relative position of a group of trees, can influence the microclimatic factors in and around a tree to such an extent that atmospheric demand decreases.
The condition of the tree will be monitored in nursery conditions and in streets by measuring photosynthetic capacity, water balances, stress symptoms, street microclimate temperature effects, evaporative demand and water availability. Results will provide guidelines for the selection of street trees and further understanding of a city tree’s demand for water and space. This will be of value to planners and managers of city trees.
5.1.6 Green infrastructure for ecological sustainability and human wellbeing in Sweden37 How does society take care of forest, rural and urban landscapes so that biodiversity conservation, ecosystem services and human health benefits are delivered? New guidelines use the term "green
35 http://inhabitat.com/will-london-2012-be-the-green-olympics/ ; http://www.olympicgames2012london.org/london2012olympicsgoinggreen.html Miklos Marton, Project Manager, Regional Environment Centre (REC) 36 FORMAS project 2006-1537, Dirk Dujesiefken, Swedish Agricultural University 37 FORMAS project 2011-1737, Per Angelstam, Swedish Agricultural University
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infrastructure". To secure functional green infrastructure, ecological and social systems must be included in governance and management.
This project focuses on the diagnosis and treatment of green infrastructures, to contribute to functionality in forest, rural and urban landscapes. We see a strong research environment as integrative research with stakeholders, ability to facilitate and contribute to social learning processes, and knowledge production in place- and area-based research and education. The project team comprises:
• Human and natural scientists at three Swedish universities,
• Actors and stakeholders in forestry, municipal and infrastructure planning, and
• Researchers from countries with traditions of planning from below in the West and from the top in the East.
This project views landscapes as patients who need diagnosis and treatment. With a suite of forest, rural and urban landscapes as laboratories, we will:
i. Diagnose green infrastructure functionality, and examine the ecological and social knowledge needed for green infrastructure; and
ii. develop knowledge, social learning, analysis and visualization tools for integrated planning by different sectors and levels of society.
5.1.7 Modelling climate change impact on coastal flooding and erosion in Sweden38 The main objectives of this project are:
(1) To develop methodologies for quantitatively predicting how coastal areas will be affected by flooding and erosion resulting from climate change;
(2) To integrate the outcome from such predictions into the planning and management of the coastal areas.
A risk-based approach will be taken where the probability of certain type of events are combined with the consequences of the events. It will be crucial to consider the simultaneous action of waves, water levels, and runoff from land when assessing the impact of different types of event, also taking into account relevant time and space scales. Scenarios will be developed based on existing prognoses of future climate change (SWECLIM).
The project will focus on two types of coastal impacts with different characteristic scale, namely the response of coastal areas to severe storms over hours to days, and to long-term changes in climatic forcing (e.g., waves, water levels, rainfall) over decades to centuries. In both cases models will be developed to describe physical processes.
38 FORMAS project 2009-802, Hans Hanson, Lund University
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Ystad municipality will be a pilot site for developing general tools which may be used in other for coastal areas of Sweden and other countries.
5.2 Case studies
5.2.1 Reducing the urban heat island (UHI) effect in Tokyo39 Tokyo’s Metropolitan Government has addressed UHI in its environmental master planning since 2002. Measures include improving the flow of wind through the city, installing pavements that block heat and absorb moisture, roadside tree plantings, and increased greening of roofs and walls.
5.2.2 ZFarm: urban farming with zero acreage in Berlin40 Inter3 is analysing opportunities for the inner-city cultivation of fruits and vegetables in existing buildings. Potential obstacles and necessary conditions for realising and disseminating house- integrated agriculture will be studied in Berlin. The objective is to develop solutions that are technically, economically, socially and ecologically sound and to devise a policy framework that supports building-integrated agriculture in Berlin. A variety of stakeholders - including potential operators, urban planners, agricultural experts, politicians and policy makers, interested residents and active urban farmers - will be invited to participate.
Figure 3: Brooklyn Grange, a 4000m2 ‘rooftop farm’ in New York
39 Rosenzweig C., Solecki, W. D., Hammer, S. A. And Mehrotra, S. (Eds ) (2011). ‘Climate change and cities: first assessment report of the Urban Climate Change Research Network (ARC3)’, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York. P240 40 http://www.zfarm.de/ - English pages available. Dr. Heike Walk, Science and Research Programme Manager, Inter 3. Institute for Resource Management
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5.2.3 Architectural solutions to extreme weather41 Cities across Europe provide examples of ancient and contemporary architectural measures to protect pedestrians from extreme weather.
The ancient city of Bologna is lined by many kilometres of arcades. They offer shade from the summer heat, from rain and from snow. These city features are highly valued by pedestrians and retailers; building regulations protect existing arcades and require them in new developments.
Seville runs shades over streets and squares to shade people from the sun. The new Metropol Parasol - a 30 meter-high concrete and steel structure – has been incorporated into redevelopment of the Plaza de la Encarnación. Difficulties encountered include reaching agreement on sharing costs amongst the connecting buildings or sites under private ownership.
Toronto faces long, hot and humid summers and long, cold winters, so malls such as the Eaton Centre are very popular among residents. Negative impacts (environmental, diverting trade from urban streets) can be mitigated by close integration into the existing urban fabric and into public transport systems.
5.2.4 Green and Blue Space adaptation for urban areas and eco-towns (GRaBS) 42 GRaBS aims to fill a gap in planning: “Green infrastructure including gardens, parks, productive landscapes, green corridors, green roofs and walls and blue infrastructure such as water bodies, rivers, streams, floodplains and sustainable drainage systems, play a vital role in creating climate resilient development – a role, which is currently not sufficiently recognised and utilised and lacks integration in mainstream planning.” There is a series of case studies43. The main themes addressed are:
Development incentives for greenspace
The Municipality of Faenza has implemented a bio-neighbourhood incentive programme for developers, which is included in their Town Planning Regulations. This programme allows developers to extend the size of buildings in bio-neighbourhoods in excess of approved standards, if the buildings meet certain environmental criteria. These include green roofs, green walls and water retention systems, and the creation of continuous public green spaces by developers.
In Berlin, new developments are required to incorporate a proportion greenspace. This is the Biotope Area Factor (BAF or BFF for Biotop Flächenfaktor). This requirement is part of a larger suite of regulations relating to landscape planning, landscape design and species protection. It responds to the need to encourage more greenspace in dense urban locations.
41 http://www.10things.it/guide/bologna/top-10/the-arcades-of-bologna/ , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropol_Parasol , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toronto_Eaton_Centre, Miklos Marton, Project Manager, Regional Environment Centre (REC) 42 http://www.grabs-eu.org/ 43 http://www.grabs-eu.org/membersArea/files/Executive_summary.pdf
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Incentives for green roofs
The city of Basel in Switzerland has the highest area of green roofs per capita in the world. Their profusion is stimulated by a combination of financial incentives and building regulations. Regulations have required vegetation on roofs since 2002. Initiatives aiming to increase the provision of green roofs in Basel were initially driven by energy-saving programmes, and subsequently by biodiversity conservation.
Chicago's Department of Buildings Green Permit Programme offers a rapid permit process to encourage developers to incorporate environmentally conscious design elements, including green roofs on new buildings. Additional benefits include cost savings through reduced need for heating and cooling of the buildings, enhancing the city’s and the emergence of businesses specialising in green roof installation.
Adaptation to flooding
In 2008, the City of Toronto became one of the first cities in Canada to develop a comprehensive climate change adaptation strategy. The document details a number of short and long-term actions to adapt to more frequent and severe flooding. The strategy highlights the importance of investment in storm water management, and in parks and urban forests.
The neighbourhood of Augustenborg (Malmö, Sweden) has experienced periods of socio-economic decline in recent decades, and frequently suffered from floods caused by overflowing drainage systems. Augustenborg underwent significant regeneration between 1998 and 2002, in part to improve flood risk management. Significant physical changes in infrastructure took place, focusing on the creation of sustainable urban drainage systems, including ditches, retention ponds, green roofs and greenspace. Rrainwater runoff rates have decreased by half, and increased greenspace has improved the image of the area.
Climate change projections for the Netherlands highlight an increased risk of coastal and river flooding. In 2000 the existing water management system, based on technological solutions, was deemed inadequate. In 2003 “The Netherlands Live with Water” public awareness campaign was launched. The campaign emphasises the need to store water within national and regional water management systems during times of excessive rainfall or high river levels. It also promotes actions that individuals can take to help reduce the threat of flooding.
Following the disastrous failure of structural flood defences during Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the State of Louisiana and the City of New Orleans have taken steps to increase the resilience of the city to sea level rise. One of the key protection measures is the conservation and restoration of wetlands as a buffer zone between the sea and the city. Inclusion of wetland conservation and restoration activities in the New Orleans masterplan signals a significant change to flood-defence tactics in the region, from an emphasis on levees and floodgates to the incorporation of more natural solutions.
Landuse planning
In Slovakia, national standards for land use planning (2009) include guidance on planning of open spaces and green areas. The standards describe not only the aspects relating to the quantity of open space in towns or in a given development, but also include aspects relating to the quality and
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character of open spaces, such as percentage of sealed surfaces, percentage of tree cover and accessibility. This exhaustive set of standards builds on examples from other European cities, including Berlin, Graz, and Malmö.
5.2.5 Solanova Project, Dunaújváros, Hungary44 This was the first “eco-reconstruction” to improve the thermal performance of a block of flats, of a type that is very common in Hungary. It involved adding a 16cm thick layer of insulation to the walls and roof, double- and triple-glazing, heat-exchange ventilation, and a green roof. As a result, the building’s energy consumption for heating has fallen to 16% of its previous figure.
The project was initiated by Kassel University in partnership with Budapest Technical University. It was c-financed by the EU, the Hungarian Ministry of the Environment, the local government of Dunaújváros City, the local heating company, and the block’s tenants. Since the completion of this pilot project, many similar conversions have followed.
Figure 4: After the reconstruction
5.2.6 GreenKeys: knowledge exchange across 12 European cities45 GreenKeys promotes urban greenspaces to improve the quality of life and increase the sustainability of cities. It is a partnership of the 12 municipalities with eight research partners; a subcontractor maintains the communication channels consisting of internal and external websites.
Pilot projects in each city involve local stakeholders to identify ways of increasing accessibility, social/ recreational value and ecological benefit. Examples of best practice from these pilots will be exchanged throughout the network.
44 http://www.e-epites.hu/580 - in Hungarian, but with many graphics. Miklos Marton, Project Manager, Regional Environment Centre (REC) 45 http://www.greenkeys-project.net/en/home.html Ina Gencheva, Project assistant, ASDE ‘Ecoregions’
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5.2.7 The North American urban agriculture experience46 This describes local growing to combat the difficulty of accessing healthy, local and reasonably- priced food, to combat the urban heat island effect, and to serve as stormwater abatement. An example is given of an Urban Agriculture Plan for Oakland (California), which includes an inventory of vacant land, and a tax credit for such land put into agricultural use.
6. Projects for later dialogue cafés
6.1 Mitigation and adaptation
6.1.1 Generic tools and guidelines
47 6.1.1.1 Resilience: VivaCity2010 in the UK This project developed understanding of human behaviour in urban environments, and a toolkit of resources for planners and developers to navigate urban sustainability issues. The toolkit encourages decision-makers to think about sustainability in a user-centred, holistic way, identifying overlaps and trade-offs as the drivers of decision- making. The 3D visualisation tool has been used in work with the Black Country Consortium (BCC) urban regeneration project, and in the Life Chances pilot in Salford to aid the Local Authority and key service providers in enabling holistic visualisation of localised service provision needs.
Figure 5: Visualisation of multiple agendas for the Black Country Consortium
46http://blogs.worldbank.org/sustainablecities/the-north-american-urban-agriculture- experience?cid=ISG_E_WBWeeklyUpdate_NL 47http://www.urbansustainabilityexchange.org.uk/media/ISSUES%20Outputs/ISSUES%20VivaCity2020_Final.p df
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48 6.1.1.2 Partnership: DISTILLATE – decision support and knowledge exchange in the UK A decision-making tool developed by project partners is intended for use by local authorities and for consultancies acting on their behalf to signpost policy makers and planners to appropriate guidance on sustainable transport planning including other DISTILLATE tools. The tool was developed in consultation with stakeholders including end-users from public authorities.
49 6.1.1.3 CHAMP The CHAMP website presents a capacity development package for local climate change responses. The online tool, ‘Integrated management for local climate change response’, consists of guidance papers, training materials, tools and case studies for enhancing local capacity in climate change adaptation and mitigation.
50 6.1.1.4 OECD Green Cities programme The OECD Green Cities programme seeks to assess how urban green growth and sustainability policies can contribute to improve the economic performance and environmental quality of metropolitan areas and enhance the contribution of urban areas to national growth, quality of life and competitiveness. “While a growing number of studies seek to characterise sustainable and “green” cities, they do not provide an assessment across multiple cities of the impact of urban green growth and sustainability policies on job creation, economic attractiveness and demand for green goods and services”.
The concept paper includes a literature review as well as a preliminary set of policy interventions and measures that are applied to each case study to compare existing initiatives and monitor their impact in terms of job creation, urban attractiveness and supply and demand of green goods and services. The first round of case studies included the Paris-IDF region and the Chicago/Tri-State Area. A national-level study was completed for Korea, focusing on the implementation of the National Green Growth Strategy in urban areas. A second round of case studies is currently underway, with assessments of Stockholm and Kitakyushu and, at the national level, China.
51 6.1.1.5 Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) The UK RTPI’s “Seven commitments on climate change” is a vision and strategy for the way the RTPI and members should tackle the challenge of climate change, as part of an overall approach to sustainable development. The seven commitments are:
1. Promote behavioural change
2. Adapt existing places
3. Work towards responsive legislation and policies
48http://www.urbansustainabilityexchange.org.uk/media/ISSUES%20Outputs/distillate%20formatted%20final. pdf 49 http://www.localmanagement.eu/index.php/cdp:home 50 http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/44/37/49318965.pdf
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4. Improve current practice
5. Celebrate best practice
6. Compile a compendium of best practice
7. Develop climate change education and skills.
The commitments are seen as a thread running through RTPI’s work to help mainstream climate change within all planning policy and practice. For example, climate change is a consideration in consultation responses to proposed policy changes by national government. Judging criteria for RTPI Planning Awards have been changed so that climate change impacts are considered by all entries. Recent key work has been involvement in the Planning for Climate Change Coalition, and lobbying of Government on changes to the English Localism Act 2011 and the National Planning Policy Framework to improve their legislation and policy in relation to climate change.
52 6.1.1.6 URBENENEGY Network This is an integrated model for energy efficiency conscious communities and includes city partners from ten European countries.
The aim was to develop an integrated framework for improving energy efficiency and optimal utilisation of renewable energy sources, by offering an innovative model for creating sustainable energy efficiency in the urban environment. The long-term goal of the project was to turn residential areas from energy consumers into energy producers.
The model is based on four thematic pillars: policy-making, local business, financial, social. Sub- objectives have been pursued under each thematic pillar.
1. Policy-making pillar: Enhancing an integrated policy approach through fostering cooperation among stakeholders and policy-makers, based on lessons drawn from experience in partner cities. The objective was to align various stakeholder interests and develop a jointly agreed energy master plan by bundling the existing studies, strategies, policy approaches, etc. into one coherent package of measures including timeline and cost plan.
2. Local business pillar: Introducing new and innovative technological tools and product packages, capitalising on existing knowledge and know-how, tailored to local needs. The objectives was to survey investment opportunities for the implementation of renewable energy strategy (RES) and energy efficiency (EE) technologies and to support local businesses to enter the renewable energy market and therefore create and support local employment.
3. Financial pillar: Developing financial schemes to support alternative energy solutions for urban environment, based on existing knowledge and exchange of experience between partner cities. The objective was to offer financial solutions for EE technological product packages.
51 http://www.rtpi.org.uk/item/2624/23/5/3 Vincent Goodstadt, Trustee of the RTPI; Sarah Lewis, RTPI Policy Officer 52 http://urbact.eu/en/projects/low-carbon-urban-environments/urbenenergy/homepage/ Liliana Florina Cergan, Legal Counsellor to Avrig, Romania
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4. Social pillar: Increasing social acceptance of RES and EE solutions through disseminating and awareness-raising activities. The objectives were to stimulate the use of RES and EE solutions by changing citizens’ attitude; to increase awareness and uptake of RES for existing housing stock and businesses; and to promote local community involvement in the planning process of EE retrofitting.
Partner Level Outputs: 1. One integrated policy framework document per partner based on the integrated EE model, to serve as a baseline for Local Action Plans.
2. One local Action Plan per partner, serving as a road map of activities for the Local Authority.
3. One joint statement by LSG/ MAs supporting the Local Action Plan, in order to express local commitment to implementing Local Action Plan.
4. One project idea from each partner will be elaborated on to seek funding and serve as the first step in the practical implementation of Local Action Plans.
Project Level Outputs:
1. a consistent set of strong case studies based on peer review exercises.
2. collection of best practice based upon the case studies.
3. Policy recommendations developed on how RES and improved EE contribute to sustainable urban development.
Results:
1. Local Action Plans adopted by city councils.
2. Municipality staff with increased capacity and increased cooperation among stakeholders.
II. At the Project level:
Recommendations included in: URBACT II PDF generated at 2009-09-25 10:11 Page 7 / 52, and URBENENERGY (Ref : 3235 | Version : 1 | Submitted project).
53 6.1.1.7 Resilience: TURaS – transitioning towards urban resilience and sustainability , across Europe TURaS is a five year project that will develop visions, feasible strategies, spatial scenarios and guidance tools to help cities address the urgent challenges of:
• climate change adaptation and mitigation,
• natural resources shortages, and
53 www.turas-cities.eu Dr. Marcus J. Collier, Research Fellow at University College Dublin / TURaS Scientific Co- ordinator
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• unsustainable urban growth.
TURaS will enable adaptive governance, collaborative decision-making and behavioural change in order to facilitate local authorities and communities in the transition process. The project will research, demonstrate and disseminate transition strategies and scenarios to enable European cities and their rural interfaces to build vitally-needed resilience. TURaS will demonstrate to city communities, businesses, planners, policy-makers and managers, mechanisms for transition that may be created and implemented as we strive to move to more sustainable urban living.
The project brings together decision makers in local authorities with SMEs and academics, to respond to the efforts of city communities. Eleven local authorities or local development agencies are involved as project partners, and they will orient research and development from the outset towards the most significant sustainability and resilience challenges facing their cities. Nine academic research institutions and eight SMEs will work with these public sector bodies helping them to reduce their urban ecological footprint through proposing new visions, strategies, spatial scenarios and guidance tools to help cities address these challenges. The feasibility of these new approaches will be examined and results compared between participating cities.
6.1.2 Case studies
54 6.1.2.1 Eco-Parc in Cergy-Pontoise, Paris region The Eco-Parc has a total of 17 business parks, including 4000 companies. The scheme aims for sustainable mobility and waste management, from planning and design to participative implementation
Within a framework of environmental indicators, the main activities are:
1 - Planning public spaces and transport pooling, including noise reduction and minimising energy consumption; and
2 - Waste management of the industrial city, including development of a waste database, waste pooling, waste treatment and transport, and recycling.
The scheme is undertaken in partnership between the city authorities and a professional association of young entrepreneurs.
55 6.1.2.2 Governance: climate change policy integration in Sweden This project focuses on municipal planning as a key arena for achieving more effective climate policy. The barriers and success factors are identified and analysed using case studies in Swedish municipalities that have taken a leading position on climate policy.
The objective is to identify the key measures that could increase the effectiveness of local climate change policy in practice. Formal and informal institutional conditions that affect planning at all
54 Amel LESLOUS, Managing Partner, AMLING ENGINEERING 55 FORMAS project 2011-1599, Sofie Storbjörk, Linköping University
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stages from a strategic level through to project implementation will be analysed. Agenda-setting, synergies and conflicts between different policy areas and practical learning and opportunities for change will be studied. The research covers several social sciences and is carried out in close collaboration between researchers at the CSPR (Linköping University) and National Road and Transport Research Institute, VTI.
56 6.1.2.3 Spatial adaptation strategies to climate change: model region Stuttgart Stuttgart anticipates an increase in the average annual temperature of up to 5 °C, a doubling of heatwaves in summer, increased water shortages, dry periods and extreme weather events.
For many years the region of Stuttgart has had a strategy for climate mitigation and adaptation. The aim is for a regional climate strategy to provide an integrated approach involving multiple departments and administrative levels. This is supported by the Stadtklimalotse decision-support tool (see section 1.1.1).
The main areas of action include:
Planning and traffic:
• landscape planning as “green infrastructure”;
• regional atlas for climate, as a basic planning tool for the communities;
• promotion of public transport by rail;
• housing development through streets suitable for short distance traffic;
• flood protection measures;
• international networking and projects.
Economic development:
• supporting clustering initiatives and demonstration projects;
• establishing a centre of competence for (regenerative) fuel cells;
• advising communities on measures for climate protection;
• holding events, fairs and international projects;
• promoting electro-mobility and new technologies.
56http://www.region-stuttgart.org/vrs/main.jsp?navid=68 http://www.region-stuttgart.org/vrs/main.jsp?navid=438 Ines Jerchen, Project Coordinator, Verband Region Stuttgart; Prof. Dr.-Ing. Stefan Siedentop, Institute of Regional Development Planning, University of Stuttgart
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57 6.1.2.4 Local energy independence in Avrig, Romania This partnership brings together the Municipality of Avrig with the national Environment Agency, the local power company, the business development authority and civil society organisations.
The project has four pillars: • Renewable energy resources and technologies to produce renewable energy; • Network systems; • Energy storage; • Communication of the outputs throughout the partnership network.
58 6.1.2.5 CO2 Today This booklet presents a number of urban energy and climate initiatives, mainly in the Netherlands. It was co-produced by the Dutch Environment and Infrastructure Ministry and Agentschap NL which is an agency of Ministry of Economic Affairs.
59 6.1.2.6 Resilience: SOLUTIONS, or the value of influence ; UK and Germany The Sustainability of Land Use and Transport in Outer Neighbourhoods (SOLUTIONS) consortium investigated how towns and cities can be planned so that they are socially inclusive, environmentally sustainable and economically efficient.
Strategic and management level health officials, planners and local authority staff from southwest England participated in two study tours to the town of Freiburg, to learn first-hand about the city’s world-renowned sustainability. The main impact of the tours was to create a shared vision and network of senior leadership connected with sustainable living in the southwest of England. Ideas have been fed into projects such as the Eco-town being created in Cornwall. Having senior decision-makers participate in the study tours has ensured uptake of ideas and created a network that can collaborate on a shared, sustainable vision for the future.
57 Mirela Petrar, Program Coordinator, Municipality of Avrig 58 Electronic copy received from Koen Hollander, European Metropolitan Network Institute 59 http://www.urbansustainabilityexchange.org.uk/media/ISSUES%20Outputs/Impact%20Case%20Study%20- %20SOLTUIONS%20(v4).pdf
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6.2 Innovative approaches to governance
6.2.1 Governing the transformation of local infrastructure systems in Sweden60 Ecological, social and economic sustainability demand sustainable systems and legitimate policy instruments. In Sweden socio-technical systems, such as water and energy, are traditionally municipal responsibilities. Socio-technical systems are located at specific places and the municipality thus has to take on different roles, which we identify as “a people” (demos), “a place”, and “an institution”.
The project aims:
• to analyse the radical historical changes related to the establishment of municipal infrastructural systems, and then
• to use these experiences to analyse why, whether and how municipalities relate differently to consumers and citizens in socio-technical systems, illustrated by the cases of water and energy systems.
Analysis of current municipal policies for sustainable development from system and user approaches will inform development of a conceptual model of local governance and socio-technical systems. Practical and policy implications will focus on the opportunities and constraints for formulating policy instruments for households, and system design to increase sustainable development.
6.2.2 Gendered structures of climate change response in Sweden61 Are there changes in the gendered structures of sustainable development, which affect the concrete climate change responses of Swedish municipalities? Why have some Swedish municipalities responded actively to the issue of climate change, when the vast majority of municipalities in Sweden have not? A current theme in spatial planning literature, local environment and regional studies points out that in OECD countries, despite increasing awareness, the gap between rhetoric and action at the municipal level is a concern. Knowing more about the processes and motivations involved in action is a key aim of this interdisciplinary proposal.
What explains the shift of climate change to the centre of sustainable development? Is it a turning point? If so, it is important to verify and understand how and why this is occurring and who is involved, so that implications can inform professional planning, policy and decision-making.
A high proportion of women are employed in sustainability work in Sweden. This project is exploring all relevant interactions, using actor-network and gender studies and theories to find out whether changes in the gender characteristics of responses to climate change are part of the answers.
60 FORMAS project 2008-1338, Elin Wihlborg, Linköping University 61 FORMAS project 2008-203, Richard Langlais, Nordregio-Nordic Centre for Spatial Development Research
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6.2.3 Winning hearts and minds, UK62 ‘Winning Hearts and Minds’ describes the impact of Birmingham’s Eastside Sustainability Advisory Group (ESAG) on individuals, institutions and the city of Birmingham and its inhabitants. Its impact is largely attributed to:
• the work of the two sustainability officers appointed to work alongside the Eastside team at Birmingham City Council, in making sustainability a key part of the decision making process in the regeneration of Birmingham Eastside; and
• the University of Birmingham, which was a member of ESAG from 2002. These ties contributed to knowledge created as part of the Sustainable Eastside project. “Links with the academics from the University of Birmingham not only gave us access to their knowledge and expertise, but gave ESAG’s arguments an extra dimension and weight in the eyes of the council and developers”, p6.
• The combination of all the above: “It was a combination of the University of Birmingham, the sustainability officers and ESAG that ensured sustainability issues were considered so important by developers”, p8.
The report findings are based on background research and interviews with key players in the Eastside regeneration project. It considers both the tangible and conceptual impacts on individuals, institutions and the city of Birmingham and its inhabitants.
6.3 Collaborative approaches
6.3.1 ClimateXChange63 ClimateXChange is Scotland’s centre of expertise on climate change. This is a collaboration between 16 of Scotland’s leading research and higher education institutions to deliver research targeted at policy development.
6.3.2 Advancity’s competitiveness cluster on sustainable cities, Paris region64 This is a partnership of 190 companies, 30 higher education and research organisations, and 34 local governments which aims to develop the private sector’s competitiveness through innovation.
Members meet to discuss issues linked to sustainable cities. Topics cover building, networks, transport, accessibility, mobility services, urban monitoring, planning and governance, and eco- technologies. Members aggregate into project consortia for developing urban innovation in areas where they are ready to engage specific resources.
62http://www.urbansustainabilityexchange.org.uk/media/ISSUES%20Outputs/Birmingham%20Eastside%20Win ning%20Hearts%20and%20Minds_Template_Final.pdf 63 www.climatexchange.org.uk Ragne Low, Knowledge Officer, ClimateXChange, Scotland 64 http://www.advancity.eu/ Vincent Cousin, Industrial advisor, Advancity
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Results since 2006:
• 120 innovation projects,
• total investment : 310 M€,
• New products and services, innovation platforms, and experiments.
In summary, collaborative approaches between private and public sectors are gaining momentum, however transfer to market requires more extensive experimentation.
6.3.3 Innovative projects for sustainable cities in France This was a partnership approach between the French Ministry of Ecology, local governments, land developers, regulatory authorities, ministerial agencies, public financing agencies, and enterprises (consulting, engineering companies, utilities, energy suppliers, construction companies, IT companies). They produced a synthesis report addressing:
• Defining innovation and sustainable cities
• Identifying the conditions for implementing innovative projects
• Identifying are the barriers
• Questions which remain unanswered
• Recommendations for French policy to support urban innovation.
6.3.4 SME projects in Bulgaria Alliance for Environment has instigated a three partnership projects in Bulgaria, focused on the development of local SMEs:
• EcoStep – Integrated Management System for SMEs is a handbook on Quality management (ISO 9001), Environmental management system (ISO 14001) and Occupational health (OHSAS 18001) with relation to the EMAS – Environmental Management and Auditing System. The handbook helps Bulgarian stakeholders to prepare for the international standards as the last step before certification.
• H2S Recovery is a research partnership between government, academia and SMEs on the feasibility of extracting hydrogen as a fuel from the Black Sea;
• Integrated Plans for Urban Regeneration and Development (IPURD) is the revitalisation of selected zones in 36 major towns through revised urban land use using defined programmes and tools.
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6.3.5 REC Conference Centre, Szentendre, Hungary65 This partnership, between five national governments and five technology companies (solar, heating etc.), will redesign a conference centre building with the aim of reducing carbon emissions to zero. The main function of the centre is as a training and demonstration facility for sustainability solutions. It is hoped that this will contribute to the dissemination of knowledge, helping to find effective ways to tackle the global problem of climate change.
6.3.6 USE Efficiency66 Universities and Students for Energy Efficiency is a partnership between nine universities and four firms, in ten EU countries. It aims to improve the energy efficiency of university buildings, and to educate students as the next generation of decision-makers.
6.3.7 The Energy Academy, Manchester67 The Energy Academy involved “Manchester is My Planet” (a city-region climate pledge campaign), the Greater Manchester office of the national Energy Savings Trust Advice Centre (ESTAC) network, and the sustainable development charity Action for Sustainable Living (AfSL). It focused on the two Greater Manchester boroughs of Trafford and Stockport. The priorities of the Energy Academy were fourfold:
1. The Energy Academy would employ part time co-ordinators to recruit, train and support 30 volunteers to work in communities for the benefit of local people.
2. These volunteers would assist householders to access the energy advice and financial support available locally and nationally, save energy and reduce their wider environmental impacts.
3. As well as direct support, the Academy would help increase understanding of the benefits of energy efficiency, over and above personal financial savings, and build and embed local capacity for ongoing improvements.
4. Delivered over one year (although developing the funding meant the project lasted significantly longer), The Academy would form one of 6 pilot projects taking place throughout the EU as part of the CHANGING BEHAVIOUR project, and help shape new European guidance for behavioural change interventions.
It was planned that monitoring took place through multiple sets of measures that can be characterised in terms of: effectiveness, efficiency and social learning.
There were institutional adjustments and an enlargement of the project network as a result of the pilot. The EST assisted in measuring the pilot project’s impact. Also a third Local Authority (Manchester) saw the value of using a supported volunteer network and secured resources to run a very similar programme.
65 http://archive.rec.org/conferencecenter/index.php 66 http://www.useefficiency.eu/en 67 http://manchesterismyplanet.com/behavioural-change/the-energy-academy
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6.4 Technological leverage
6.4.1 Local Energy Management Agency, Gran Canaria68 Las Palmas de Gran Canaria Local Energy Management Agency is the new autonomous body of the City Council of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, created within the framework of the Intelligent Energy Europe programme. The agency promotes good practice in energy management and sustainability, including energy efficiency and the introduction of renewable energy.
The Agency proposed the installation of low power wind turbines in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, thermo solar installations in twenty sport centres of the municipality and six thermo solar installations in six municipal nurseries. All halogen traffic lights in the city have been replaced with LED technology. In addition, the City Council Department for Urban, Environmental and Water Supply Planning has replanted a total surface area of 1,000,000 m2 with drought tolerant plants.
6.4.2 ‘Innovation in Design, Construction and Operation of buildings for People’ (IDCOP), UK69 How to achieve a more sustainable urban environment that would benefit people, the inhabitants and users of these environments, creating a higher quality of life? This research focused on UK building stock and developed new technologies and processes for the maintenance and refurbishment of existing buildings. The Sustainable Built Environment Tool (SuBET) tool has gone from theory to practice. The partners observed a need for master planning to address sustainability and carbon mitigation issues. SuBET is a sustainable master planning tool which will be used to design exemplar planning and development schemes.
Image: Example spider map of SuBET assessment of a development.
68http://www.eukn.org/Dossiers/EU_presidencies/Hungarian_Presidency/Climate/Climate_friendly_urban_go vernance/Las_Palmas_de_Canaria_a_local_management_energy_agency 69 http://www.urbansustainabilityexchange.org.uk/media/ISSUES%20Outputs/ISSUES%20IDCOP_Final.pdf
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6.4.3 GREENOV renovation cluster GREENOV is a European cooperation project comprising ten partners from north west Europe. It is led by the new town of Marne-la-Vallée Val Maubuée, France. GREENOV aims at developing the sector of sustainable renovation by stimulating the innovation capacity of SMEs. The project should contribute to the transition to low-carbon cities and sustainable economy and improve the knowledge and expertise on sustainable renovation of existing buildings.
The GREENOV project is structured into 3 groups of activities:
“From exchange of expertise to knowledge transfer”
The GREENOV partners intend to stimulate the innovation cycle by exchanging their expertise and practice and by pooling different stakeholders of the sustainable renovation sector. Transnational experts’ panels and thematic conferences are organised. Common and operational indicators and standards are identified. A guide for carrying out and monitoring sustainable renovation is being developed. A joint study on energy efficient refurbishment on a large scale will be also carried out.
“Capitalisation in a cluster approach”
Partners will capitalise on this innovation cycle through an approach leading to: cordination of the SMEs’ supply chain through a cluster management structure and collaborative platform; identifying innovative SMEs; carrying out market analysis; and providing training and services for SMEs.
“Demonstration through exemplary investments”
Four GREENOV partners have launched the sustainable renovation of one of their existing buildings (private or public buildings welcoming citizens). The four buildings represent complementary and exemplar case studies. These pilot renovations should impact local market development by stimulating SMEs and by raising awareness among the building sector’s stakeholders, from political decision-makers to citizens. (See http://www.greenov.net/Project_presentation for a slideshow).
In summary, GREENOV is a collaborative project gathering different actors of sustainable renovation (users, experts, decision-makers…, public and private) who all bring their knowledge, ideas, experiences to improve practices in sustainable renovation of buildings. The GREENOV approach highlights the importance of the global process to eco-renovation, in gathering the different actors, experts, techniques, and of understanding needs and demands of building owners and inhabitants.
6.4.4 Luas light rail system in Dublin70 In May 1998 Dublin Municipality decided to build two light rail lines in Dublin. The project aimed to decrease air pollution by providing an environment-friendly alternative to automobiles. By December 2009, the system had two lines, 40 stations and 26.5 kilometres of track. There are currently plans for some new lines, as well as extensions to the two existing lines. In 2008 Luas carried 27 million passengers.
70http://www.eukn.org/Dossiers/EU_presidencies/Hungarian_Presidency/Climate/Climate_friendly_urban_tra nsport/Light_rail_Dublin
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6.4.5 Assessing the benefits of urban forest, Canada71 Oakville, 40km west of Toronto, is acclaimed for its progressive approach to urban forestry. It conducted an Urban Forests Effect Model study to assess the economic value of its urban forests – including the replacement value, benefits of carbon sequestration, energy savings and pollution filtering. These findings have fed into Oakville’s Urban Forest Strategic Management Plan regarding stewardship and extension of forest cover.
6.5 Integrated information tools
6.5.1 Bulgarian Spatial Data Infrastructure (BSDI)72 This prototype geoportal provides data for sustainable land management. It incorporates flood simulation models, risk management systems, and monitoring of changes to landcover. Riskwatch73 is an online news aggregator within BSDI that aims to give early warning of natural disasters.
6.5.2 Data needs: an urban social-ecological atlas The Urban Atlas Portal74 is a collaboration between twelve cities around the world: Bangalore, Canberra, Cape Town, Chicago, Helsinki, Istanbul, New Delhi, New Orleans, New York City, Phoenix, Shanghai and Stockholm. The aim is to develop new tools for understanding the social-ecological capacities to provide access to and sustain ecosystem services. The Urban Atlas maps the spatial distribution of selected ecosystem services and biodiversity and to what extent different socio- economic groups have access to these services.
For the first time, this enables users to compare cities of different size and wealth to see how varying social contexts, customs and norms affect urban ecosystems and vice-versa75. This offers a starting-point in addressing the reported lack of comparable data for cities.
71 ‘Climate change and cities: first assessment report of the Urban Climate Change Research Network (ARC3) (2011), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York. Eds Rosenzweig C., Solecki, W. D., Hammer, S. A. And Mehrotra, S. P238 72 http://bsdi.asde-bg.org/lccs_en.php 73 http://bsdi.asde-bg.org/riskwatch_en.php 74 http://www.urbanatlasportal.org/UAP/ 75 http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/urban_resilience/P4/
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