Abstract
Urban environments are challenged with unprecedented anthropogenic and natural pressures, the latter being accelerated by the growing awareness of the consequences of climate change. The concept of urban resilience has been growing in response, since it allows us to understand city behaviour as a system of systems, improving its response to extreme climate-related events. This paper presents the EU H2020 Resilience to Cope with Climate Change in Urban Areas (RESCCUE) project approach in Lisbon’s research site, regarding the Hazur® resilience assessment methodology. This methodology focuses on the interdependencies between services and infrastructures, and on the recovery times needed to restore its normal functionalities. This approach allows the integration of several work packages of the RESCCUE project, from climate change projections to adaptation strategies selection. The assessment was conducted for 19 services and 146 infrastructures, including water (supply and drainage systems), power, mobility, waste, telecommunication, environment, and the social sector. The principal climate-related hazard analysed at the Lisbon research site was urban flooding. The main result consists of a deep understanding of the relations between different services and the consequent cascade effects triggered by flooding events. Stakeholders’ involvement, beyond the project consortium, was fundamental for the success of the methodology implementation.
Highlights
The importance of cities performance in the global context of rapid urbanisation is undoubted
The present paper focuses on the approach followed at the Lisbon research site regarding the application of an holistic resilience assessment methodology, the Hazur® methodology [12,13], with the acquisition, centralization, and compatibility of different types of data to produce useful outcomes regarding the city performance and the resilience improvement
In the cases analysed, the impact on the services/infrastructures was defined depending, at least, on: (a) the service/infrastructure exposure; for example, water pressurized systems in Lisbon are not affected by flooding, but if a pipe rupture occurs within a flooded area, its repairment can only occur after the flooding; (b) the water height; for instance, buses may still operate during flooding events if the water level is low; (c) the duration of the flooding; that depends mainly on the duration and intensity of the rainfall and on the sea level
Summary
The importance of cities performance in the global context of rapid urbanisation is undoubted. This work was developed under European Horizon 2020 project Resilience to Cope with Climate Change in Urban Areas (RESCCUE—a multisectoral approach focusing on water) [14] This project proposes a roadmap able to assess urban resilience focusing on water related services and hazards and comprises several work packages, from climate change projection, hazard and risk assessment, and definition of adaptation strategies, to the development of a Resilience Action Plan.
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