Building Resilience to Natural Hazards in the Context of Climate Change—Introducing the Focus and Agenda of the Edited Volume

Abstract

AbstractThe edited volume “Building resilience to natural hazards in the context of climate change—Knowledge integration, implementation, and learning” follows a specific purpose and agenda. This introductory contribution to the volume explains its purpose and agenda in broad terms and provides an overview over the contributions. Six points characterize the volume. (1) The volume offers conceptual and empirical contributions that focus on climate change adaptation at local and regional level in Germany. Theoretical and methodological arguments remain in the background of investigation. (2) Contributions address issues of dealing with river floods and risks related to heavy rain fall as well as rising temperatures, heat waves and associated droughts in urban areas. Hence, contributions address issues of high priority for climate change adaptation—in Germany, but also in Europe and around the globe. (3) We understand building resilience as a core element of urban resilience. (4) The expression “building resilience” is meant to cover both the social process of increasing resilience in the future and dealing with the consequences of climate change for the building stock as well as related blue, green, and grey infrastructures. (5) Three patterns of goal-driven social processes for building resilience are salient: knowledge integration, implementation at local level, and learning in the context of participation and multi-level governance. (6) Engineers, physical geographers, social scientists, and spatial planners were involved in providing the contributions to the edited volume. Inter- and transdisciplinary approaches result in conceptual arguments and empirical accounts that seek to address both challenges of scholarly quality and practical relevance.