Chapter 4 - Smart city solutions and climate change adaptation: An overview

Abstract

Climate change impacts become more clear every passing day as humans continue to emit greenhouse gases into Earth's atmosphere. These include a wide range of impacts such as extreme weather events, sea-level rise, and increased and more intense storms. Even if stringent climate policies and actions lead to low- and zero-carbon societies, climate change impacts will continue to affect humans and economies for decades to come, due to historical emissions. Recognizing this, climate change adaptation is now increasingly promoted on part with climate change mitigation. Through text mining of bibliometric data archived in the Web of Science, this chapter seeks to provide an overview of existing research at the intersection of climate change adaptation and smart technologies. This way, it aims to discuss actual and potential contributions of smart city solutions, related to various urban systems and to climate change adaptation. Based on outputs of bibliometric analysis (term co-occurrence) obtained from the VOSviewer software tool, issues related to urban planning, buildings, transportation, waste management, energy and water resource, economy, urban infrastructure, and urban governance are discussed. It is argued that smart solutions and technologies have high potential to contribute to climate change adaptation and resilience. Use of smart technologies might, however, lead to some potential trade-offs and rebound effects. Such trade-offs and effects have also been discussed. Further, the need for integrated systems that accommodate different urban sectors is highlighted.