A multidisciplinary approach to assess impact of climate change hazards on urban resilience.

Abstract

Management of urban areas is complex. They are vulnerable and continuously evolving, with interacting strategic services, assets and stakeholders. Potential effects of climate dynamics and natural hazards such as intense precipitation events, tidal effects or droughts, may significantly impact the strategic services, people, natural environment and economy. These challenges require a multidisciplinary approach to urban resilience, incorporating interdependencies between systems. In this light, a resilience assessment framework was developed based on a multidisciplinary approach integrating risk related aspects, cascading effects, contributions from the society and urban risk awareness as well as impact of climate change. It provides an objective-driven resilience diagnosis of urban cities and services, tracking the progress of resilience over time. The paper briefly presents the framework and the main results of its application to three cities with diverse contexts, focusing on the mentioned aspects. It demonstrates that the framework supports identification of improvement opportunities contributing to reduce risk to climate change hazards.