Urban services interdependencies and cascading events for floods in urban areas

Abstract

Floods in urban areas are responsible for severe disruptions to services as well as for consequences in several dimensions, to people, built environment and society functions. These events are largely associated with natural phenomena and climate dynamics. Traditionally, drainage and civil protection services are involved in planning for facing floods but this is insufficient. A broader involvement of communities’ services and organisations is necessary, especially if city resilience to these events is still incipient and needs to be significantly improved. Cross-sectoral collaboration can provide increased knowledge on city processes and interdependencies, building intra-sector capacity to strengthen sector resilience and adding to overall city resilience.The paper addresses a cross-sector approach to the identification of interdependencies and cascade events, using Lisbon as a study case, focusing on flood related hazards and a set of city services including urban drainage, electricity supply, wastes collection and mobility, taking into consideration climate change trends.