Climate Resilience Assessment in Regions, Cities, Strategic Services, and Critical Infrastructure: Implementation and Outcomes.

Abstract

Resilience to climate change is a complex concept, especially in metropolitan areas where diverse services and stakeholders interact. Promoting sustainable climate adaptation, a resilience assessment method focused on regional areas and nature-based solutions is presented, along with its open-access, web-based platform, supporting resilience assessment, planning, and monitoring. Floods, droughts, heat or cold waves, windstorms, and forest fires can be assessed. A framework for holistic assessment and other framework, addressing critical infrastructure, are integrated. Four resilience dimensions are assessed: organizational (governance, social aspects, finance); spatial (exposure, impacts, and mapping); functional (service management, interdependencies); and physical (infrastructure robustness, redundancy). Strategic services comprise, e.g., water, waste, and natural areas. Resilience capacities, e.g., to prevent, respond, and recover from disruptions, are also assessed. The paper emphasizes new developments and assessment. Practical step-by-step guidance aligned with assessment purposes is included, aiming to address observed limitations (e.g., fragmented service provision, communication silos, data constraints). Overall results of a Spanish metropolitan area (AMB) and an exploratory application to an Austrian rural case (SLR) are also presented. Following the guidelines, AMB progressed from an essential to a comprehensive assessment. Overall, almost 1/3 of the metrics are advanced or progressing. SLR assessed its resilience capabilities regarding electrical infrastructure.