Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - RESIN (Climate Resilient Cities and Infrastructures)

Teaser

The overall aim of the RESIN project is to develop standardised approaches to increase the resilience of Europe’s cities and urban areas to extreme weather and climate change. RESIN has a specific focus on ensuring that critical infrastructures are better integrated into...

Summary

The overall aim of the RESIN project is to develop standardised approaches to increase the resilience of Europe’s cities and urban areas to extreme weather and climate change. RESIN has a specific focus on ensuring that critical infrastructures are better integrated into this process. The heart of the RESIN approach lies in the co-creation between the partner cities and the research institutes developing the products of the project.

The main products of the RESIN project are and will be (by work package):
• An analysis of the state-of-the-art of concepts and approaches linked to the RESIN project; and a conceptual framework for the project (WP1)
• A typology for European cities for adaptation to climate change (WP1)
• Detailed guidance for an impact and vulnerability analysis (IVAVIA) including tooling such as an impact chain diagram creator, and aggregation and calculation support (WP2)
• A database of possible adaptation options with due attention for harmonisation of effectiveness and cost-efficiency information; and standardised methods for prioritising between these adaptation measures (WP3)
• Methodology for the adaptation pathway design (WP3)
• A common unifying framework for the adaptation decision making process, with associated methods, tools and datasets in the form of an e-Guide (WP6)
• Inputs for the international and European Standardisation organisations to enhance the standardisation of actions and approaches in climate change adaptation (WP5)
• A circle of Tier-2 cities that have been introduced to the RESIN tools; further a wide range of dissemination activities took place (WP7).

Work performed

Work during the second project period focused on the development of a climate risk typology to support for climate adaptation and resilience building in European cities and urban areas. The typology will have benefits:
• for city decision makers by supporting the quick identification of tools and adaptation options that may be suitable for a specific city given their climate risk factors
• for supporting decision-making on distributing national and European funding for adaptation or research planning.
Development of the IVAVIA guideline and tools for vulnerability and risk assessment has taken place in a co-creation process with Bilbao, Manchester and Bratislava. The development of impact chains appeared to be so engaging for local stakeholders that it was decided to develop an “impact chain editor” to facilitate these discussions.
The database of adaptation options consists of two layers: one layer with results from all the literature consulted on each of the adaptation measures, the other layer summarises the outcomes per adaptation option. The database has been put into practice in Bratislava and presented to city stakeholders in ParisFinally the adaptation pathway approach will be considered as a policy guideline for considering adaptation options at the city level which will be further developed in Bilbao.
Work in the standardisation workpackage resulted in RESIN having a liaison status of several ISO committees (via NEN, Fraunhofer, ICLEI, and Tecnalia). Most of our efforts have been directed to Technical Committee 207 of ISO, which is developing guidance for vulnerability assessments. In the reporting period, reports on views of cities and other stakeholders on standardization, and on experiences with certification in urban climate adaptation were completed.
The development of the e-Guide has resulted in a decision support tool that on the one hand contains a structured overview of the decision making process with explanations and links to useful tools and on the other hand contains a section that allows for actively developing a dedicated adaptation strategy with a group of local experts
An important element of the dissemination strategy is the creation of a circle of tier-2 cities around our partner cities. Two webinars with the tier-2 cities, two knowledge transfer workshops have been organized which led to a useful exchange of experiences between cities and between cities and researchers. RESIN reached an audience of 222 newsletter subscribers, 69 LinkedIn group members, 267 followers (Open European Day Twitter account used for RESIN dissemination) and over 2000 monthly visitors to the website.
The consortium has been very active in presenting and disseminating the project results: attending 70 events between M12-M30, sharing the project to a pool of over 4,000 people through presentations, networking, posters and meetings.

Final results

We believe that the RESIN climate risk typology is unique in terms of its scope, coverage and potential role in supporting climate change adaptation and resilience planning in Europe.
For the first time a thorough and encompassing analysis of reporting units and values on the effectiveness of climate adaptation options has been madeThe results have been summarized in a database that includes descriptions of adaptation options for urban heat, pluvial, fluvial and marine flooding, and drought.
The IVAVIA guideline is the most systematic description of a vulnerability and risk assessment for cities and infrastructures developed so far.
The e-Guide equally provides a very systematic and comprehensive overview of all aspects of adaptation planning, including the resources and tools that are available for practitioners.
As a whole the RESIN project is an example of co-creation between urban stakeholders and research institutes.
Although most impacts will be realised later in the project and after the project some first signs that we are on the right track are:
• In the Netherlands a program has started aimed at developing a freely available database of “green-blue adaptation options”,
• Based on the comments provided by the RESIN project the DIN committee NA 172-00-13 AA has recommended ISO to base the ISO 14091 standard (“Climate Change Adaptation – a guidance to vulnerability assessment”) of ISO/TC 207/SC 7/WG 11 on the terminology of the IPCC 5th Assessment Report
• In Paris the department of urban planning has shown interest in a workshop on developing impact chain diagrams.
• Greater Manchester is one of the Rockefeller 100 Resilient Cities. The RESIN local team has been providing support to this initiative using RESIN outputs including impact chains.
It is expected that the following tangible impacts will be realised:
• Improvement of the ClimateAdapt website with (elements of) the e-Guide.
• Creating impact chain diagrams in a workshop setting will become a common tool in European cities
• The work on standardisation of reporting units and values for effectiveness measurement of adaptation options will have an impact on research on urban adaptation options
• RESIN’s involvement in formal standardisation processes on the national and international level will further influence adaptation standardisation.
• RESIN IVAVIA vulnerability assessment results for Bilbao integrated in Bilbao’s planning documents.

Website & more info

More info: http://www.resin-cities.eu.