Integrated urban services: Experience from four cities on different continents

Abstract

A B S T R A C TRapid urbanization combined with climate change necessitates new types of urban services that make best use of science and technology. The Integrated Urban Hydro-Meteorological, Climate and Environmental Services and systems are a new initiative from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) that seeks to provide science-based integrated urban services supporting safe, healthy and resilient cities. Various cities have already started development and implementation of such Integrated Urban Services and successfully test and use them following specific requirements of local stakeholders. This paper demonstrates the novel concept and approach of Integrated Urban Hydro-Meteorological, Climate and Environmental Services (IUS) from a set of four case study cities: Hong Kong, Toronto, Mexico City and Paris, that use different IUS configurations with good existing practice. These cities represent a range of countries, climates and geophysical settings. The aggregate main joint similarities of the IUS in these cities and synergy of the cities' experience, achievements and research findings are presented, as well as identification of existing gaps in knowledge and further research needs. A list of potential criteria for identifying and classifying IUS demonstration cities is proposed. It will aid future, more detailed analysis of the IUS experience, and selection of additional demonstration cities. Introduction to urban data and services needsUrbanization is an ongoing phenomenon and a growing number of urban settings are particularly vulnerable to weather and climate events, including floods, storms, heat waves, sea-level rise and poor air quality. In addition, urban dwellers are the primary users of energy and resources, and contribute in a significant way to increasing atmospheric greenhouse gasses as well as air pollution. These alterations to the atmosphere from urban to global scales have consequent impacts on human health and the environment. But the urban setting also provides exciting opportunities for scientific advancement in the field of new observations, data assimilation, high resolution coupled modeling and user-specific systems and services for sustainable and climate smart cities.Most (90%) of the disasters affecting urban areas are of a hydro-meteorological nature and these have increased due to climate https://doi.

Integrated urban hydrometeorological, climate and environmental services: Concept, methodology and key messages

“…WMO has played a role in the development and/or demonstrations of some of these (e.g. Figure 3, Tang, 2006;Grimmond et al, 2014;Baklanov et al, 2018Baklanov et al, , 2019Amorim et al, 2018). To understand the state and development plans of IUS for good practice (WMO, 2019a), exploratory surveys were conducted with 31 urban experts representing 22 specific cities (Table 1).…”

Impact of Urban Canopy Parameters on a Megacity’s Modelled Thermal Environment

“…For long, urban-induced meteorological effects such as the well-known urban heat island (UHI) [1] have been a primary focus in the urban climate research community. Yet recently, the role of cities in climate adaptation and mitigation practices is acknowledged to be a core part of global initiatives, with a need for reliable climate and meteorological observations, modelling capabilities and associated services to support disaster risk management, urban planning and governance [2][3][4][5]. High-resolution city-scale atmospheric models are an essential tool for such services, needed for example, for numerical weather prediction This study extends the philosophy of LCZ-derived UCPs to the COSMO limited-area atmospheric model and its climate version COSMO-CLM [35] coupled to the TERRA_URB urban parameterization developed by Wouters et al [36].…”

Les deux épisodes caniculaires de l’été 2019 à Grenoble : constat et perspective pour une gestion des extrêmes thermiques futurs

“…Mais le diagnostic doit également être complété par une perspective des conditions futures attendues en s'appuyant sur les projections et expertises des modèles numériques du climat, ce qui est à ce jour plus technique et ardu à réaliser par les collectivités. Pourtant, l'OMM a adopté en 2018 une approche urbaine transversale comme l'une de ses priorités dans un objectif de durabilité et de résilience, suggérant le concept de services urbains intégrés (ou Urban Services Survey) pour favoriser les études fondées sur l'observation et les scénarios futurs, rassemblant hydro-météorologie et climatologie urbaine, services environnementaux, systèmes urbains d'alerte précoce multirisques, informations intégrées sur les gaz à effet de serre et services climatiques (Baklanov et al, 2020). L'épisode chaud exceptionnel enregistré à Grenoble en 2019 donne ainsi un exemple pertinent de comparaison possible par rapport aux projections thermiques futures du GIEC issues du scénario RCP 8.5 (i.e.…”

“…Les villes ont un potentiel unique pour s'adapter rapidement aux risques liés aux extrêmes thermiques, à condition d'entreprendre des analyses sur ce risque encore mal défini à l'échelle locale et en élaborant des plans de réduction et de gestion spécifiques aux différents cas urbains (Singh et al, 2019). Mais l'absence d'informations cohérentes sur les villes reste un obstacle majeur dans la science du climat urbain pour informer et développer des planifications d'atténuation et d'adaptation à cette échelle (Baklanov et al, 2020). Le fait est que l'état des lieux climatologique, pour ensuite l'intégrer à des stratégies d'adaptation au changement climatique, peut encore être considéré comme un thème très récent pour les planificateurs urbains (Musco et al, 2016).…”