Resilience to Cope with Climate Change in Urban Areas—A Multisectorial Approach Focusing on Water—The RESCCUE Project

Abstract

The RESCCUE Project is an H2020 research project that aims to help cities around the world to become more resilient to physical, social, and economic challenges, using the water sector as the central point of the approach. RESCCUE will generate models and tools to bring this objective to practice, while delivering a framework enabling city resilience assessment, planning and management. This will be achieved by integrating software tools, methods, and new knowledge related to the detailed urban services performance into novel and promising loosely coupled models (integrated models), multi-risk assessment method, and a comprehensive resilience platform. These tools will allow urban resilience assessment from a multisectorial approach, for current and future climate change scenarios, including multiple hazards and cascading effects. The RESCCUE approach will be implemented in three EU cities (Barcelona, Bristol, and Lisbon) and, with the support of UN-Habitat, disseminate their results among other cities belonging to major international networks. The aim of this paper is to present the main goals of this project, as well as the approach followed and the main expected results after the four years of implementation, so other cities around the world can use the RESCCUE approach to increase their resilience.

Urban Resilience to Flooding: Triangulation of Methods for Hazard Identification in Urban Areas

“…Lisbon study case Assumptions in this study include the focus on the water cycle and flood related hazards, while the risk sources analysed are rainfall and coastal overtopping [10]. The emphasis here is on the mobility and waste management sectors, but the methodology is applicable to other urban sectors.…”

“…For the study case of Lisbon, the set of methods available to support description and mapping of flood related hazards are indicated in Figure 2, together with main outputs and hazard characteristics. Assumptions in this study include the focus on the water cycle and flood related hazards, while the risk sources analysed are rainfall and coastal overtopping [10]. The emphasis here is on the mobility and waste management sectors, but the methodology is applicable to other urban sectors.…”

Flood Risk Assessment in an Underground Railway System under the Impact of Climate Change—A Case Study of the Barcelona Metro

“…Barcelona Metro Line 3 is the line most vulnerable to flood events due to extreme rainfall, according to TMB (Transports Metropolitans de Barcelona, Barcelona Metropolitan Transport-the leading public transport operator in Barcelona) records. Hence, in this study, the Metro Line 3 is integrated into the 1D/2D hydrodynamic model developed for the entire drainage system of the city of Barcelona within the European project RESCCUE (RESilience to cope with Climate Change in Urban arEas-a multi-sectorial approach focusing on water) [27]. Flood events in major global Metro systems: (a) New York [17]; (b) Tokyo [18]; (c) Madrid [19]; (d) Prague [20]; (e) Washington [21]; (f) Brussels [22].…”

Evaluación de la resiliencia de los servicios urbanos frente a episodios de inundación en Barcelona. El Proyecto RESCCUE

“…El proyecto RESCCUE (RESilience to cope with Climate Change in Urban arEas -a multisectorial approach focusing on water) (Velasco et al, 2018) es un proyecto de investigación financiado por la Comisión Europea en el marco del programa H2020 y tiene como objetivo principal proporcionar metodologías y herramientas para la evaluación, planificación y gestión de la resiliencia de las ciudades del siglo XXI en un contexto de cambio climático.…”