Supporting Urban Climate Adaptation Governance Through Citizen Sensing

Abstract

As climate change sets increasingly threatening challenges for ecosystems worldwide, societies are ever more facing the need to cope with the impacts of a rise in average temperatures and in extreme weather events. Cities are particularly exposed to the risks linked to climate change. The dense structure of the built-up environment of urban areas, in combination with a low share of green spaces, enhances the risks related to e.g. high temperature and heavy precipitation. One prominent impact is the urban heat island effect in which exacerbated temperatures have been shown to cause negative impacts, such as the formation of smog and air pollutants that lower the air quality, increasing thermal stress of citizens, the level and risk of morbidity caused by heat (Mohajerani et al. 2017) and the disruption of urban ecosystems (Wilby and Perry 2006). These effects are likely to intensify, given that cities currently accommodate more than half of the world's population, and this value is expected to reach 68% in 2050 (United Nations 2018). Therefore, due to