Climate Resilient Cities and Infrastructures

Project Information

RESIN

Grant agreement ID: 653522

DOI 10.3030/653522

Closed project

EC signature date 8 May 2015

Start date 1 May 2015

End date 31 October 2018

Funded under

• SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Climate action, Environment, Resource Efficiency and Raw Materials

Total cost € 7 466 004,50

EU contribution € 7 466 004,50

Coordinated by

NEDERLANDSE ORGANISATIE VOOR TOEGEPAST NATUURWETENSCHAPPELIJK ONDERZOEK TNO
Netherlands

Periodic Reporting for period 3 - RESIN (Climate Resilient Cities and Infrastructures)

Reporting period: 2017-11-01 to 2018-10-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The overall aim of the RESIN project has been to develop standardised approaches to increase the resilience of Europe’s cities and urban areas to extreme weather and climate change. In order to increase the applicability of the results, co-creation between the partner cities (Paris, Manchester, Bilbao and Bratislava) and the research institutes in developing the products of the project has played an important role.
The project addressed the need and urgency of developing an urban climate change adaptation strategy standardised at European level. Although vulnerability assessments and adaptation strategies have been produced in several cities, their comparability is low and the process of creating a strategy is not harmonised and is, in many cases, open for improvement.
The RESIN project has provided solutions and guidelines to support cities and city stakeholders to develop more systematically and stepwise, an assessment of the risk they are exposed to, the portfolio of adaptation measures they could apply, and an overall climate adaptation strategy.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The RESIN project started with the development of a conceptual framework to help guide the project.
It describes two distinct, but interconnected, systems and their processes; the urban system and the adaptation planning system. The conceptual framework, and especially the adaptation planning system (and its interactions with the real world) have underpinned the development of the set of tools described in the attached table.
The project also completed a glossary to promote a common language and a series of “state of the art” reports on topics relevant for the project. At the same time also the “state of policy development” in the partner cities was documented in four reports.

Work continued with the development of several ‘tools’ to be applied by city administrators and city stakeholders these have been the result of a co-creation process between the partner cities, the research institutes and the commercial parties in the consortium (see the RESIN tools overview table).

Apart from the development of the main tools, supporting studies have been done into:
• Prioritisation methods for adaptation options
• The development of the adaptation pathway approach for cities
• The state of affairs in and possibilities for certification in urban adaptation
• Dealing with uncertainty in decision support tools
• Integrated Planning of adaptation
• Exploring a “Financial metabolism dashboard” as a possible tool for identifying financing mechanisms in adaptation
• A report documenting and critically reflecting the project’s co-creation process.
As the project emphasised the need for standardisation, inputs have been delivered into ongoing international, standardisation activities..The project’s report on standardisation in urban climate adaptation contains an overview of standards and developments in standardisation.

A wide range of regular communication and dissemination products and activities have been developed, including a guidance document on how to use the tools as part of a wider adaptation management process.
An important element of the dissemination strategy of the tools and guidelines was the creation of a circle of ‘tier-2’ cities around our four partner cities.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Progress beyond the state of the art

Important scientific progress has been made by the RESIN project by:
• The development of a comprehensive risk typology with a European coverage based on a clustering approach. An advanced way of clustering was applied to create Classes and Subclasses of regions.
• The development of a methodology for risk assessment based on the IPCC 5th Assessment report risk concept. The IVAVIA methodology makes the IPCC AR5 risk concepts applicable in an urban adaptation setting.
• Providing a systematic overview and analysis of the effectiveness and cost data on urban climate adaptation measures. For the first time an overview has been generated of the variation in effectiveness measurement of urban adaptation options. The outcomes have been analysed and are presented in the Adaptation Option Library.


Actual and potential impact of the project

Actual and potential impact of the project is generated by:
• Formal standardisation:
Through the inclusion of RESIN inputs in draft standard ISO/DIS 14090 and through the possible inclusion of RESIN inputs or influence in standards in development: ISO 14091, ISO 154902, ISO 14050. The adaptation options library includes information on the standards that are relevant for the respective adaptation measures, which encourages the use and development of technical standards
• Application:
The actual use of RESIN outputs in, for instance:
o Five tier-2 cities (Lahti, Reykjavik, Almada, Athens and Padua) and the ‘external’ cities of Glasgow and Rotterdam have expressed concrete interest in applying RESIN tools;
o Tier 2 cities, such as Lahti, and other cities like Glasgow already using IVAVIA;
o the development of an adaptation planning tool in The Netherlands using the information from the Library of Adaptation Options;
o
o the Polish Institute of Environmental Protection expressing interest in incorporating one or more tools into a national framework to support adaptation in Polish cities

• Dissemination (and informal standardisation)
The inclusion of RESIN material in the ClimateADAPT website maintained by the EEA, which ensures long-lasting dissemination. Special interest has been expressed in the overview of tools included in the e-Guide, the European Climate Risk typology, and the adaptation options library.

High-level policy conclusions from the RESIN project
Co-creation between researchers and urban stakeholders can lead to better and more applicable results. However, support is needed to make it happen, also allowing for experimentation.
Standardisation in urban climate adaptation is actively developing in several organisational settings. This standardisation process needs involvement of urban stakeholders from various sectors and disciplines.
Maintaining a network of cities in Europe around urban climate adaptation requires continuity in (research) projects that are able to regularly gather city representatives.

table describing RESIN tools

The RESIN tools and how they fit into an adaptation process aligned to the e-Guide