Enterprise Interoperability: Smart Services and Business Impact of Enterprise Interoperability

49 Assessment of Climate Change-related Risks and Vulnerabilities in Cities and Urban Environments

Climate change and related extreme weather events in particular threaten urban population centers as they impact citizens, critical infrastructure systems, as well as interregional and global value chains. The combination of climate change-related impacts and the trend towards increasing urbanization necessitates improvements to municipal climate change adaptation planning processes, which are already ongoing. Towards that goal, this chapter reports on the ongoing development of a standardized risk-oriented vulnerability assessment method, supported by dedicated software tools, as a first step of adaptation processes. The software tools include a web-based application to develop impact chain diagrams as well as a toolset for the automatic processing of climate change relevant indicators for quantitative assessments. Integrating close feedback provided by end-users, called “co-creation”, is a continuous part of the development process, assuring a broader acceptance and adaptation by the city administrations in charge.

49.1. Introduction

Extreme weather events resulting from climate change are severe threats to urban population centers with their high density of residents and economic assets [COL 16]. The increasingly complex dependencies of infrastructure components combined with the ongoing trend towards urbanization (see [UNI 14]) make it necessary for local authorities to ...