Urban Adaptation

description19 papers

group39 followers

lightbulbAbout this topic

Urban adaptation refers to the process by which cities adjust to the impacts of climate change and other environmental challenges. This involves implementing strategies and practices to enhance resilience, reduce vulnerability, and ensure sustainable development in urban areas, thereby improving the capacity of urban systems to cope with changing conditions.

lightbulbAbout this topic

Ferrara F.F, Forino G., 2014, Annex I: Case study of flooding in Genoa, Italy

by Giuseppe Forino and

D5.1: Review of climate change losses and adaptation costs for case studies

Climate change is a significant challenge for European and national policy agendas, and debates about impacts, costs assessment and enacted strategies by (trans)national and local policies are still in an early phase. However, most Members States of the European Union have adopted National Adaptation Plans through an approach that involves national, regional and local levels, as well as selected stakeholders. A particular focus is also devoted to urban strategies, as Europe is becoming more “urbanised” in terms of population density, spatial planning, human settlements, transport networks and economic flows. The necessity to provide methodologies able to assess costs and benefits of adaptation is urgent. In this way, likely and actual damage impacts and related costs have to be assessed on the basis of specific literature and on innovative evaluation methods, both qualitative and quantitative, involving economic and social aspects of urban life, policies and politics. Furthermore, urban policies are required that are able to ensure good standards of quality of life within the cities, also through climate change adaptation. Adaptation is also intimately related to the concept of vulnerability, because generally a system that is more vulnerable to climate change impacts require more adaptive capacities. However, it is still difficult to translate this relation into costs for adaptation.
The objective of the Annex is thus twofold:
a) to present an overview about how climate change adaptation issues and costs are developed in the current policy agenda in Italy, both at national and urban scale;
b) to point out significant aspects of urban vulnerability, that policy makers and scholars have to consider in future strategies of adaptation to climate change impacts, particularly in the case of extreme rainfall.
The Italian state-of-art will be described through an overview of the climate change
adaptation policies since its earlier steps during the 1990s. Section 2 will analyse and discuss preliminary experiences of costs assessments in relation to flood and heat waves, although they do not present a specific urban target. Some strategies of climate change adaptation will also be presented for some Italian cities and metropolitan areas, summarised in the Table “Italian Cities” at the end of this report. Sections 3, 4 and 5 will discuss two severe floods, occurred in 1970 and 2011 in the Italian city of Genoa. They will be described looking at the damages and related costs assessments as well as on changing vulnerability factors contributing to an increased risk. In this way, a comparison with the RAMSES case studies is carried out in terms of vulnerability aspects (Section 6). In Section 7, adaptation and mitigation strategies, implemented by Genoa to increase the coping capacities with climate change effects, are described as suggestions for those RAMSES case studies with similar vulnerability aspects. Finally, Section 8 will present the experience of the BLUE AP adaptation plan of the Italian city of Bologna as an example of an advanced stage of adaptation plan in an Italian city. The paper proposes five conclusive remarks, also in the way of suggesting main recommendations for the future activities of WP5 and the RAMSES project in general:
1) only recently climate change adaptation has been added to the Italian policy agenda, and related costs assessments have just emerged within the political debate. Thus, updated results about the assessment of adaptation costs in Italy are lacking, but studies of the National Conference on Climate Change (NCCC) since 2007 represent a seminal contribution to provide preliminary results about climate change impacts, such as floods and heat waves. Costs and benefits analysis of climate change adaptation would further allow to understand priority areas of intervention with very constrained budgets, and to indicate the size and the scale of the main challenges in Italy;
2) some Italian cities and metropolitan areas have adopted climate change adaptation plans, even though preliminary and comprehensive adaptation costs are still not definitively integrated within these plans. The Table “Italian Cities”, annexed at the end of the report, reviews some of the existing experiences of adaptation plans in Italian cities. It reveals that strategies mainly aim to cope with floods and heat waves’ risks, particularly focusing on river management and land use policies. These strategies are also integrated in ordinary urban planning tools as well as civil protection activities and grassroots networks;
3) the Mediterranean area is a hotspot in terms of climate change. Settlements are at risk of severe consequences in the near future due to the effects of climate change, including the interruption of main urban functions. Genoa represents an emblematic case study for Mediterranean cities, as it is a crucial hub for road, railway and maritime infrastructure networks in Southern Europe and in the Mediterranean basin. It has been taken as example due to huge potential losses related to climate change impacts such as extreme rainfalls. The high monetary losses value − without considering intangible losses − as experienced in 1970 and the 2011, has shown that the inaction option, or Business As Usual (BUA) scenario, is unsuccessful. In fact, inaction could determine heavy damages, deeply undermining the expected outcomes of sustainable development;
4) damages occurred in 1970 and 2011 events have been high due to some vulnerability conditions characterizing the urban context of Genoa. Urbanization and related issues (such as urban sprawl, land take and soil sealing, abandonment of rural areas) contributed to exacerbate the effects of extreme events damages, by greatly modifying geomorphological conditions in face of inland flooding threat. These factors should be analysed also in the main RAMSES case studies, in order to define specific adaptation measures and, consequently, to address the main related costs. In detail, the review carried out on losses resulting from 1970 and 2011 events in Genoa reports the sectors in which specific adaptation measures are required. In detail, a part from improving ecosystem services (e.g. water absorption capacity of the soil to reduce run off), it is important to develop adaptation strategies even for infrastructures, with a focus on transport and services (gas and water pipelines). Despite the fact that they have been seriously damaged and that they have caused indirect impacts in other sectors (e.g. industries, commerce, etc.) Genoa has not yet adopted an adaptation plan. However, for the future, the city can take advantage to a considerable set of data collected by other initiatives and research projects, recently developed in terms of both mitigation and adaptation measures;
5) in the Italian context, climate change adaptation has still not been included in a
comprehensive framework/plan and does still not have a defined cost assessment.
However, a successful experience of an adaptation plan in an Italian urban area is the BLUE AP of Bologna. BLUE AP identifies the targeted areas on the basis of spatial, social and planning characteristics. The aim is to obtain homogeneous development strategies which are inspired by sustainability goals. For the prevention of river floods and heat waves and the conservation of biodiversity, main strategies aim at enhancing river infrastructures, creating green spaces within urban environment, and ensuring a more sustainable management of water resources.

Figure 8.1: Economic damages due to extreme events between 1970 and 2012 in Colombia (figures in EUR ‘000 (EUR ‘000). Source: EM-DAT, 2013.

Figure 15: Brignole station during 1970 and 2011 floods (Balbi and Monti, 2071) This question introduces another aspect of vulnerability that can be indicated as “institutional vulnerability“. According to the definition provided by the European research project ENSURE (2011), institutional vulnerability represents “the exposure and vulnerability of individuals, communities or organizations to the uncontrollable adverse consequences of another organisation’s critical shortcomings“.

Figure 8.6: Loss curves for flood risk in the Quebrada Limas river catchment area, Bogota. Source: reproduced from Yamin et al., 2013.

Figure 17: Genoa Vision included in the new Master Plan (PUC, 2010), with the demarcation of a green and a blue line within municipal boundaries.

Figure 18: Methodological framework developed within GRABS project for implementing Adaptation Action Plan (Celenza, 2011)

Figure 2.1: An adaptive regional input-output model and its application to the assessment of the economic cost of Katrina. The curve shows indirect losses as a function of sectoral losses, for a disaster with the same sectoral structure of Hurricane Katrina. The equation in black is the polynomial regression of indirect losses to sectoral losses for this case study modelled. Source: reproduced from Hallegatte et al., 2011 using data from Hallegatte, 2008.

Figure 2.2: Methodological roadmap for assessing economic impacts of climate change in cities. Source: reproduced from Hallegatte et al., 2011 p. 53.

Figure 2.3: Building and contents damage ratios for households with and without flood adaptea use and measures (bars=means, points=medians and 25-75% percentiles). Source: reproduced from Kreibich et al., 2005 p. 124.

3.2.2 Flooding events in the rest of the world

Figure 4.1: Repair Storm or Wind Damage Costs. Source: reproduced from HomeAadvisor, 2014.

Figure 6.1: Correlation between UK household buildings subsidence damage and drought (1988- 2006) Legend: Subsidence damage measured in £2003 million. Data supplied by the ABI. Drought intensity measured in accumulated precipitation over the 18 months prior to September of the corresponding year (in mm). Source: reproduced from Logar and van den Bergh, 2011 using date from Dlugolecki, 2007. A direct impact of droughts on buildings is subsidence (Logar and van den Bergh, 2011). Dlugolecki (2007) has reported that drought-induced subsidence has cost insurers in the UK and France billions of dollars in recent decades. Damages to buildings due to subsidence of the ground in France is estimated to have cost EUR 237m per year for the period 1989- 2002 (Corti et al., 2009). Furthermore, the damage costs of subsidence have doubled since the 1961-1990 period — when subsidence damage costs to buildings equated to EUR 115m. Logar and van den Bergh (2011) argue that the increase in costs indicates a causal relationship between subsidence and climate change, because the increase corresponds with temperature increases and a higher incidence of drought (see Figure 6.1).

Figure 7.1a: Total costs for major extreme weather events in Europe, 1998-2009. Source: EEA, 20117.

Figure 7.1b: Total fatalities for major extreme weather events in Europe, 1998-2009. Source EEA, 20117.

Figure 7.2a: Highest cost extreme weather events in RAMSES case study cities, 1900-2013

Figure 7.2b: Perceived costs of extreme events due to future climate change (responses from municipal officials averaged across 20 cities)

Figure 7.2c: Estimated costs of adaptation measures by sector in New York City. Averages of ranges from City of New York 2013. Conversion of USD to EUR based on 1 January 2073.

Figure 7.3: Perceived likelihood and cost of extreme events due to future climate change (0 — 10 range, averaged across 20 cities). The minus value for coldwaves and snow denotes a hazard that is perceived on average to decrease in likelihood with climate change. Furthermore, heatwaves and drought both scored very highly as perceived future costs. This may be partly because officials assess health-related costs of heatwaves to be high while these non-market costs are rarely quantified in the cities. The high costs of drought may be due to views that costs will increase substantially as the likelihood of drought events increases (see Figure 7.3). However, the mismatch between historical costs and perceived future costs may also be due partly to the lack of a strong evidence base for policy makers to draw on. Further research should be undertaken to test this.

Figure 8.1: Share of London’s metro output by industry. Source: Brookings Institution, 2012b.

Bilbao is a city of high wealth levels relative to the rest of Europe. In 2012, Bilbao’s metropolitan GDP was EUR 30.82bn, representing 2.95% of Spain’s GDP (Brookings Institution and JPMorgan Chase, 2014a). In 2012, Bilbao’s GDP per capita was EUR 31,753 (Brookings Institution and JPMorgan Chase, 2014a). As Figure 8.2 shows, the largest sectors of employment in Bilbao in 2012 were the business and financial sector (21 %), the trade and tourism sector (18%) and the manufacturing and local/non-market sector (both 17%) (Brookings Institution, 2012b) (see Figure 8.2). Figure 8.2: Sectors of employment in the metropolitan area of Bilbao. Source: Brookings Institution, 2012b.

Figure 8.3: Sectors of employment in the metropolitan area of Bogota. Source: Brookings Institution, 2012b.

Figure 8.4: Number of disasters in Colombia by city between 1970 and 2011. Source: reproduced from Campos et al., 2011 using data from OSSO-EAFIT Corporation, 2011.

Costs for damages resulting from the 1970 event have been estimated to more than EUF 160m. The total costs of the event, however, including consequent relief efforts spannin the period 1970-1980, amounted to a total of nearly EUR 500m (CNG, 2010). Such direc costs show that inaction is an unacceptable option in the face of climate change threats Economic simulations coupled with climate scenarios show that the benefits of adaptatio! can be noteworthy (see Figure 16). The implementation of adaptation measures can make « significant difference in terms of costs compared with scenarios in which no action i undertaken. Anyway, it is worth specifying that the variables at stake often have non-linea relationships with each other. Figure 16: Economic costs with and without adaptation showing the reduction of costs following the implementation of adaptation measures (Feyen and Watkiss, 2011)

Figure 8.7: Share of New York City’s metropolitan area GDP by sector. Source: Brookings Institution, 2012b. According to the Brookings Institution, the largest market sector in New York is business and finance, representing 40.3% of the city’s GDP (Brookings Institution, 2012b) (see Figure 8.7). This is followed by the local/non-market sectors (37.2%) and trade and tourism (12.3%). In terms of trade, chemical products (including pharmaceuticals), financial services, business services, tourism, and royalties account for 70% of the city’s total exports (Istrate and Marchio, 2012). The city is also an important centre for mass media, journalism, publishing and the creative industries (Currid, 2006).

Figure 8.8: Share of Rio’s metro output by industry. Source: Brookings Institution, 2012b. Rio’s largest sector is the local and non-market sector, representing 30% of the economy (Brookings Institution, 2012b). Other key sectors include business and finance (28%), trade and tourism (15%) and commodities (9%) (See Figure 8.8).

Figure 9.1: Highest cost extreme weather events in RAMSES case study cities, 1900-2013

Figure 9.2: Perceived costs of extreme events due to future climate change (responses from municipal officials averaged across 20 cities)

Figure 9.3: Major market sectors of the municipal economy in the RAMSES case study cities (percentage of market output). Comparable data not available for Hyderabad.

Figure 1: The Bisagno river valley (Rosso, 2012)

Figure 3: The position of Genoa municipality within the Ligurian Gulf enclosed between the sea and the mountains (Brandolini et al., 2012)

Such a configuration has been recognised as the main cause for the genesis of Geno cyclones (Trigo, 2002), a phenomena known also as “Genoa Low” or Ligurian Depressior that involves not only the city but the entire regions of Liguria and Northern Toscana. | detail, the “Genoa Low” consists of a low pressure area, consequence of a thermal contras between the perturbations from the Atlantic Ocean and the warm seawater of the Liguria Gulf. Such a contrast often rainfalls, in some cases identified as “water bombs”. The formation of “water bombs” has or emergency warnings, and this aspect makes them particularly relevant i very short time terms of impac s and poten eads to severe precipitations and, in some cases, to extrem ial damages as also Figure 4 highlights. This phenomenon i favoured by the increase of days characterised by a higher sea temperature, that is one c the expected e ects of clima: e change.

Figure 5: 3 hours and 24 hours rainfall accumulation recorded at Ponte Carrega rain gauge in 1970 and 2011 flood events (adapted from Garotta, 2012)

Figure 6: The Bisagno Valley (Cevasco et al., 2070) The following review of damages takes into account what occurred to the Bisagno catchment in both the extreme events (see the morphology of Bisagno river Valley in Figure 6). In detail, apart from morphological conditions, other factors have contributed to the occurrence of great damages and represented factors of vulnerability toward more likely flash floods events. These factors are more related to urban shape, city features and land use and can be observed also in other urban contexts. Urbanization and high density population make Genoa one of the major hydrological risk areas in Italy. A recent mapping activity carried out by the Civil Protection of the Environment Department of the Liguria Region shows that 16% of the municipality of Genoa is exposed to flood risk (Il Secolo XIX, 9012).

In the last century the municipal area of Genoa has been affected by recurring flood events, often originating from the Bisagno river and some of its tributaries (see Figure 8). The Fereggiano brook is the last tributary of the Bisagno river. Both the streams flow under a cover in their last sections — for, respectively, 1.5 km and 0.6 km (Silvestro et al., 2012) following works realised in the late 1930s. Figure 8: The Bisagno river, the Fereggiano brook and the Sturla torrent with evidence of the canalised and covered sections (in red) (adapted from Colombini, 2012)

Figure 10: Non-monetary damages to cultural heritage occurred in 2011 flood (MIBAC, 2013)

Figure 11: The coverage of Bisagno river at Brignole railway station The size and typology of damages occurred in Genoa in the two above described events find their origin in the peculiar exposition and vulnerability factors of the city. As stated by Brandolini (2012), the main land use change due to the development of harbour, industrial, and residential areas has strongly impacted on geomorphological processes. The Bisagno Valley has been the object of a radical transformation during the last 150 years. In the mid of the 19th century, the Bisagno Valley was rich of small cultivated lots and the landscape was characterised by terraces of olive trees. Starting from 1926, Genoa developed important urban services, like the prison, the stadium, the slaughterhouses, the kennel, the fruit market, public houses and different municipal housings. In order to complete the inclusion of some neighbourhoods, the final segments of the Bisagno river and the Fereggiano brook were canalised in their final parts at the end of Thirties (see Figure 11).

The evolution of urbanization over one century, as reported by Tizzoni (2011) (see Figure 12), shows a significant increase of urban areas (from 3 to 11%) and crops (including

Figure 13: Urbanization in Genoa over the centuries (Rosso, 2012). Last image on the right refers to 1997 (Faccini, 2012)

Figure 14: Qualitative estimation of rainfall height in respect to time (Garotta, 2012) Such data shows that the development of the city did not take into account extreme events, recently even more frequent and concentrated due to the effects of climate change. According to the River Basin Plan of the Bisagno river (2001), the event occurred on 4 November 2011 was characterised by a Period of Return of 200 years (PR=200) that is correctly taken into account by the Basin River Plan (see Figure 14). The Plan itself includes interventions to be realised in order to face these peak conditions. According to hydraulic estimations, the flood could have presumably been avoided if such interventions had been realised.

With respect to floods, also structural measures aimed at adapting to (more frequent) hig value flows can be evaluated as adaptation measures. Referring to the case at stake, works for improving the hydraulic functionality of the final covered section of the Bisagno river anc the Fereggiano brook and the realization of a channel devoted to reduce the river flow rate at the peak are in progress (see Figure 19). It is worth noting that some of the quotec tools/initiatives (River Basin Plan, PUC, GRABS project), represent a considerable tank in terms of information for the implementation of a future comprehensive Adaptation Action Plan for Genoa. Undoubtedly, flood and water management should represent one of the “relevant planning areas” to deal with.

dependent. The saturation is maximal in Summer (mean up to 3°C), while it is considerabl smaller in winter. Furthermore, Zhou et al. (2013) present two main findings about the UF intensity of individual clusters as a function of the boundary temperature. On the one hanc not all clusters exhibit increasing UHI intensities with increasing boundary temperatures. Fc several clusters, the opposite, inverse UHI effect is found, i.e., decreasing cluste temperature with increasing boundary temperature. On the other hand, seasonal difference are highlighted. For the same boundary temperature, different UHI intensities are measure in spring and fall. A pronounced seasonality is found for many clusters, mirroring | characteristic signature and regional heterogeneity due to climate conditions (Zhou et al 2013). In Bologna, measured and projected temperatures are increasing. In a comparativ study on heat waves in Italian urban areas in 2003, comprising Bologna, Conti et al. (200 reported the mortality rates particularly for elderly people, while Zauli Sajani et al. (2008 report the existence of an urban-rural gradient for UHI in Bologna. Major differences exis between the urban texture of Bologna and close plain rural areas, in average of app. 4°C with values up to 8°C measured during the night. The annual trend of minimum an maximum temperatures shows a tendency to increase during the period 1951-2011, with | value of 0.3°C in 10 years for minimum temperatures and 0.2°C in 10 years for maximur temperatures. Figure 20 shows the evolution of anomalies in temperature as measured i Bologna during the period 1951-2011. This tendency becomes more pronounced after th 1990s, when peaks of annual anomaly of 2.5°C have been recorded, for both minimum an maximum temperatures, as for example in 2000 (BLUE AP, 2013a). Figure 20: Trend of anomalies of annual minimum and maximum temperatures Bologna (BLUE AP, 2013a, p. 12)

Figure 21: Temporal trends of maximum number of consecutive days without precipitation during the summer in Bologna. Period 1951-1991 (BLUE AP, 2013a, p. 17)

Figure 22: Temporal trends of number of days with intense precipitation (<90 percentile) during summer in Bologna. Period 1951-1991 (BLUE AP, 2013a, p. 17)

Table 3.1: Preliminary estimates of future costs of weather insurance claims (GBP million [EUR million] in 2004 prices). Source: Dlugolecki and Catovsky, 2004 and ABI, 2004. The Association of British Insurers (ABI) estimated losses from storms and floods in the UK to have exceeded GBP 6bn (EUR 8.5bn) during 1998-2004 (Dlugolecki and Catovsky, 2004). ABI estimates future claims will be two or three times higher than today’s level unless action on is taken to reduce the impacts of climate change (Dlugolecki and Catovsky, 2004; ABI, 2004). Table 3.1 shows estimates of future costs of insurance claims due to flooding across the UK. Costs from inland floods are expected to double by 2050 on an annual average basis and triple during an extreme year (Dlugolecki and Catovsky, 2004; ABI, 2004).

Table 3.2: Domestic flood damage in the UK. Source: ABI, 2013. Table 3.2 shows data from the ABI on insurance claims from general flooding events in the UK between 2002 and 2012. Although claims represent only a proportion of overall losses, i provides an indication of relative order of magnitude of events across years.

Table 3.3: Total estimated costs of a typical US home. Source: NFIP, 2014.

Table 3.4: Adaptation measures and costs. Source: Copenhagen, 20171.

Table 4.1: Domestic storm damage in the UK. Source: Association of British Insurers

Table 5.1: Major events of temperature heatwave events in EU 27, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Switzerland and Turkey, 1998-2009. Source: EEA, 2011.

Table 5.3: Estimated costs and benefits of the weather of 1995 on air, rail, road and water transpor (GBP million). Source: LCCP, 2002a.

Table 5.4: Total costs of single intervention measures in 2002 in Philadelphia. Source: Koppe et al. 2004 using data from Kalkstein, 2002.

Table 7.1: Costs and fatalities attributed to major extreme weather events in Europe 1998-2009 Source: EEA, 2011. In contrast, heatwaves and coldwaves were responsible for many more excess fatalities, and the health costs of these extreme events are most likely to be substantial (see Table 7.1; Figure 7.1b). Between 1998 and 2009, 77,551 recorded excess deaths were attributed to heatwaves and coldwaves - the vast majority of these being due to the heatwave in the hot summer of 2003.

Table 7.2: Summary of absolute and relative costs from historical extreme events in the RAMSES case study cities. No recorded costs were found for coldwaves, mean warming, humidity, coastal erosion, wildfires or landslides. were known to exist by the city authorities and local stakeholders. The most comprehensive data found were for London. However, even for London, some of the data used and provided by the city authorities are sourced from anecdotal references such as news reports rather than academic or official analyses.

Table 7.3: Results of Fisher LSD tests showing p values. P values below 0.05 (5% level) suggest a significant difference in perceived cost between hazards. For example, the perceived costs of inland flooding are significantly higher than the perceived costs of coldwaves and snow, sea flooding, storms and humidity across the 20 cities.

Table 7.4: Results of cluster analysis of perceived costs of climate-related threats across 17 of the 20 cities surveyed. The three remaining cities — Burgas, Copenhagen and Trondheim - did not provide sufficient responses to cover all threats. Numbers represent means of perceived costs for each event, with higher means representing higher perceived costs. Cities fall into four groups: Cluster 1 have high perceived costs of inland flooding; Cluster 2 have high costs of heatwaves and drought; Cluster 3 have high costs of sea and inland flooding; Cluster 4 have low predicted costs from future climate change.

Table 8.1: Funding for flood and coast erosion risk management in England. Source: The Pitt Review, 2008.

Table 8.2: Total Environmental Benefits and Size of Scheme. Source: GLA, 2009b

Table 8.3: Historical list of floods in Bilbao. Source: Ayuntamiento de Bilbao, 2008b.

Table 8.4: Origin of the funds and percentages of funds each sponsor gives. Source: Tovar, 2005.

Table 8.5: Budget for improving “Barrios” in Bogota, Source: UNDP, 2007. The project is part of the improvement of “Barrios” coordinated through the CVP (UNDP, 2007). Overall, 500 barrios and 1,860,000 people benefited from this programme which was implemented across 12 different localities in Bogota. The estimated budget for this programme was around COP 258bn (EUR 83.7m). The following Table 8.5 shows the budget

Table 8.6: Total costs of The Nueva Esperanza resettlement programme. Source: World Bank 2011. The Nueva Esperanza neighbourhood in Rafael Uribe Uribe, in the southeast of Bogota, is a watershed of the Hoya del Gueaura creek near the Entres Nubes District Ecological park (Parque Ecologico Distrital Entre Nubes, PEDEN), one of Bogota’s natural reserves (World Bank, 2011). The DPAE declared the area a “high-risk zone”. A resettlement programme was financed under the World Bank. A census and appraisal of the two largest estates were undertaken, and the areas valued at COP 4.3bn (EUR 1.7m). The total cost of the resettlement programme is around COP 32.4bn (EUR 12.8m) including a range of resettlement measures (see Table 8.6).

Table 8.7: Severe flooding events in Hyderabad. Source: Apte, 2009 using data from the India Meteorology Department.

In 2013, a resilience plan was published as part of PlaNYC, including a breakdown of 10- year capital and study cost preliminary estimates (City of New York, 2013). The following sections outline the major conclusions of the plan (see Table 8.8). A full breakdown by initiative can be found in the report. Overall, if NYC implements all the resilience measures in the plan, the total cost is estimated to be EUR 10-12bn (1.14-1.35% of the city’s GDP).

Table 8.9: PAC 2 Investments in BRL billion (EUR billion). Source: Loudiyi, 2010.

Table 8.10: Cost of building upgrade in all houses at risk, 2010 (in BRL of 2010 (EUR of 2010)). Source:Swiss Re, 2011 using data from IBGE, Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra de Domicilios (PNAD) 2008-2009.

Table 8.11: Summary of adaptation measures, their costs and loss aversion potential. Source: Swiss Re, 2011. Table 8.11 shows that building codes which enforce sealing of the ground floor are currently estimated to avert losses of up to BRL 1.4bn (EUR 626m) by 2030 (Swiss Re, 2011). Drainage projects are likely to reduce the damage costs by almost BRL 1bn (EUR 447m) and measures to tackle hillside stabilisation by over BRL 165m (EUR 73.8m). Additional stabilisation for hillsides which is a measure of the PAC 2 and costs around BRL 1.4bn (EUR 626m) could avert losses by BRL 158m (EUR 70.6m) annually.

Table 9.1: Summary of current evidence of climate-related costs and adaptation costs in RAMSEX case study cities.

Table 1: Cost of protection (USD million) from sea level rise in Italy. “A2 and B2 scenarios according to IPCC (adapted from Carraro and Sgobbi, 2008, p. 13) In terms of coastal erosion, the assessment of climate change adaptation costs for Italy is very limited, and few researches have been implemented for coastal areas. In depth analysis of adaptation costs in urban areas are also lacking. Therefore this paragraph does not target urban environments; rather, it aims at providing an overview of climate change adaptation costs for coastal areas in Italy. Nunes and Chiabai (2007) analyse the case of the MOSE dykes in the Venice Lagoon, while Carraro and Sgobbi (2008) estimate the costs of inaction in terms of land lost to sea level rise and the optimal investment in infrastructure for coastal protection in Italy, as presented in Table 1.

Table 2: Five operations for assessing adaptation costs to flood risk in the Fondi Plain (adapted from Gambarelli and Goria, 2003; 2004)

As Table 3 shows, the present value of the area at risk of permanent flooding within the time norizon 2002-2100 varies in the range of EUR 130-270m, depending on the considered scenario (low, high), the discount rate (3%, 1%) and the upper and lower limits assigned to some variables.

Table 4: VSL (in EUR million) per range of ages. VSL is median/mean WTP, dividec by the risk reduction. Calculations assume average income per household membe in Italy, male, married, no children, no college degree (adapted from Alberini anc Chiabai, 2007a; 2007b).

In Italy, earthquakes represent the most disruptive natural disaster events for number of victims and economic losses. Nevertheless, in terms of “affected people” the EM-DAT global disaster database shows the absolute supremacy of floods (See Figure 2). In detail, in Italy, referring to the 1900-2013 period, the event that has involved the largest number of people has been the 1970 flood that seriously affected the city of Genoa, located in North- Western Italy.

Figure 9: Classification of types of loss from floods (modified from EMA, 2002)

Table 5: Economical loss data for 1970 event as reported by the Genoa Commerce Chamber (Gatti, 2012)

Table 6: Maximum urgency intervention established by Genoa Municipality after the 2011 flood (Grillo, 2011) 200 years peak flow in terms of period of return (PR) of t flow corresponding to the 200 years PR is 1300 m? that m the Bisagno river was able to drain after its canalizatio occurred during this event can be estimated through Municipality of Genoa as “extreme urgency” intervention, ne event n. Part o the Special Council Commission nominated for investiga and as summarized in the Table 6 below. ing the f ISPRA, 2011). The peak uch exceeds the 500m*° value that the physical damages he intervention declared by the as reported in the final report of ood event (Grillo, 2011)

Table 7: Damages to enterprises according to different activities (Chamber of Commerce, 2011) Maximum urgency works included physical reconstruction and functional restoratio activities. They have been unded both by Municipal and National Funds, even by chargin a specific excise tax on the national petrol price. Referring to National Funds, Legambient (2012) reports about a total of EUR 66.9m allocated for covering maximum urgency work emerged after the events damages occurred in the UNESCO world heritage si happened in Liguria in October and November 2011 (includin: “Cinque Terre” area that has a high landscape value being | e). Referring to the same emergency (Cinque Terre and Genoa other channels of funding have been activated and, in detail, 18 million euros came from th European Social Fund and EUR 30m from the ERDF, devoted to restore activities fc damaged enterprises (Legambiente, 2012). A more detailed analysis on the 2011 occurre damages in the private sector is provided by the Genoa Chamber of Commerce (Table 7).

institutional vulnerability. The restriction of the river section compliant with respect to a PR=50 years flow, that means a low flow expectation, is in fact one of the determinant factors of the following disasters. It is worth noting that the River Basin Plan, carried out by the Province of Genoa in 2001, took this critical aspect into account by applying different typologies of measures for mitigating flood risk.

Table 9: Climate change vulnerability factors of Genoa compared to RAMSES case studies

In detail, the PUC of Genoa (see Figure 17) presents the vision of the city in which two conceptual lines, the “green” and the “blue”, are drawn within the administrative boundaries. The green line encloses the built up area, including a non-homogenous urban texture within which empty spaces have to be requalified; the blue line represents the relationship between the built up area and the sea. The Table 10 highlights which are the current main adaptation measures to climate change in Genoa, deriving from several sources and initiatives. Particularly worthy to note is the fact that the new Master Plan hardly promotes measures against the urban sprawl phenomenon, especially in the area included between the green and the blue line. This would be needed in order to preserve the environmental, ecologic and landscape value of the territory surrounding the city.

Table 10: Main adaptation measures to climate change in climate conditions and its consequences (own elaboration).

Table 11: Projections of seasonal climate change in T. min. and T. max. Periods 2021-2050 and 2071-2099, A1B IPCC scenario, Bologna. Source: BLUE AP (2013a, p. 21)

In terms of flood risk, a dramatic increase in flow rates of rivers is projected for the Emilia Romagna region (as the very recent urban and rural floods in January 2014 have shown) and Bologna. This may become a challenging issue considering that more than 50% of the Municipality of Bologna is characterised by very low hydrological response capacities, particularly in the most urbanised areas. The soil sealing caused by urban development over he last 60 years has led to the rapid growth of surface runoff, overloading the network of plain artificial channels, designed for a less extended urban texture. The current urban exture is not able to ensure an adequate drainage, and thus floods in Bologna are expected o increase (BLUE AP, 2013a). Table 12 shows the urban sprawl in Bologna in the period 1951-2003, pointing out that the urbanised area as well as the ratio of urbanised area on the otal municipal area is more than doubled. Table 12: Urban Sprawl in Bologna. Period 1951-2003 (BLUE AP, 2013a, p. 27

Table 13: Adaptation measures for Heat Waves (HW) and Flood (F) risks in Bologna (BLUE AP, 2013b).

TABLE “Italian Cities”. Some experiences of adaptation plans at urban scale in Italy

descriptionView Paper arrow_downwardDownload

Ciudad y adaptación al cambio climático

by Celia Ruiz-de-Oña Plaza

2014, Sociedad y Ambiente

Esta reflexión plantea que la investigación sobre adaptación al cambio climático en espacios urbanos debe tomar relevancia frente a la actual preeminencia de estudios sobre mitigación en el sector forestal, tomando como punto de partida... more

descriptionView Paper arrow_downwardDownload

Urban Adaptation

Related Topics