Resilience Scanner

HAZUR® Urban Resilience Assessment Methodology and Platform

Solution Overview

The holistic approach for resilience assessment was implemented using the HAZUR® methodology and tool.[11][8][12] This methodology analyses the cascading effects that have collateral impacts on other strategic urban services and the city.[11] The HAZUR® approach is based on a method and software (as a service) to help city decision makers and urban resilience professionals make fully informed and structured choices to make their cities more resilient analyzing the interdependencies between different city services, monitoring the city and simulating cascade effects in case of impacts that may affect the city.[1]

Technical Components

The HAZUR® methodology has been developed by Cetaqua, the Water Technology Centre, in collaboration with UN-Habitat and has been applied in several cities including Barcelona, Bristol, Lisbon, Bogota, Amman and Mexico City.[2] In the holistic approach, the resilience assessment tool (HAZUR) is used to analyse the relations and the cascading effects among the different urban services.[10] The RESCCUE project took advantage of the existing HAZUR tool and methodology as the basis of further software developments able to perform the assessment, management and planning of urban resilience in an integrated way.[10] The approach of the project is holistic and multisectoral and utilizes the HAZUR® tool that enables consideration of urban interdependencies in decision making.[3] These tools assess urban resilience from a multisectorial approach, for current and future climate change scenarios and including multiple hazards.[8] The RESCCUE tools allow urban resilience assessment from a multisectorial approach for current and future climate change scenarios, including multiple hazards and cascading effects.[9] The information generated by sectorial and integrated models was employed to feed a more holistic analysis to provide a general overview of Barcelona's resilience in the case of extreme rainfall events.[7] A comprehensive flood risk assessment including direct, indirect, tangible and intangible impacts has been performed using cutting edge sectorial and integrated models to analyze the resilience of different urban services (urban drainage, traffic, electric and waste sectors) and their cascade effects.[7]

Implementation Details

The HAZUR® tool was used in Barcelona as one of three validation cities for the RESCCUE project.[1] The HAZUR® workshop in Barcelona was held on the 20th and 21st of June 2017 at the Cetaqua facilities, organized by Cetaqua and UN-Habitat with support of the Barcelona City Council.[2] The workshop was attended by 25 participants from different organizations, including operators of critical services, the city council, the civil protection agency, the meteorological agency and research centres.[2] In Barcelona, participants identified 10 hazards including floods, droughts, heat waves, sea level rise, storm surges, wildfires, earthquakes, terrorist attacks, industrial accidents, and cyber-attacks.[2] Participants identified 10 critical services: water supply, sanitation, energy, transport, telecommunications, health, food supply, waste management, public safety, and emergency services.[2] The RESCCUE project was led by Aquatec – SUEZ Advanced Solutions and counted with 18 partners including UN-Habitat, Bristol, Barcelona and Lisbon City Councils, utilities such as Endesa, EDP, Aguas de Portugal and Wessex Water, four research centers: Cetaqua, FIC, LNEC and IREC, The University of Exeter and École des Ingénieurs de la Ville de Paris and SMEs such as Opticits, Hidra and UrbanDNA.[5] Ajuntament de Barcelona (Barcelona City Council) was a partner in the RESCCUE project.[3] Since 2016, RESCCUE has been developing methodologies and tools to support cities increase their resilience, with Barcelona, Bristol, and Lisbon serving as testing platforms.[6] The RESCCUE Project is an H2020 research project with four years of implementation.[9] The RESCCUE project received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 700174.[12] The possible approaches were ranked by their cost-efficiency in terms of CAPEX and OPEX to evaluate their benefits potential.[8]

Benefits and Impacts

The results of the HAZUR® risk assessment in Barcelona show that the main risks are the impact of floods on water supply and sanitation services, the impact of droughts on water supply service, and the impact of heat waves on energy and health services.[2] According to the obtained results, Barcelona could suffer a significant increase of socio-economic impacts due to climate change if adaptation measures are not adopted.[7] The impacts have been geographically distributed showing the specific situation of each district of Barcelona for current and future scenarios, providing information essential for the justification and prioritization of the implementation of adaptation measures.[7] Key results of RESCCUE include Climate Change Scenarios and Risk Assessment, Climate Change Adaptation Strategies Prioritization Methodology, and Resilience Action Plans (RAP) for the three RESCCUE Cities including Barcelona.[4] The RESCCUE project aimed to elaborate Resilience Action Plans (RAP) for the research pilot cities with contributions of local project partners and stakeholders.[3] With the support of UN-Habitat, RESCCUE disseminated results among other cities belonging to major international networks.[9]

Climate Adaptation Relevance

Barcelona faces urban flooding, Combined Sewer Overflow during heavy storm events, drought, heat waves and sea level rise.[1] Recent climate projections for Barcelona show a relevant increment of the maximum rainfall intensities for the period 2071–2100.[7] RESCCUE not only assessed urban resilience under current climate scenarios but also provided projections on the future climate at local scale, facilitating thus the evaluation of climate change impacts in urban services.[5]

Business Analysis

The RESCCUE project aimed to deliver a framework for assessment, planning and management of urban resilience and develop a portfolio of adaptation strategies to test in selected pilot cities.[3] RESCCUE aimed to deliver a framework enabling city resilience assessment, planning and management by integrating into software tools new knowledge related to the detailed water-centred modelling of strategic urban services performance into a comprehensive resilience platform.[8] The project took the water sector as a starting point for the analysis of interconnectedness of urban systems.[3] The three RESCCUE cities were selected due to their strong involvement with urban resilience as demonstrated by their selection and participation in the 100 Resilient Cities program funded by the Rockefeller Foundation.[6] The three research sites Barcelona, Bristol and Lisbon are members of the '100 Resilient Cities' organization pioneered by The Rockefeller Foundation.[5] The validation platform was formed by 3 EU cities (Barcelona, Lisboa and Bristol) that allowed testing the innovative tools developed in the project and disseminating their results among other cities belonging to major international networks.[8] RESCCUE is an H2020 research project that aimed to help cities become more resilient to physical, social, and economic challenges, using the water sector as the central point of the approach.[6]

Sources