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HAZUR® Urban Risk Assessment and Resilience Planning Methodology

Solution Overview

The HAZUR® methodology represents a structured, qualitative risk assessment framework designed to evaluate interconnected urban services and infrastructures within cities, identifying risks, assessing cascading impacts, and establishing priorities for improvement.[9] This approach was developed by Cetaqua, the Water Technology Centre, in collaboration with UN-Habitat, and forms part of the City Resilience Profiling Tool (CRPT) that supports cities in developing resilience strategies.[1] The methodology has been applied in several cities around the world, including Barcelona, Bristol, Lisbon, Bogota, Amman and Mexico City.[1]

Technical Components

The HAZUR® methodology engages multidisciplinary teams of city stakeholders in a series of structured sessions, using a qualitative process to stimulate collaborative problem-solving among participants as they identify potential hazards and operational vulnerabilities in the urban network.[9] This approach draws inspiration from well-established methodologies in industrial safety, such as Hazard and Operability Studies (HAZOP), as well as from business continuity planning and strategic urban management.[9] The system incorporates several analytical techniques, including 'What-If' scenarios and cross-service impact assessments, utilizing participatory modeling, domino-effect simulations, and the assessment of climate adaptation measures on urban service operations.[9] The RESCCUE project uses the HAZUR tool and methodology as the basis for software developments able to perform the assessment, management and planning of urban resilience in an integrated way.[3] In the holistic approach, the resilience assessment tool is used to analyse the relations and the cascading effects among the different urban services.[3] The urban resilience management tool HAZUR Manager is being improved and tested so it can be easily deployed in any other city around the world, and by constantly monitoring key infrastructures, the tool will be able to detect which infrastructures are affected when shocks occur.[3]

Implementation Details

The HAZUR® workshop in Barcelona was held on the 20th and 21st of June 2017 at the Cetaqua facilities.[1] The workshop was organized by Cetaqua and UN-Habitat, with the support of the Barcelona City Council.[1] The workshop was attended by 25 participants from different organizations, including the operators of the critical services, the city council, the civil protection agency, the meteorological agency and the research centres.[1] Organizations participating in the Barcelona HAZUR® workshop included Aigües de Barcelona, AMB, Barcelona Cicle de l'Aigua, Barcelona City Council, Cetaqua, Civil Protection, Endesa, Gas Natural Fenosa, Port de Barcelona, Servei Meteorològic de Catalunya, Telefónica, TMB, UN-Habitat, and Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya.[1] The workshop was divided into two days, with the first day dedicated to the identification of the hazards, the services and the potential impacts, and the second day dedicated to the risk assessment.[1] An initial resilience assessment with HAZUR has been made in Barcelona, which helped identify improvements of the tool currently under development.[3] The Barcelona Resilience Action Plan was developed within the framework of the RESCCUE project (Resilience to cope with climate change in urban areas), a research and innovation project funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 700174.[2] The RESCCUE project using HAZUR® methodology involves a consortium of 18 partners coordinated by Aquatec – SUEZ Advanced Solutions.[6] CETAQUA, CENTRO TECNOLOGICO DEL AGUA, FUNDACION PRIVADA received a net EU contribution of €979,949.61 for participation in the RESCCUE project.[5]

Benefits and Impacts

Through the HAZUR process, cities can consolidate essential data, analyze service interdependencies, anticipate crisis impacts, and develop proactive management strategies.[9] Through HAZUR, cities can gain a deeper understanding of vulnerabilities and critical infrastructures, as well as the complex interdependencies between urban services, facilitated by a common language, clear visuals, and insights from key stakeholders.[9] The results of the risk assessment in Barcelona show that the main risks are related to floods, droughts and heat waves, specifically the impact of floods on the water supply and sanitation services, the impact of droughts on the water supply service, and the impact of heat waves on the energy and health services.[1] The HAZUR® implementation in Barcelona identified that the impact of heat waves on energy services has a risk level of 5 (very high risk).[1] In Barcelona, participants identified a list of 10 hazards including floods, droughts, heat waves, sea level rise, storm surges, wildfires, earthquakes, terrorist attacks, industrial accidents, and cyber-attacks.[1] By identifying the vulnerabilities of urban services, the resilience assessment tool will help prioritize investments to improve their robustness and reduce the risk of failure.[2] Local administrations across Europe are utilizing HAZUR to inform resilience strategies, and the technique is frequently incorporated into university-level courses on smart cities and urban resilience.[9]

Climate Adaptation Relevance

Climatic drivers and pressures affecting the urban water cycle, such as droughts or heavy rains, can produce critical direct impacts on strategic urban services (water supply, wastewater and stormwater drainage, wastewater treatment, solid waste, telecommunication, energy supply, transport, etc.) and cause cascading collateral impacts on other services.[4] Recent climate projections for Barcelona show a relevant increment of the maximum rainfall intensities for the period 2071–2100.[10] RESCCUE focuses on the cascading failures that involve several urban functions, given the interdependencies existent between the several city services.[4]

Business Analysis

RESCCUE was born in May 2016 as Europe's first large-scale innovation and urban resilience project, aimed to improve the capability of cities to anticipate, prepare for, respond to, and recover from significant multi-hazard threats with minimum damage.[8] The RESCCUE project received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 700174.[1] RESCCUE aims 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.[5] The RESCCUE project is developing a set of tools and methodologies to assess urban resilience and to support the development of resilience strategies, with these tools being tested and validated in three case study cities: Barcelona, Lisbon, and Bristol.[2] The RESCCUE validation platform is formed by 3 EU cities (Barcelona, Lisboa and Bristol) that will allow testing the innovative tools developed in the project.[5] The HAZUR® models and tools will be validated in Barcelona, Lisbon and Bristol, three cities carefully selected by their representativeness of the European diversity in terms of climate type and city characteristics.[6] The RESCCUE tools allow urban resilience assessment from a multisectorial approach, for current and future climate change scenarios, including multiple hazards and cascading effects.[4] Action 6.2 aims to develop a resilience assessment tool for urban services based on the methodology being developed within the RESCCUE project, to assess the resilience of the water, energy, and waste services in Barcelona and identify cascading effects between them.[2] Action A2.1 under RESCCUE includes the improvement of the drought indicators system and the Drought Protocol of the Ter-Llobregat system.[7] Action A2.2 under RESCCUE includes the implementation of a real-time flood forecasting and warning system for the main critical points of the city's drainage system.[7]

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