Impacts of disasters caused by natural events in African urban areas are growing due to the increasing physical, social and economic vulnerability of African cities. The impacts’ assessment of climate-related hazards, including floods, heat waves, droughts, sea level rise, desertification, etc., on African urban areas is becoming a priority for planning a sustainable development of African cities. Such analyses generally require reliable basic data (e.g. topographic maps, DEMs and DSMs, etc.) and long time series of climate parameters, also to assess future climate trends. The lack of this data in African areas is one of the main criticalities faced by experts of this sector and introduces several uncertainties at each step of the analysis, from the hazard to the impact assessment, becoming more critical when considering climate change effects. Global Circulation Models are often used to perform projections of future trends of climate parameters considering hypothetical emission, concentration, and radiative forcing scenarios; this tool can assist researchers working on this topic, nevertheless, these climate models bring with themselves further uncertainties that cannot be neglected in the assessment of climate effects in Africa.
A comprehensive overview of uncertainties related to hypothetical climate change impacts scenarios on African urban areas represents a basic information for local stakeholders to address and prioritize mitigation actions to climate change.
We welcome contributions focusing on the assessment of climate change impacts and related uncertainties in Africa. The aim of this session is to promote a multidisciplinary exchange of experiences and practices in the assessment of climate change impacts in African urban areas dealing with all the aspects of urban vulnerability (social, economic and physical) and the treatment of uncertainties related to their analysis.