Decoding the urban geo-puzzle: navigating geological issues and global challenges through the lens of the Urban Geo-climate Footprint

At present, worldwide population and economic expansion boosts the demand for environmental resources and urban development. According to the 2022 United Nations World Population Prospect, the global population may reach up to 9.7 billion people by 2050 of which nearly 70% will be residing in urban areas. As a result, the urban setting will become increasingly complex and with more geological and climate negative effects exacerbated by the increasing population, the unequal distribution of economic and energy resources, and the over-exploitation of the environment.

To face these worldwide issues, a global approach to knowledge is required with concerted actions by all countries and cities. One possible solution addressing this need could be achieved firstly by classifying cities throughout the world as complex systems defined by geological, subsoil-related climate impact, environmental, and anthropic factors considered in a more holistic way.

To achieve this objective, the Urban Geo-climate Footprint (UGF) project, aimed to define a new methodology to classify and cluster cities by geological and climatic point of view.

The basic assumption of the UGF approach is that cities with similar geological-geographical settings should have similar challenges to manage, due to both common geological issues and climate change subsoil-related effects. Following this approach, a holistic tool consisting in a complex spreadsheet has been developed and applied to several European cities, in collaboration with several Geological Surveys of Europe.

It is demonstrated as the Urban Geo-climate Footprint tool is currently capable of providing a semi-quantitative quick representation of the pressures driven by geological and climatic complexity in the analysed cities, providing for the first time such classification for the urban environment.

Through the wide application of this methodology several benefits could be reached as the general awareness increase of non-experts and the enhanced reading-the-landscape capacity of decision makers about the link between geological setting and the increase in pressures due to climate change and anthropogenic activity.

Furthermore, the UGF approach would facilitate the possibility to exchange best practices among similar cities for planning purposes, and it would support the decision processes to define and differentiate policies and actions, also supporting policy and cooperative geoscience and climate justice.