Typology of climate risks for scaling up urban planning-based adaptation in the EU

Every city is unique and complex. Examples include its geography, decision-making context, and climate-related risk profile. At the same time, each city shares similarities with other cities. The same applies to counties. Complex climate-related risks are increasing in cities in the EU. This makes the transfer of effective adaptation and mitigation measures between cities increasingly important, especially as time and funding for local case studies are limited. It is uncontroversial that transfer between similar cities, or similar counties respectively, is more probable. Systematic approaches to support this transfer are rare.

One way to reduce complexity in the world, and across such units of analysis, is by looking for patterns. Using a well-established data-driven methodology with a cluster analysis at its core, we identify and analyze recurrent patterns of multiple climate-related risks across urban areas, and derive what urban planning and design can do about it. We do this for 1152 NUTS-3 (county level) units covering over 99% of the EU area using over ten spatially explicit datasets on exposure to climate-related exteme events (for drought, heat, landslide, wildfires, air pollution, and flooding types) and exposure to sea-level rise.

In the resulting spatially explicit typology, each of the eight clusters, or groups, consists of NUTS-3 units which have similar combinations and degrees of multiple climate-related hazards. Each group was then comprehensively statistically analyzed and characterized. Then we derived and suggested combinations of areas for action and adaptation measures for decision-making in each group to focus on for reducing combined climate-related risks. On a city-and county level this supports urban planners and authorities, on a regional level political decision-making, and on an EU level strategically scaling up climate action.

For example, one group of NUTS-3 units exhibits the most pronounced dryness, alongside high heat hazard and highest wildfire exposure, in parts of France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Croatia, Romania, and Bulgaria. On this basis, we suggest integrating measures from action areas such as heat action plans, nature-based solutions to multiple hazards simultaneously, as well as public health measures, water management and science-based risk assessments and subsequent adaptation plans.

The climate-risk related typology is supplemented by three further EU-wide NUTS-3 level typologies based on 5-8 datasets each: contribution to mitigation, urban morphology, and capacity for action. This allows for a highly detailed and interdisciplinary storyline for understanding risk in each county, and county group, through a lens of urban planning.

The study was conducted in the Horizon EU project UP2030 (Urban Planning 2020, https://up2030-he.eu/). The results can be found here at https://urbanplanningfor2030.eu/form/urban-typologies. The methodology is interdisciplinary, drawing from climate risk assessment, governance, geography, and urban planning and dialogues between ten urban authorities. We also show that the methodology is also applicable to mitigation problems, and is applicable to other spatial units, such as ecosystems, conservation areas, or grid cells.