Assessment of urban flood resilience in Barcelona for current and future scenarios: the RESCCUE project

Abstract

The results of recent climate projections for the city of Barcelona show a relevant increment of the maximum rainfall intensities for the period 2071–2100. Considering the city as a system of systems, urban resilience is strictly linked to the proper functioning of urban services and the knowledge of the cascading effects that may occur in the case of the failure of one or more critical infrastructures of a particular strategic sector. In this context, the aim of this paper is to assess urban resilience through the analysis of the behavior of the main urban services in case of pluvial floods for current and future rainfall conditions due to climate change. 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. In addition, the paper shows how the information generated by these models can be employed to feed a more holistic analysis to provide a general overview of the city’s resilience in the case of extreme rainfall events. 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. In several cases, these impacts have been geographically distributed showing the specific situation of each district of the city for current and future scenarios. This information is essential for the justification and prioritization of the implementation of adaptation measures.

This research was funded by Horizon2020 Programme, Grant Agreement No. 700174. This paper presents some of the results achieved in the framework of the RESCCUE project (Resilience to Cope with Climate Change in Urban Areas—a multisectoral approach focusing on water) (www.resccue.eu). RESCCUE is a research project funded by the European Commission under the H2020 program, and its main goal is to provide methodologies and tools for the evaluation, planning and management of urban resilience in the context of climate change.

Peer Reviewed

Postprint (published version)