Developing green infrastructure design guidelines for urban climate adaptation

The United Nations have identified climate change as the greatest threat to human life. As current research shows, urban areas are more vulnerable to climate change than rural areas. Numerous people are affected by climate change in their daily life, health and well-being. The need to react is undisputed and has led to numerous guidelines and directives for urban climate adaptation. Plants are commonly mentioned and recommended as one key to urban climate adaptation. Due to shading of open space and building surfaces, as well as evapotranspiration, plants reduce the energy load on the urban fabric and increase thermal comfort and climate resilience amongst many other ecosystem services. Plants, therefore, are described as green infrastructure (GI), because of the beneficial effects they provide. Extensive green roofs are often discussed regarding their impact on thermal comfort for pedestrians and physical properties of buildings. By means of Stadslab2050 project Elief Playhouse in Antwerp, Belgium, a single-story building in the courtyard of a perimeter block, the effects of different extensive green roof designs (A and B) on the microclimate, human comfort at ground and roof level, as well as building physics are analyzed and compared to the actual roofing (bitumen membrane) as the Status Quo variant. For the analyses and evaluation of the different designs the innovative Green Performance Assessment System (GREENPASS®) method has been chosen. The planning tool combines spatial and volumetric analyses with complex 3D microclimate simulations to calculate key performance indicators such as thermal comfort score, thermal storage score, thermal load score, run-off and carbon sequestration. Complementary maps and graphs are compiled. Overall, the chosen method allows to understand, compare and optimize project designs and performance. The results for the Elief Playhouse show that the implementation of green roofs serves a slight contribution to the urban energy balance but a huge impact on the building and humans. Variant B with entire greening performs better in all considered indicators, than the less greened design Variant A and the actual Status Quo. Variant B will probably bring a greater cost/benefit than Variant A and is thus recommended.

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Green infrastructure for urban climate adaptation: How do residents’ views on climate impacts and green infrastructure shape adaptation preferences?

Landscape and Urban Planning ◽

10.1016/j.landurbplan.2016.05.027 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 157 ◽

pp. 106-130 ◽

Cited By ~ 71

Author(s):

Marthe L. Derkzen ◽

Astrid J.A. van Teeffelen ◽

Peter H. Verburg

Keyword(s):

Green Infrastructure ◽

Climate Adaptation ◽

Urban Climate ◽

Climate Impacts ◽

Shape Adaptation

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Urban Pluvial Flood Management Part 1: Implementing an AHP-TOPSIS Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis Method for Stakeholder Integration in Urban Climate and Stormwater Adaptation

Water ◽

10.3390/w13172422 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 13 (17) ◽

pp. 2422 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Charles Axelsson ◽

Silvio Giove ◽

Stefano Soriani

Keyword(s):

New York ◽

Decision Analysis ◽

Green Infrastructure ◽

Climate Adaptation ◽

Urban Climate ◽

Flood Management ◽

Adaptation Measures ◽

Multi Criteria Decision Analysis ◽

Inclusive Policy ◽

Stakeholder Integration

Cities are facing increasing pressures to enact adaptation measures due to climate change. While blue-green infrastructure has emerged as a focal adaptation technique for stormwater management, in order to craft adaptation policies cities must consider a multitude of emerging, complex, and competing stakeholder interests around multiple adaptation alternatives. However, accounting for these different interests, analyzing their diverse priorities, and maintaining a transparent decision-making process is not easily achieved within the existing policy frameworks. Here we define and present a combined multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) of the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and the technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) methods that easily integrates and quantifies stakeholder priorities while remaining accessible for non-experts engaged in the policy-making process. We demonstrate the method’s effectiveness through analyzing opinions about stormwater adaptation in New York City across several stakeholder groups. The method succeeds in integrating quantitative and qualitative judgements, indicating stakeholder preferential differences and allowing for more inclusive policy to be crafted. It can be extended beyond stormwater to many urban climate adaptation decisions facing multi-criteria considerations.

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Nature-Based Designs to Mitigate Urban Heat: The Efficacy of Green Infrastructure Treatments in Portland, Oregon

Atmosphere ◽

10.3390/atmos10050282 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 10 (5) ◽

pp. 282 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Yasuyo Makido ◽

Dana Hellman ◽

Vivek Shandas

Keyword(s):

Built Environment ◽

Green Infrastructure ◽

Climate Adaptation ◽

Environmental Concern ◽

Urban Climate ◽

Extreme Heat ◽

Land Uses ◽

Ambient Temperatures ◽

Urban Heat ◽

The City

Urban heat is a growing environmental concern in cities around the world. The urban heat island effect, combined with warming effects of climate change, is likely to cause an increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme heat events. Alterations to the physical, built environment are a viable option for mitigating urban heat, yet few studies provide systematic guidance to practitioners for adapting diverse land uses. In this study, we examine the use of green infrastructure treatments to evaluate changes in ambient temperatures across diverse land uses in the city of Portland, Oregon. We apply ENVI-met® microclimate modeling at the city-block scale specifically to determine what built environment characteristics are most associated with high temperatures, and the extent to which different physical designs reduce ambient temperature. The analysis included six green infrastructure interventions modeled across six different land-use types, and indicated the varying degrees to which approaches are effective. Results were inconsistent across landscapes, and showed that one mitigation solution alone would not significantly reduce extreme heat. These results can be used to develop targeted, climate- and landscape-specific cooling interventions for different land uses, which can help to inform and refine current guidance to achieve urban climate adaptation goals.

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Urban playgrounds as potential green infrastructure: The case of Thessaloniki

IOP Conference Series Earth and Environmental Science ◽

10.1088/1755-1315/899/1/012016 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 899 (1) ◽

pp. 012016

Author(s):

Garyfallia Katsavounidou

Keyword(s):

Public Space ◽

Green Infrastructure ◽

Urban Areas ◽

Climate Adaptation ◽

Urban Climate ◽

Free Play ◽

Point Of View ◽

Environmental Benefits ◽

Significant Shift ◽

Positive Effects

Abstract In Greek cities and towns, playgrounds, which represent a significant portion of open public space available in high density compact urban areas, fail to positively impact the sustainability of the urban environment, as they are made of artificial materials and generally lacking in natural elements. Designed around safety from accidents, a typical urban playground is equipped with prefabricated play structures, surrounded by an extensive area of rubber protective floor providing a surface safe from falls etc. This water-sealed surface does not absorb rainwater and has a very hazardous behaviour in hot temperature climates, such as Greece has. This “toxic turf,” a product of recycled elastic tires, contains chemicals suspect for cancer. In addition, trees and vegetation are usually insufficient or absent, thus worsening the overheating due to lack of shade. Although this model continues to prevail in Greece, around the world there is a significant shift towards natural playgrounds – play spaces that are designed to incorporate trees, shrubs, dirt, sand, grass, and play elements that are not industrially manufactured but constructed in situ, using stone, wood, reed, and other natural materials. From a pedagogical point of view, a stereotypical playground offers a rather dull and uninteresting environment for children to play, compared to the rich experience of a natural playground. Therefore, if designed as green infrastructure, playgrounds can considerably contribute to urban climate adaptation and a cooler microclimate and at the same time provide opportunities for urban children to come to contact with nature and benefit from free play. The scope of the paper is to present the multiple environmental benefits of natural playgrounds and to calculate the potential positive effects by the transformation of playgrounds into green spaces in a compact urban area. The field study examines the existing playgrounds in the municipality of Thessaloniki and their potential to become part of the city’s green infrastructure.

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Nature-based cooling potential: a multi-type green infrastructure evaluation in Toronto, Ontario, Canada

International Journal of Biometeorology ◽

10.1007/s00484-021-02100-5 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Vidya Anderson ◽

William A. Gough

Keyword(s):

Urban Agriculture ◽

Air Temperature ◽

Green Infrastructure ◽

Urban Climate ◽

Surface Air Temperature ◽

Green Roofs ◽

Near Surface ◽

Green Walls ◽

The Impact ◽

Agriculture Systems

AbstractThe application of green infrastructure presents an opportunity to mitigate rising temperatures using a multi-faceted ecosystems-based approach. A controlled field study in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, evaluates the impact of nature-based solutions on near surface air temperature regulation focusing on different applications of green infrastructure. A field campaign was undertaken over the course of two summers to measure the impact of green roofs, green walls, urban vegetation and forestry systems, and urban agriculture systems on near surface air temperature. This study demonstrates that multiple types of green infrastructure applications are beneficial in regulating near surface air temperature and are not limited to specific treatments. Widespread usage of green infrastructure could be a viable strategy to cool cities and improve urban climate.

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Transnational Support for Urban Climate Adaptation: Emerging Forms of Agency and Dependency

Global Environmental Politics ◽

10.1162/glep_a_00467 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 18 (3) ◽

pp. 25-46 ◽

Cited By ~ 7

Author(s):

Eric K. Chu

Keyword(s):

Climate Adaptation ◽

Urban Climate ◽

Institutional Culture ◽

External Support ◽

Political Agency ◽

Global Marketplace ◽

Spatial Strategies ◽

Transnational Actors ◽

Economic Constraints ◽

Political Economic

Transnational actors are critical for financing programs and generating awareness around climate change adaptation in cities. However, it is unclear whether transnational support actually enables more authority over adaptation actions and whether outcomes address wide-ranging development needs. In this article, I compare experiences from three cities in India—Surat, Indore, and Bhubaneswar—and link local political agency over adaptation with their supporting transnational funders. I find that adaptation governance involves powers of agency over directing bureaucratic practices, public finance, spatial strategies, and institutional culture. A city’s ability to exert these powers then yields different patterns of adaptation. However, political agency is circumscribed by a combination of historical political economic constraints and emerging transnational resources that promote specific forms of political meaning and procedures. The presence of external support therefore paradoxically constrains the governance autonomy of cities. This opens up new opportunities for development dependency—that is, ones that mirror neoliberal critiques of foreign aid—within the global marketplace for climate finance.

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Uncertainty and sensitivity analysis for natural risk and adaptation appraisal modeling with CLIMADA

10.5194/egusphere-egu21-1773 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Chahan M. Kropf ◽

Alessio Ciullo ◽

Simona Meiler ◽

Laura Otth ◽

Jamie W. McCaughey ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Sensitivity Analysis ◽

Green Infrastructure ◽

Climate Adaptation ◽

Damage Model ◽

Adaptation Measures ◽

Natural Risk ◽

Impact Function ◽

Uncertainty And Sensitivity Analysis ◽

Global Uncertainty ◽

The Impact

Modelling societal, ecological, and economic costs of natural hazards in the context of climate change is subject to both strong aleatoric and ethical uncertainty. Dealing with these is challenging on several levels &#8211; from the identification and the quantification of the sources of uncertainty to their proper inclusion in the modelling, and the communication of these in a tangible way to both experts and non-experts. One particularly useful approach is global uncertainty and sensitivity analysis, which can help to quantify the confidence in the output values and identify the main drivers of the uncertainty while considering potential correlations in the model. Here we present applications of global uncertainty analysis, robustness quantification, and sensitivity analysis in natural hazard modelling using the new uncertainty module of the CLIMADA (CLIMate ADAptation) platform.CLIMADA is a fully open-source Python program that implements a probabilistic multi-hazard global natural catastrophe damage model, which also calculates averted damage (benefit) thanks to adaptation measures of any kind (from grey to green infrastructure, behavioral, etc.). With the new uncertainty module, one can directly and comprehensively inspect the uncertainty and sensitivity to input variables of various output metrics, such as the spatial distribution of risk exceedance probabilities, or the benefit-cost ratios of different adaptation measures. This global approach does reveal interesting parameter interplays and might provide valuable input for decision-makers. For instance, a study of the geospatial distribution of sensitivity indices for tropical cyclones damage indicated that the main driver of uncertainty in dense regions (e.g. cities) is the impact function (vulnerability), whereas in sparse regions it is the exposure (asset) layer.&#160;CLIMADA: https://github.com/CLIMADA-project/climada_python&#160;(1) Aznar-Siguan, G. et al., GEOSCI MODEL DEV. 12, 7 (2019) 3085&#8211;97 (2) Bresch, D. N. and Aznar-Siguan., G., &#160;GEOSCI MODEL DEV. (2020), 1&#8211;20.

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