Urban Resilience in a context of Climate Change (URCC) conference

We already live in a world of cities, and that trend will continue in the future. Today, 54% of the world’s population lives in urban areas, a proportion that is expected to increase to 66% by 2050. Moreover, climate change will cause pressures and uncertainties that will pose challenges to the society, economy, and environment. In this case, focusing on the impacts on the urban living, this can affect basic urban services, such as water or energy supply, making the city capacity of continuously functioning crucial for the most part of the world’s population.

Urban resilience refers to the ability of human settlements to withstand and to recover quickly from any plausible hazards. The repercussions of each crisis depend on the city’s preparedness to respond to specific predictable impacts. As such, cities are taking steps towards becoming more resilient and to protect their residents, their assets, and to remain functional during crises.

In this context, the RESCCUE project will organise the Urban Resilience in a context of Climate Change (URCC) conference. This event, under the slogan “URCC: You are climate change”, will take place in Sant Pau Art Nouveau Site, in Barcelona (Spain) on 9-10 March 2020 and aims to bring together different actors from academia, administrations, businesses and local communities to discuss the multiple aspects of urban resilience and climate change.

With a programme full of sessions, workshops, visits and discussions, this conference will be a space to exchange knowledge, to present excellence on Research & Innovation for urban resilience and climate change and to discuss key challenges and solutions in cities, with special focus on European urban areas. Besides, this event will support ongoing efforts to enhance the coherence and synergy between the communities of Climate Change Adaptation and Disaster Risk Management, policy and practice.

The URCC conference organising committee is made up by representatives from UN-Habitat, Barcelona City Council, Aquatec-SUEZ Advanced Solutions and Cetaqua, Water Technology Centre, all RESCCUE partners. Besides, a Scientific Committee with more than 20 experts from different backgrounds has been defined to ensure the best possible quality of the conference.

URCC Conference in a nutshell

Organised by RESCCUE, EU-funded project

• 250 Participants
• 2 Plenary Sessions
• +60 Parallel Sessions
• 4 excursions

URCC Conference themes:

• Hazard and risk assessment of key and critical urban services
• Climate risk management and resilience in urban areas
• From climate data to climate services
• Forecasting, monitoring, real-time control and decision support
• Adaptation strategies and nature-based solutions to improve resilience
• Institutions, governance and planning
• Financing for resilience and climate change adaptation
• Citizens engagement and social justice
• Innovation, communication and data-sharing
• Co-production of knowledge, solutions and services

About the RESCCUE project

RESCCUE (RESilience to cope with Climate Change in Urban arEas—a multi-sectorial approach focusing on water) is Europe’s first large-scale innovation and urban resilience project, funded under the Horizon 2020 Programme, aimed to improve the capability of cities to anticipate, prepare for, respond to, and recover from significant climate-change-related threats with minimum damage.

More precisely, RESCCUE will bring this objective to practice by providing a set of models and tools to analyse urban resilience based on a multisectorial approach that overcomes current difficulties related to lack of information on the integration of the different urban services. These are being validated in three different cities: Barcelona, Lisbon and Bristol. The aim of having three cities as the validation platform and first application of RESCCUE’s results will guarantee that the final product is complete, qualified and ensure its maximum replicability.

Contact

• David Pacheco pacheco.ext@cetaqua.com
• +34 673 41 49 09

For more information please visit: www.urcc202.eu