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The Adaptability of Cities to Climate Change

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A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainable Urban and Rural Development".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (25 November 2022) | Viewed by 18449

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Special Issue Editors

Dr. Filomena Pietrapertosa

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Guest Editor

CNR-IMAA, National Research Council of Italy, Institute of Methodologies for Environmental Analysis, 7-00185 Rome, Italy
Interests: energy systems analysis and modeling; energy efficiency; renewable energy source; climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies at local scale; energy awareness; evaluation of the role of local and national energy systems in achieving the objectives of efficient use of resources and sustainability; decision support tools for the energy efficiency of public buildings; life cycle assessment

Dr. Monica Salvia

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Guest Editor

CNR-IMAA, National Research Council of Italy-Institute of Methodologies for Environmental Analysis, C.da S. Loja, 85050 Tito Scalo, PZ, Italy
Interests: energy systems analysis and models development; climate change mitigation strategies; rational use of energy; renewable energy sources; technology support and capacity building for local governments; smart cities
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Dr. Attila Buzási

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Guest Editor

Department of Environmental Economics and Sustainability, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, H-1117 Budapest, Hungary
Interests: climate adaptation; vulnerability assessment; policy analysis; urban sustainability
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Nowadays, the growing urbanization and the complex patterns of urban economic assets, infrastructure, and services make cities particularly vulnerable to climate change. Cities worldwide directly suffer the greatest damage due to the increase in the magnitude and frequency of severe weather events that make it urgent and necessary to build a climate-resilient society. Since the majority of the global population lives in cities, analyzing the vulnerability of urban areas is crucial in the transition to sustainability.

The need to tackle climate change through the definition of global and structured actions has become an indispensable priority for cities, especially considering that future climate projections predict that the magnitude of the impacts will increase and could become increasingly serious if strong and urgent actions are not taken both to reduce global warming and to adapt territories to anticipated climate-related threats. Urban climate adaptation has a pivotal role in broader urban sustainability; therefore, the complex relationship between these phenomena contributes to increasing the interdisciplinary feature of potential studies.

This Special Issue welcomes papers covering studies dealing with climate change adaptation in cities with particular reference to analysis of urban adaptation plans; mitigation co-benefits of climate change adaptation strategies; approaches to increase city resilience to climate change; examples of effective ways of involving city leaders, city authorities, and citizens; climate information and alert systems for citizens; experiences and case studies; monitoring and evaluation systems for urban adaptation plan implementation; analyzing potential lock-ins in urban development; theoretical and practice-oriented studies in urban vulnerability analysis; understanding of adaptation responses in terms of synergies and trade-offs with SDGs.

Dr. Filomena Pietrapertosa
Dr. Monica Salvia
Dr. Attila Buzási
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Keywords

climate change adaptation planning
urban climate policy
climate impacts
implementation of urban adaptation policy
sustainable development goals
mitigation and adaptation co-benefits

Published Papers (6 papers)

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Research

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21 pages, 9709 KiB

Open AccessArticle

The Adaptability of Cities to Climate Change: Evidence from Cities’ Redesign towards Mitigating the UHI Effect

by Georgia Spyrou, Byron Ioannou, Manolis Souliotis, Andreas L. Savvides and Paris A. Fokaides

Sustainability 2023, 15(7), 6133; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su15076133 - 03 Apr 2023

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1467

Abstract

The urban heat island effect can be studied through satellite imaging, field measurements, or analytical and numerical tools. However, the latter methods are considered more comprehensive due to the complexity of the built environment and the large quantity of data required for an adequate analysis. This study aims to investigate the extent to which specific urban bioclimatic design concepts and strategies affect the urban heat island intensity in Mediterranean semi-arid environmental conditions, classified as subtropical. The case study site chosen was Kaimakli, an urban district in Nicosia, Cyprus, known for high urban heat island intensities due to its location and rapid growth characterized by more impervious materials and less green vegetation. The analysis of the specific site considers parameters such as urban density, vegetation, soil sealing effect, building age and materials, land coverage ratio, and orientation. A design scenario consisting of three mitigation policies of different building types, heights, and vegetated types was developed and investigated. The study found that under semi-arid conditions, the use of extensive vegetation in an urban block of a 200 × 200 m² area and the reduction of the built area by about 10% resulted in an air temperature reduction of 1.5 °C during the summer solstice at 3:00 pm. These findings quantify the impact of specific urban heat island mitigation practices on decreasing the intensity of the effect under subtropical climatic conditions. This study provides valuable insights into the potential of specific urban bioclimatic design concepts and strategies to mitigate the urban heat island effect. The use of extensive vegetation and a reduction in the built area have been shown to be effective in reducing air temperatures, which can have significant implications for public health, energy consumption, and overall urban sustainability. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Adaptability of Cities to Climate Change)

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15 pages, 2874 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Novel WD-SARIMAX Model for Temperature Forecasting Using Daily Delhi Climate Dataset

by Ahmed M. Elshewey, Mahmoud Y. Shams, Abdelghafar M. Elhady, Samaa M. Shohieb, Abdelaziz A. Abdelhamid, Abdelhameed Ibrahim and Zahraa Tarek

Sustainability 2023, 15(1), 757; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su15010757 - 31 Dec 2022

Cited by 8 | Viewed by 2266

Abstract

Forecasting is defined as the process of estimating the change in uncertain situations. One of the most vital aspects of many applications is temperature forecasting. Using the Daily Delhi Climate Dataset, we utilize time series forecasting techniques to examine the predictability of temperature. In this paper, a hybrid forecasting model based on the combination of Wavelet Decomposition (WD) and Seasonal Auto-Regressive Integrated Moving Average with Exogenous Variables (SARIMAX) was created to accomplish accurate forecasting for the temperature in Delhi, India. The range of the dataset is from 2013 to 2017. It consists of 1462 instances and four features, and 80% of the data is used for training and 20% for testing. First, the WD decomposes the non-stationary data time series into multi-dimensional components. That can reduce the original time series’ volatility and increase its predictability and stability. After that, the multi-dimensional components are used as inputs for the SARIMAX model to forecast the temperature in Delhi City. The SARIMAX model employed in this work has the following order: (4, 0, 1). (4, 0, [1], 12). The experimental results demonstrated that WD-SARIMAX performs better than other recent models for forecasting the temperature in Delhi city. The Mean Square Error (MSE), Mean Absolute Error (MAE), Median Absolute Error (MedAE), Root Mean Square Error (RMSE), Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE), and determination coefficient (

R^{2}

) of the proposed WD-SARIMAX model are 2.8, 1.13, 0.76, 1.67, 4.9, and 0.91, respectively. Furthermore, the WD-SARIMAX model utilized the proposed to forecast the temperature in Delhi over the next eight years, from 2017 to 2025. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Adaptability of Cities to Climate Change)

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15 pages, 296 KiB

Open AccessEditor’s ChoiceArticle

Sustainable Island Communities and Fishing Villages in South Korea: Challenges, Opportunities and Limitations

by Sun-Kee Hong and Adam Grydehøj

Sustainability 2022, 14(24), 16657; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su142416657 - 12 Dec 2022

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 3234

Abstract

Island communities and fishing villages in South Korea have been affected by changes in policy and environmental conditions. This paper presents an overview of and potential solutions to sustainability challenges confronting Korea’s island communities and fishing villages. The paper is grounded in a review of the relevant Korean and international research literature. The paper identifies the following major challenges: climate change, overexploitation of and damage to marine resources, and sociocultural challenges. The paper recommends an integrated approach to sustainable development that involves building a cooperative system with the Korea Island Development Institute, focus on ‘livable islands’, encouraging in-migration to islands, improving island accessibility, and identifying and assessing island ecosystem services. The paper concludes that it is necessary to develop an integrated approach driven by institutional, policy, technological, and sociocultural innovation. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Adaptability of Cities to Climate Change)

22 pages, 834 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Characteristics of Climate Concern—Attitudes and Personal Actions—A Case Study of Hungarian Settlements

by Emőke Kiss, Dániel Balla and András Donát Kovács

Sustainability 2022, 14(9), 5138; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su14095138 - 24 Apr 2022

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1853

Abstract

This article discusses one of the most important social factors of climate protection: climate concern. Most research in this area focuses on North America and Western Europe or presents international comparative statistics. Our work is innovative because we have designated a lesser-known post-socialist region in East-Central Europe as a sample area, and we intend to conduct in-depth analyses at the municipal level. Our study describes the second largest city in Hungary, Debrecen, and its agglomeration. Based on a questionnaire survey in 2020 (N = 512), we examined opinion factors, and we have presented features consistent with or different from the findings in the relevant literature. In the statistical analysis, chi-square tests and binary logistic regressions were applied to reveal significant differences between the responses of different types of respondents. As response variables, we used the questions about general concerns regarding air pollution, knowledge about climate change, beliefs about tackling, perceived threat, behavioural responses, personal actions, and demography. We found that the concern about air pollution and a feeling of threat to respondents’ life was mainly affected by the degree of climate concern. We conclude that the knowledge of local communities on climate change has increased, and risk perception has improved. Still, there is no clear relationship between the level of concern and climate-conscious behaviour. The findings provide ideas for promoting local climate management and awareness-raising in the European Union or other countries. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Adaptability of Cities to Climate Change)

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23 pages, 4446 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Detecting Natural Hazard-Related Disaster Impacts with Social Media Analytics: The Case of Australian States and Territories

by Tan Yigitcanlar, Massimo Regona, Nayomi Kankanamge, Rashid Mehmood, Justin D’Costa, Samuel Lindsay, Scott Nelson and Adiam Brhane

Sustainability 2022, 14(2), 810; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su14020810 - 12 Jan 2022

Cited by 24 | Viewed by 4609

Abstract

Natural hazard-related disasters are disruptive events with significant impact on people, communities, buildings, infrastructure, animals, agriculture, and environmental assets. The exponentially increasing anthropogenic activities on the planet have aggregated the climate change and consequently increased the frequency and severity of these natural hazard-related disasters, and consequential damages in cities. The digital technological advancements, such as monitoring systems based on fusion of sensors and machine learning, in early detection, warning and disaster response systems are being implemented as part of the disaster management practice in many countries and presented useful results. Along with these promising technologies, crowdsourced social media disaster big data analytics has also started to be utilized. This study aims to form an understanding of how social media analytics can be utilized to assist government authorities in estimating the damages linked to natural hazard-related disaster impacts on urban centers in the age of climate change. To this end, this study analyzes crowdsourced disaster big data from Twitter users in the testbed case study of Australian states and territories. The methodological approach of this study employs the social media analytics method and conducts sentiment and content analyses of location-based Twitter messages (n = 131,673) from Australia. The study informs authorities on an innovative way to analyze the geographic distribution, occurrence frequency of various disasters and their damages based on the geo-tweets analysis. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Adaptability of Cities to Climate Change)

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Review

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19 pages, 1064 KiB

Open AccessReview

Compact Development Policy and Urban Resilience: A Critical Review

by Alireza Dehghani, Mehdi Alidadi and Ayyoob Sharifi

Sustainability 2022, 14(19), 11798; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su141911798 - 20 Sep 2022

Cited by 13 | Viewed by 3809

Abstract

Sustainable development and urban resilience are dominant urban planning paradigms that have become buzzwords in urban planning and policy domains over the past 2–3 decades. While these two paradigms have been analyzed and scrutinized in different studies, the interconnection between them in policy realms is understudied. Compact development policy is expected to contribute to a variety of sustainability goals. However, these goals’ alignment with the principles and goals of urban resilience is under question. This research tries to shed some light on this issue. A critical review method is employed to understand how compactness as a sustainable urban development policy relates to different principles and dimensions of urban resilience. First, the conceptual and theoretical relationship between urban resilience and compact city is established. Next, the resulting framework is used to critically analyze 124 articles to understand how the compact city policy relates to urban resilience from different dimensions and principles. Densification and intensification, mixed land use and diversity, and spatial connectivity and public transportation are identified as principles of the compact city. Finally, the interconnection between compact city policy and urban resilience dimensions and principles is explored and assessed through examining the selected literature. The results of the review show some alignments between compact city policy outcomes and urban resilience. However, the level of alignment may vary depending on the context, scale, or dimension. In other words, while compact city in one scale/dimension can increase urban resilience to a specific adverse event or stressor, it might increase vulnerability to others in another scale/dimension. From the policy perspective, compact development policy and urban resilience principles should clearly be defined a priori to reach favorable outcomes. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Adaptability of Cities to Climate Change)

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