We examine how core professional and institutional actors in the innovation system conceptualize climate change adaptation in regards to pluvial flooding-and how this influences innovation. We do this through a qualitative case study in Copenhagen with interconnected research rounds, including 32 semi-structured interviews, to strengthen the interpretation and analysis of qualitative data. We find that the term "climate change adaptation" currently has no clearly agreed definition in Copenhagen; instead, different actors use different conceptualizations of climate change adaptation according to the characteristics of their specific innovation and implementation projects. However, there is convergence among actors towards a new cognitive paradigm, whereby economic goals and multifunctionality are linked with cost-benefit analyses for adapting to extreme rain events on a surface water catchment scale. Differences in definitions can lead to both successful innovation and to conflict, and thus they affect the city's capacity for change. Our empirical work suggests that climate change adaptation can be characterized according to three attributes: event magnitudes (everyday, design, and extreme), spatial scales (small/local, medium/urban, and large/national-international), and (a wide range of) goals, thereby resulting in different technology choices.
Incorporating objectives of stakeholders in strategic planning of urban water management
AcknowledgementThis project was funded by Innovation Fund Denmark through the Water Smart Cities Project (Grant no. 5157-00009B). We wish to thank Odense municipality, VandCenter Syd (VCS Denmark), Ramboll and KLIKOVAND for aiding us in the data collection. We would also like to thank Shane Carnohan and Ursula S. McKnight from DTU Environment, for their valuable feedback on our manuscript. We declare no conflict of interest.
Incorporating objectives of stakeholders in strategic planning of urban water managementUrban water management (UWM) strategies are difficult to implement in the urban space due to conflicting professional objectives and lack of communication tools. We explore stakeholders, objectives and indicators for urban water management and urban planning to make UWM relevant for other urban disciplines. Stakeholder analysis was applied to systematically identify stakeholders and their objectives by screening literature published in professional journals and conference proceedings. The literature study was supplemented with three workshops. Similar sets of planning objectives and stakeholders were identified in the two analyses. 14 stakeholders were identified, from the utility to legal stakeholders. We identified 17 objectives and nine sub-objectives, that can be divided into four overall groups; welfare for citizens, environmental protection, economic growth and technical objectives. Our results are relevant for a variety of UWM projects, providing a common terminology when discussing objectives between stakeholders and enabling an exploration of multifunctional UWM strategies.
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