The idea of a flood resilient city -one which can withstand or adapt to a flood event without being harmed in its functionality -seems promising. But what does resilience actually mean when it is applied to urban environments exposed to flood risk, and how can resilience be achieved? This paper presents a heuristic framework for assessing the flood resilience of cities, for scientists and policy-makers alike. It enriches the current literature on flood resilience by clarifying the meaning of its three key characteristicsrobustness, adaptability and transformability -and identifying important components to implement resilience strategies. The resilience discussion moves a step forward: from predominantly defining resilience to generating insight into 'doing' resilience in practice. The framework is illustrated with two case studies from Hamburg, showing that resilience, and particularly the underlying notions of adaptability and transformability, require first and foremost further capacity-building among public as well as private stakeholders. The case studies suggest that flood resilience is currently not enough motivation to move from traditional to more resilient flood protection schemes in practice; it rather needs to be integrated into a bigger urban agenda.2
Carbon emission inventories are the foundations of climate change mitigation and adaptation in cities. In this study, we estimated production-based CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion and industrial processes in eleven cities in Hebei Province of China in 2012 and used input-output theory to measure their consumption-based CO2 emissions. By comprehensively comparing production-and consumption-based emissions, we found that six developed cities were consumption based with import-depended trade patterns, while the five other cities were production based, mostly medium in size, with the potential to transform into consumption-based cities with socioeconomic development. Emissions embodied in imports accounted for more than half of the consumption-based emissions in most cities, which shows the significance of interregional cooperation in tackling climate change. International cooperation is also important at the city level, as international imports also impacts consumption-based emissions. From the perspective of final use, emissions caused by fixed capital formation predominated in most cities and were determined by their economic development models.
There is an increasing emphasis on the local level as well as growing expectations regarding civil society actors in flood‐risk management in the UK. However, not enough is known about the potential contributions of civil society to flood resilience at the local level. This paper addresses this knowledge gap by conceptualising flood resilience at the local level across three phases inherent to flood disasters: pre‐flood, during the flood and post‐flood. These phases act as the foundation for this paper's exploration of the contributions of civil society to local‐level flood resilience. Data were collected before, during and after the 2015 Boxing Day floods through interviews (in 2015 and 2017) and from secondary data sources. The paper identifies the importance of time and place when analysing civil society contributions to local level flood resilience. These contributions were dynamic over time with a strong initial response that diminished over time due to apathy, “active forgetting” and lack of further exposure. Exposure and a sense of community strongly influenced civil society contributions to flood resilience in the Upper Calder Valley. Issues of representation and varying place‐based capacities were also identified as relevant for flood resilience‐based policies. These results have larger implications for our understanding of the contributions of civil society actors to flood resilience and suggest that while they can deliver better local context‐specific approaches, there needs to be caution over the long‐term sustainability and longevity of their contributions.
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