Plataforma sobre Adaptación al Cambio Climático en España

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Vrijburcht: a privately funded climate–proof collective garden in Amsterdam

Vrijburcht is a multipurpose living-and-working complex in Amsterdam. It offers many shared social amenities for both the residents and the people from the neighbourhood. The heart of the complex is the courtyard garden with trees, a vegetable garden, lawns, flowers, benches and a greenhouse. The garden provides various solutions to the expected impact of climate change; it offers residents a cool environment during warmer summers; rain water is stored in underground tanks for irrigation in dry periods; the unsealed area permits maximum rainwater permeability.

Public-private partnership for a new flood proof district in Bilbao

Bilbao’s ‘Zorrotzaurre’ district is currently a degraded, flood-prone industrial peninsula. With increasing extreme precipitation predicted across the Basque country in the future due to climate change and a need for new housing to accommodate citizens of Bilbao, a major urban regeneration project is currently underway to redevelop Zorrotzaurre district into a new flood-proof residential quarter.

Ghent crowdfunding platform realising climate change adaptation through urban greening

Ghent aims at realizing more green areas in response to climate change and actively seeks citizen involvement to achieve this. This is in line with the city being very social and creative with many citizens actively developing bottom-up initiatives. Many of these small scale projects however have difficulty developing into a successful project through the available financing mechanisms. Therefore, Ghent has developed a crowdfunding platform that allows citizens to propose and finance their ideas for the city.

Catchment management approach to flash flood risks in Glasgow

Normally a shallow river, the White Cart Water was prone to flash flooding. Its water levels can rise by six metres after just 12 hours of rain, which threatened vulnerable Glasgow suburbs downstream. Public awareness of such flooding risks in the 1980s and 1990s, and projections of more intense periods of rainfall made devising a flood prevention scheme a priority for the Glasgow City Council.

Improved resilience of biomass fuel supply chain in UK

Nine UK electricity generating companies have been receiving support based on the provisions of the Climate Change Act of 2008. Specifically, the Joint Environmental Programme (an initiative funded by nine of the leading energy producers in the UK) supports a programme of research focusing on the environmental impacts of these nine leading producers, including Drax Power. The operating subsidiary of the Drax Group plc, Drax Power Limited has 6 boilers with a maximum capacity of 3,945 MW, 3 of which are powered by biomass pellets.

Assessing adaptation challenges and increasing resilience at Heathrow airport

In 2011, as all other large infrastructure providers in UK, Heathrow Airport Limited (HAL) was asked by the UK government to submit a climate change adaptation report (also called adaptation strategy). The report included a climate adaptation risk analysis matrix, which has been regularly monitored since then. Besides rain (and consequent flooding) and temperature, fog and changing wind directions were identified as the weather conditions deserving more attention today and also in the future.

Adapting overhead lines in response to increasing temperatures in UK

Several energy transmission and distribution companies in the UK have begun to take the impact of increasing temperatures into consideration for the long-design of electricity distribution infrastructure. Rising temperatures can impact power lines by reducing their thermal rating (i.e. the maximum current allowed at a given temperature) and causing lines to sag to dangerous levels.

Heatwave plan for England

In 2003, a 10 day heatwave period caused over 2,000 excess deaths (compared to the same dates in the previous five years) in UK. As a response, the heatwave plan for England was first issued in 2014 and has since undergone annual updates (last update in May 2016 has not introduced changes to 2015 version that therefore it is the one still valid). The plan intends to protect the population from heat-related harm to health. It aims to prepare for, alert people to, and prevent, the major avoidable effects on health during periods of severe heat.

The Watermachine: multifunctional area for flood protection and improved water quality - Kristalbad, Enschede

Kristalbad is an area of about 40 hectares located in the east of the Netherlands between the cities of Enschede (160.000 inhabitants) and Hengelo (81.000 inhabitants). This is one of the last remaining green areas between these two cities, playing a role for ecosystem-based adaptation to cope with potential climate change related impacts.

Restoration of the Oka River’s upper estuary, part of the Urdaibai Biosphere Reserve

The estuary of the Oka River is located within the Urdaibai Biosphere Reserve, on the coast of Biscay, Basque Country, north of Spain. It is an area of high ecological value. Its landscape has been transformed over the years by human activities, as it has been inhabited since Prehistoric times. The most important activities affecting the landscape of the estuary have been agriculture, cattle rising and a shipyard. While the first two have practically disappeared, the shipyard activity is still on-going, although with less intensity than in previous decades.