THREE BENEFITS RESCCUE WILL BRING TO YOUR CITY

Having surpassed the equator of the RESCCUE Project, a few main results have already been completed. Several advanced methodologies have been developed, new models have been created and even some final datasets have already been produced.

The RESCCUE results not only aim at providing an overview of the resilience building in Barcelona, Bristol and Lisbon, but also intend to help many other cities around the world to build their capacity to adapt to current and future shocks and stresses.

Taking advantage of some of the implementations that have already been done in the three research sites, this post presents three benefits that RESCCUE will bring to your city. Replicability of results is one of the key concerns of the European Commission and thus, of RESCCUE, and this is precisely why this project will prepare a set of guidelines that help other cities implement the methodologies, tools, frameworks and plans that are currently being tested in Barcelona, Bristol and Lisbon.

As a teaser of what will come next, following, three benefits that RESCCUE will bring to your city can be found:

1. A better understanding of the systems behaviour: cities are complex systems of systems, with many different services (water, electricity, telecommunications, transports, etc.) that are interconnected. The first step to untangle this complexity, is to analyse in detail each one of these services independently, so that the critical points can be identified; hazards, vulnerabilities and risks can be assessed; and the interdependencies with other services can be spotted. This is not an easy task, as a lot of data is required to set up, calibrate and validate the models, and several different models from various sectors have to be considered. However, taking advantage of the numerous detailed models implemented in Barcelona, Bristol and Lisbon, as well as the several methodologies to assess impacts and cascading effects, RESCCUE will ease the path for the coming cities that want to understand how their systems behave and interconnect.
2. Improved capacity to respond to shocks: acute shocks due to natural causes, as well as technological or man-made impacts, may cause huge problems in our interconnected and complex cities, both in economical, social and environmental terms. A proper management of such events and an adequate response from the several response teams, is crucial not only to reduce the impacts but also to reduce the recovery time, going back to a normal functioning state as quick as possible and thus, also minimizing the indirect damages. In RESCCUE, the urban resilience management tool HAZUR®Manager is being improved and tested so it can be easily deployed to any other city around the world. Building on the understanding of the city functions, and by monitoring the key infrastructures, functioning thresholds can be established and the state of the city can be assessed at all time. Then, when shocks occur, the tool will not only be able to detect which infrastructures are affected, but also will support the response teams by issuing pre-defined warnings.
3. A better future for urban living: all city services, functions, infrastructures, etc., have a common goal – ensure and improve quality of life of the citizens that live there. Therefore, the ultimate goal of RESCCUE is to contribute to guarantee a better future for the cities and the people that live in them. In order to do this, considering climate change scenarios and a set of adaptation measures (that are prioritized with different methodologies), adaptation strategies will be defined for each case study city. These, together with the Resilience Assessment Framework developed, will help cities build their Resilience Action Plans, key documents that will be crucial for the planning of future investments. Beyond the RESCCUE cities, these tools and frameworks could be used to develop the RAPs in cities elsewhere, building on the knowledge generated by RESCCUE.

These benefits listed above are a result of the combination of several methodologies, tools and knowledge generated and provided by a collaborative and intensive work of almost 20 partners (utilities, research centres, city councils and SMEs and other organizations working on urban resilience). Although in RESCCUE all these will only be implemented in the three research sites, replicability is very important to maximize the impact of the project. This is precisely why besides the several deliverables, publications and public events, RESCCUE will also develop several guidelines to help others cities implement all these results, promoting the increase of urban resilience worldwide.