Barcelona

Located on the Mediterranean coast, Barcelona is a dense and compact settlement: on a surface area of 100.4 square kilometres, a population of over 1.600.00 inhabitants is established, which implies an average density of 15.873 hab/km2. The city’s climate is Mediterranean, with hot and humid summers and warm winters. Rainfalls occur mostly during spring and autumn, and the average temperature is about 16.5°C with 2,483 hours of sun.

The main critical hazards due to climate change scenarios for Barcelona are urban flooding, combined sewer overflows (CSO) during heavy storm events, drought, heat waves and sea level rise.

Tools & Results

Publication

RAP templates & guidelines

Water-focused city resilience roadmap

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These documents support the development by any city of their resilience action plans. A template with guidance to write a Resilience Action Plan (RAP) is provided, regarding climate change, with focus on the water cycle. The city may complete or adapt the template suggestions to fit better its own context and expectations for this document.

Publication

Resilience Action Plan of Barcelona

Water-focused city resilience roadmap

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It is a document containing the resilience action plan for each city defining the roadmap for resilience enhancement, to climate change with focus on water. It includes the information on the work already existing in the city, definition of climatic scenarios, characterization of the context, and hazards, risk and resilience assessment, description and implementation planning of strategies to be implemented to improve resilience. It is a thematic plan that can contribute to the city’s global resilience plan and it was built based on RESCCUE’s template and guidelines and on the results obtained, using the tools and approaches developed in RESCCUE.

Tool

RESCCUE Assessment Framework tool for application

Water-focused city resilience roadmap

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RESCCUE RAF-APP is a tool to facilitate undertaking a structured urban resilience assessment to climate change providing easy visualization of results through graphical representation. The tool enables assessing the development level of city resilience, considering strategic services and interdependencies contributions to city resilience. Services included are water supply, wastewater, storm water and waste management, energy distribution and mobility. It also supports to assess resilience development level of the service. This allows identifying the main strengths and weaknesses in the city and services. Its main purpose is to support decision in the development of resilience action plans and assess progress.

Registration is required to use the RAF APP. Please contact macardoso@lnec.pt.

Click here for more information >

Methodology

Framework for the Resilience Action Plan

Water-focused city resilience roadmap

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It is an approach that provides a planning process by defining the main steps to follow to develop resilience action plans, It includes the information needed to produce an action plan for enhancing resilience of any city, based on the work already existing in the city, the definition of climatic scenarios, characterization of the context and hazards, risk and resilience assessment and development of strategies to be implemented to improve resilience.

More information:

Methodology

Framework for cities resilience assessment

Water-focused city resilience roadmap

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RESCCUE RAF is a framework that provides a structured system for urban resilience assessment to climate change, considering four dimensions: organisational integrating top-down governance relations and urban population involvement; spatial referring to urban space and environment; functional regarding strategic services’ resilience and physical looking at infrastructures’ resilience. It is objective-driven enabling to assess the development level of city resilience, considering strategic services and interdependencies contributions to city resilience. Services included are water supply, wastewater, storm water and waste management, electrical energy and mobility. Its main purpose is to support decision in the development of resilience action plans and assess progress.

More information:

Dataset

Tool and database for the selection of adaptation strategies

Resilience & adaptation strategies

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A prioritization methodology has been developed to rank the proposed climate adaptation measures. This methodology will assist to decision makers to select the most efficient measures in terms of both their costs and the degree of risk reduction that they can guarantee. Besides, the methodology has been integrated into a web-based platform that will assist the decision makers to conduct the process of prioritization. The platform includes an extensive database of adaptation measures gathered by the different project partners based on their experience in the three cities that act as case studies in the project (Barcelona, Bristol and Lisbon)

Dataset

Flood direct damage assessments

Impact assessment & cascading effects

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The Direct Damage Assessment data for the Bristol case study is derived via the analysing water depths that are in contact with buildings to estimate the damages based on the building use and the associated depth-damage relationship. The functions for Bristol are obtained from the Multi-colour Manual (MCM ). The MCM contains information derived from historical insurance data that relates damage estimates to properties based on surrounding flood depth and said properties land use classification. The dataset herein presented outlines the aggregated damages to flooded buildings based on their exposure to flood waters and their respective depth-damage curves. 

Tool

Flood Risk Assessment tool for electrical assets

Impact assessment & cascading effects

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This tool seeks to help with the strategic planning and future operational decisions oriented to prevent possible problems caused by extreme flooding events in the electrical network through the risk assessment and major risk identification on electrical assets, the estimation of associated costs and reliability indices. The tool has been developed on the open-source GIS platform QGIS, building on FEMA fragility curves and the methodology presented in “Electrical Grid Risk Assessment Against Flooding in Barcelona and Bristol Cities” paper.

Publication

Impact quantification indices in the electrical network

Impact assessment & cascading effects

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GIS-based methodology designed for the assessment of electrical substations and distribution centres in case of extreme flooding events and extensible to other climate extreme events such as earthquakes, heat waves, and extreme windstorms if electric poles are also included into the assessment. This methodology has been thoroughly explained in “Electrical Grid Risk Assessment Against Flooding in Barcelona and Bristol Cities” paper.

Assessment results Maps in image format

Integrated flooding – electrical simulations in Barcelona and Bristol 

Impact assessment & cascading effects

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Hazard and risk maps were generated from the integrated flooding-electrical simulations in Barcelona and Bristol cities. The Maps indicates the locations with hazard potential, level of risk, and the estimated cost quantification of these risks for different return periods and scenarios provided in the flooding models.

Dataset

Flood tangible damage assessment in Barcelona and Bristol

Impact assessment & cascading effects

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Hydrodynamic outputs (flood depths) were used to feed the flood direct damage model. This model, based on this information, detailed land use maps and tailored flood depth damage curves, provided economic risk maps for different return periods related to current and future scenarios (including Business as usual and Adaptation scenarios).

Dataset

Flood intangible damage assessment in Barcelona

Impact assessment & cascading effects

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Hazard maps were also combined with vulnerability maps to provide flood risk maps for pedestrian and vehicles. Risk maps were obtained for different return periods related to current and future scenarios (including Business as usual and Adaptation scenarios).

Dataset

Assessment of marine model impacts

Strategic urban services modelling

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Integrated urban drainage – marine model provided temporal and spatial evolution of pollution in receiving bathing water. Dataset is built with time series of rainfall, CSO discharges and pollution in representative points of bathing water during the characteristic bathing season of the year 2009.

Dataset

Sea level rise impact model

Strategic urban services modelling

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Critical infrastructures and services potentially exposed to sea level rise for the horizon of 2100 have been represented by exposure maps for RCPs 4.5 and 8.5 scenarios.

Dataset

Integrated flooding – traffic simulations in Barcelona

Strategic urban services modelling

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According to the integrated flooding-traffic model in Barcelona, flood hazard maps were obtained by GIS spatial analysis of the flooded road links (with specific rules applied in relation to traffic speed reductions) and by flow depths provided by 1D/2D hydrodynamic model. Moreover, the dataset is built on the results of TranscCAD modelling software that, on the basis of pre-calculated hazard maps, was used to simulate the flood economic impacts due to traffic disruption. Simulations were carried out for current and future scenarios (including Business as usual and Adaptation scenarios).

Dataset

Flood hazard assessment in Barcelona, Lisbon, Bristol

Strategic urban services modelling

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The outputs of the hydrodynamic model (flood extension, flood depths and velocities) were used to generate flood hazard maps for pedestrian and vehicles according to experimental hazard criteria. Simulations were performed for different return periods related to current and future scenarios (including Business as usual and Adaptation scenarios) obtaining a specific hazard map for each case.

Dataset

Climatic change scenarios of extreme events

Climate change & extreme events scenarios

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This dataset offers detailed information at a local scale about the future changes in the frequency and intensity of a wide variety of extreme variables due to climate change. The main variables analysed are: temperature-related events (heat waves, maximum temperature, tropical night, warm day, etc.), extreme rainfall, or storm surge, among others. The information provided follows the RCP 4.5 and 8.5, and is divided into three time periods: 2011-2040, 2041-2070 and 2071-2100. Thanks to the methodology implemented in RESCCUE, the use of quality-tested weather observations allows the replicability of these results into any other location.