Climate Risk and Vulnerability Assessment maps | Announcing Placemaking section at Futurebuild 2025 | Futurebuild Industry Insider Newsletter 375
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Climate change is here, and urban areas are not adapted. In July 2022, temperatures in the West Midlands exceeded 38°C causing overheating in homes and residential facilities, school closures, data server failures, increased callouts for fires, and more. Flash flooding following heavy rainfall occurs regularly, closing roads, flooding properties, causing sewage overflows to streets. As the frequency and magnitude of extreme weather events increases, without effective adaptation, so will the health and socio-economic impacts. Here we take a look at recent extreme weather events and describe how local authorities and organisations can map climate risk and vulnerability.?
This newsletter was written by Emma Ferranti , Sarah Greenham and Nick Cork , representing the WM-Air team at the University of Birmingham. ?
Mapping Climate Risk and Vulnerability in the West Midlands
Climate change is here, and our urban areas are ill-prepared. In July 2022, the West Midlands experienced temperatures surpassing 38°C, leading to overheating in residences and care facilities, school shutdowns, travel disruptions, data server malfunctions, a rise in fire emergencies, and water safety issues, among other consequences. Additionally, flash flooding from intense rainfall is a common occurrence, resulting in road closures, traffic congestion, inundated homes and businesses, sewage overflows onto streets, and the cancellation of events. As extreme weather events become more frequent and severe, the health and socio-economic repercussions will escalate without climate adaptation.
Across the UK, there is an urgent need for adaptation action to safeguard urban areas and their inhabitants, especially those in vulnerable communities who are most affected by health and economic challenges. However, in the Climate Change Committee’s 2023 assessment of the Third National Adaptation Programme (NAP3 – designed to make the UK resilient to future climate change) they report that “adaptation is still not sufficiently well-understood or resourced, particularly in local government”.
Torrential rain represents an opportunity to build a better?society
A month’s worth of rain has poured down in just a few hours in parts of central and southern England. More than 300 flood-related emergency calls were made, major roads were submerged, trains were delayed, and an enormous sinkhole opened up on a football pitch in south London.
This follows similar torrential rain across central and eastern Europe two weeks ago, which led to flash floods and widespread damage and deaths. As climate change alters rain patterns and makes extreme downpours more common, and more extreme, such flooding is increasingly the new normal.
There are various things we can do to minimise flood risks before and after torrential rains and prevent smaller floods from escalating into disasters.?We can build bigger and better drainage and stormwater infrastructure, for instance, and make sure drains are unblocked and flood walls are properly maintained. This is an example of so-called “hard” flood defences.
Researchers at the University of Birmingham continue to make an impact across the West Midlands by working with local organisations to deliver climate action
With Birmingham City Council and the West Midlands Combined Authority, we have built Climate Risk and Vulnerability Assessment maps to understand the spatial variation in climate impacts across the region. This work was Commended in the Chartered Institution Of Highways and Transportation Research Awards, and has contributed to Birmingham being graded A for Climate Action by the Carbon Disclosure Project. Trees and urban green infrastructure play an important role in building urban resilience and with the Trees and Design Action Group? (TDAG) we create guidance documents and run bimonthly knowledge exchange seminars to improve knowledge and good practice to support the role of urban trees.
Three ways we are prioritising climate action -
Trees provide a range of benefits for urban society including biodiversity enhancement, promoting better health and wellbeing, and increasing urban resilience to extreme weather such as heavy rainfall and hot summer temperatures. Tree canopy cover provides a proxy for these current benefits and this guide provides an overview of how to include it within strategic urban forestry planning.
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This open access method describes how local authorities or regional organisations can use open access datasets to create a Climate Risk and Vulnerability Assessment map. This quantifies the spatial variation in climate risk across the region, to understand climate impact drivers and prioritise climate action. ?
The bimonthly TDAG seminars bring together individuals, professionals, academics and organisations from wide ranging disciplines in both the public and private sectors to discuss topical issues. All are welcome, and the slides, discussion notes and videos from past events are provided on our website. ?
Our highlights from Futurebuild 2024
1. Bringing together health, air quality and climate resilience, examples of best practice from the West Midlands
Curated by the WM-Air project at the University of Birmingham, this session presented examples of solutions focussed research including a project with the Birmingham County Football Association to understand and reduce match day vehicle emissions, and AQ-LAT, a tool that estimates future costs and benefits associated with changes in air pollution.
2. The Barcham Stand
Barcham Trees PLC brought a splash of green to the Futurebuild Arena with their beautiful stand. Urban trees are only Nature-based Solutions to climate change if they flourish and thrive, and the conditions and care provided by tree nurseries are crucial to growing healthy trees.
3. TDAG – Collaboration in Practice
The TDAG and partners (City of Trees,?Forest Research,?Greater London Authority,?The Mersey Forest, Trees for Cities and?Woodland Trust) stand attracted much attention from a wide range of visitors. TDAG has seen increasing interest in trees and healthy urban placemaking since their first stand at Ecobuild in 2010.
Build Test Solutions is making an impact by supplying innovative building performance measurement solutions for the built environment and energy sectors
Build Test Solutions (BTS) provides building performance measurement solutions for the built environment sector. BTS drives innovation in building performance measurement to enable wide scale delivery of truly low energy buildings. Its goal is to make in-situ building performance measurement cost-effective and accessible to the mainstream building construction, renovation and home improvement sectors. BTS champions a range of innovative products that provide low cost and highly scalable building performance measurement solutions throughout the construction industry supply chain.
Check out their profile ?for more information and visit them on stand?P38.?
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