Building adaptive capacity for flood proofing in urban areas through synergistic interventions

Abstract

Few, if any urban areas are nowadays built in isolation from existing developments. Therefore, urban expansion and making existing urban areas more sustainable is a contemporary goal. There are major opportunities to do this through the ‘normal’ renewal of urban infrastructure and building stocks both now and in the future. However, significant building renewal cycles occur every 30-50 years and major infrastructure renewal cycles at even longer timescales of more than 100 years. Despite this there are significant opportunities to make buildings and infrastructure more resilient to external stress (an easier to realise goal than sustainability) beginning immediately. The challenge is to change the current norms for owners; urban planners; builders; professionals and policy makers to accept the need and urgency of doing this. Given the pace of climate and other changes and the need to manage carbon and energy better, there is an urgent need to begin to incorporate flexible, adaptable and more resilient measures by synergistic inclusion within refurbishment and renovation programmes. This needs to be recognised and planned as soon as possible, so that inclusion of such measures becomes the norm. Failure to do this will miss vital and unique opportunities that will hinder the delivery of carbon reduction targets. This is illustrated in the paper by recent studies in the Netherlands that have mapped urban flood and heat island vulnerabilities and identified where adaptive potential can best be targeted at the current building stock through refurbishment, renewal and regeneration and by reference to the latest developments in England and Wales.