In March 2020 in Barcelona, 250 experts will analyze climate change in urban services such as water and energy

At least 250 European experts will analyse the impact of climate change on essential urban services such as water, energy or telecommunications during the conference ‘Urban Resilience in a Context of Climate Change (URCC), which the multinational Suez will organise in March 2020 in Barcelona. As reported by Suez in Europa Press, the initiative is part of the European project RESCCUE, led by the company to encourage innovation to promote the capacity of cities to resist climate change. It will analyse the impact of climate change on essential urban services and seek to develop innovative tools to build smarter and more resilient cities. The URCC conference, which will be held in Barcelona on 9 and 10 March 2020, will bring together representatives of administrations, academia, companies and local communities, to discuss different aspects of urban resilience and climate change. Currently, 54 percent of the population lives in urban areas and the figure could rise to 66 percent by 2050. Climate change creates pressures and uncertainties that can affect basic urban services, such as water or energy supply, making the city’s ability to function on an ongoing basis crucial for most of the world’s population. The event will be held at the sant pau art nouveau site in Barcelona on March 9 and 10 next year, where different actors from academia, administrations, companies and local communities will meet to discuss the multiple aspects of urban resilience and climate change. The conference is organized by representatives of UN-Habitat, Barcelona City Council, SUEZ (Aquatec-Advanced Solutions) and the Water Technology Center (Cetaqua), all partners of the RESCCUE project, which is funded by the European Commission. Likewise, the organizers have defined a Scientific Committee formed by more than twenty experts from different fields. A total of 250 people are expected to participate in two plenary meetings and more than 60 parallel sessions. The topics they will discuss are hazard and risk assessment in critical urban services; climate risk management and resilience in urban areas; climate data to climate services; forecasting, monitoring, real-time control and decision support. Adaptation strategies and nature-based solutions to improve resilience will also be explored; institutions, governance and planning; financing for resilience and adaptation to climate change; citizen engagement and social justice and innovation, communication and data exchange and co-production of knowledge, solutions and services. The RESCCUE (Resilience to cope with Climate Change in Urban arEas_a multisectoral approach focusing on water) Project is Europe’s first large-scale urban innovation and resilience project, aimed at improving the capacity of cities to anticipate and prepare for, respond to and recover from significant threats related to climate change with the least damage. The models and tools proposed by the project are being validated in Barcelona, Lisbon and Bristol.

Source: The Vanguard