Building Resilient Cities to Climate Change

Several publications have been made regarding the state of the environment in cities, especially in light of new challenges such as climate change [1–6]. In particular the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI) speaks about the urgent need to build resilient cities to natural hazards and prioritizes the development of resilience plans by local authorities, especially with respect to climate change and the associated impacts to local societies [3]. In the same wavelength, the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) [5] refers to the increasing burden to local societies due to climate change and claims that the occurrence of extreme weather events, with the potential to affect cities, has not only increased since its latest assessment [4], but is also estimated to further increase in the following years. IPCC [5] also refers to the impacts of climate change to cities, mostly in terms of the increase of temperature, as well as of the occurrence of tropical days and heat waves. The European Environment Agency (EEA) in its publication on the impacts of climate change [6] also refers to the impact of climate change in the European continent and combines the increase of heat waves in Europe and the spatial and temporal enhancement of thermal heat islands in several European cities, to the urbanization trend in Europe (80 % of the population is expected to live in cities by 2020), and to the vulnerability of the population, especially elderly people.