How can the UK road system be adapted to the impacts posed by climate change? By creating a climate adaptation framework

This paper aims to analyse the impacts of climate change to the current and predicted future situations of road transportation in the UK and evaluate the corresponding adaptation plans to cope with them. A conceptual framework of long-term adaptation planning for climate change in road systems is proposed to ensure the resilience and sustainability of road transport systems under various climate risks such as flooding and increased temperature. To do so, an advanced Fuzzy Bayesian Reasoning (FBR) model is first employed to evaluate the climate risks in the UK road transport networks. This modelling approach can tackle the high uncertainty in risk data and thus facilitate the development of the climate adaptation framework and its application in the UK road sector. To examine the feasibility of this model, a nationwide survey is conducted among the stakeholders to analyse the climate risks, in terms of the timeframe of climate threats, the likelihood of occurrence, the severity of consequences, and infrastructure resilience. From the modelling perspective, this work brings novelty by expanding the risk attribute “the severity of consequence” into three sub-attributes including economic loss, damage to the environment, and injuries and/or loss of life. It advances the-state-of-the-art technique in the current relevant literature from a single to multiple tier climate risk modelling structure. Secondly, an Evidential Reasoning (ER) approach is used to prioritise the best adaptation measure(s) by considering both the risk analysis results from the FBR and the implementation costs simultaneously. The main new contributions of this part lie in the rich raw data collected from the real world to provide useful practical insights for achieving road resilience when facing increasing climate risk challenges. During this process, a qualitative analysis of several national reports regarding the impacts posed by climate change, risk assessment and adaptation measures in the UK road sector is conducted for the relevant decision data (i.e. risk and cost). It is also supplemented by an in-depth interview with a senior planner from Highways England. The findings provide road planners and decision makers with useful insights on identification and prioritisation of climate threats as well as selection of cost-effective climate adaptation measures to rationalise adaptation planning. © 2019 Elsevier Lt

Evaluation of the renovation process of the city centre façades

The renovation of commercial façades is one of the most visible measures taken within the framework of public policies in order to revitalize the city centres. The objective of these public policies is to revive and recover the image of the original centre. This paper focuses on the central perimeter of Bauru, a city located in the State of São Paulo, Brazil. The main action involved in this process was the renovation of the façades of the retail stores (Municipal Law 4951/02). This project involved approximately 240 establishments between the years of 2003 and 2005. In order to assess the result of this work, the state of a hundred of the renovated façades was analysed at three different stages degree of preservation was classified. It was shown that due to lack of maintenance on the part of the traders and lack of incentive on the part of the public policies, many of the façades that had been renovated as part of the initial program were degrading, counteracting the whole object of the work

The EU local lab for a continuous citizens’ integration

why cross border territories may be seen as adequate places to build "a European citizenship" and why it seems crucial in 2019

The EU local lab for a continuous citizens’ integration

why cross border territories may be seen as adequate places to build "a European citizenship" and why it seems crucial in 2019

Measurement and Evaluation of Smart City Outcomes for Smarter Governance

Global urbanization trends are associated with a proliferation of smart city developments enabled by advanced Information and Communication Technologies designed to address contemporary challenges and develop innovative solutions in cities and regions. This chapter sets out to examine the relationship between smart city development and smart governance, both the contribution of governance to smart city development and its potential benefits for city governance. Building on an analysis of research on UK smart city case studies, this chapter argues that the contribution of smart city developments and their success outcomes to governance is influenced by how cities address the challenges of measurement and evaluation of smart city developments