City Lab Lisbon - Development of a smart roadmap for the city of the future

Lisbon is a city with more than half a million inhabitants and one of the most touristic capitals in Western Europe, constantly trying to find ways to deal with challenges in a smart and sustainable manner. How to turn Lisbon into a more inclusive, connected, and resilient city going into the future, is the question that researchers in the Fraunhofer project, Morgenstadt, are trying to solve. Lisbon has developed a city development strategy for the next decades, defining goals that aim to create more employment, attract more people and to become a more liveable city. This last goal does not only include the improvements in living standards of citizens, but addresses topics such as new mobility concepts, renewal of old buildings, increased energy efficiency, among others. All this can be fostered by using more participative approaches and an extensive exploration of the local resources to stimulate the economy and incentivize local innovation. The question that arises is how to get there? How to make Lisbon a more liveable and attractive city not only for tourists but especially for its citizens and workers? This paper is based on an interdisciplinary project in the form of a so-called “City lab” that began in September 2015 in the context of the ongoing long-term research project called “Morgenstadt: City Insights” initiated by the Fraunhofer Society. This paper therefore first provides a general introduction into the smart city concept (chapter 2) and an overview over the initial position of Lisbon in this regard (chapter 3). In a next step, the research methodology applied in the City Lab will be outlined, dividing the analysis process (chapter 4) and the project development process (chapter 5). In the following the results of the city lab Lisbon will be presented. While the first part of results concentrates on key outcomes such as the sensitivity analysis and exemplary sector specific results (chapter 6), the second part will provide an overview over the developed projects to foster a smart and sustainable development of Lisbon (chapter 7). According to the identified challenges and opportunities in chapter 6 that reveal a good level of smartness among the different sectors, the projects presented in chapter 7 will specifically address the strengthening of interdisciplinary and cross-department as well as cross -stakeholder cooperation, which has been identified as Lisbons key challenge

Progress and gaps in climate change adaptation in coastal cities across the globe

Coastal cities are at the frontlines of climate change impacts, resulting in an urgent need for substantial adaptation. To understand whether and to what extent cities are on track to prepare for climate risks, this paper systematically assesses the academic literature to evaluate climate change adaptation in 199 coastal cities worldwide. We show that adaptation in coastal cities is rather slow, of narrow scope, and not transformative. Adaptation measures are predominantly designed based on past and current, rather than future, patterns in hazards, exposure, and vulnerability. City governments, particularly in high-income countries, are more likely to implement institutional and infrastructural responses, while coastal cities in lower-middle income countries often rely on households to implement behavioral adaptation. There is comparatively little published knowledge on coastal urban adaptation in low and middle income economies and regarding particular adaptation types such as ecosystem-based adaptation. These insights make an important contribution for tracking adaptation progress globally and help to identify entry points for improving adaption of coastal cities in the future

A global assessment of actors and their roles in climate change adaptation

An assessment of the global progress in climate change adaptation is urgently needed. Despite a rising awareness that adaptation should involve diverse societal actors and a shared sense of responsibility, little is known about the types of actors, such as state and non-state, and their roles in different types of adaptation responses as well as in different regions. Based on a large n-structured analysis of case studies, we show that, although individuals or households are the most prominent actors implementing adaptation, they are the least involved in institutional responses, particularly in the global south. Governments are most often involved in planning and civil society in coordinating responses. Adaptation of individuals or households is documented especially in rural areas, and governments in urban areas. Overall, understanding of institutional, multi-actor and transformational adaptation is still limited. These findings contribute to debates around ‘social contracts’ for adaptation, that is, an agreement on the distribution of roles and responsibilities, and inform future adaptation governance

A global assessment of actors and their roles in climate change adaptation

An assessment of the global progress in climate change adaptation is urgently needed. Despite a rising awareness that adaptation should involve diverse societal actors and a shared sense of responsibility, little is known about the types of actors, such as state and non-state, and their roles in different types of adaptation responses as well as in different regions. Based on a large n-structured analysis of case studies, we show that, although individuals or households are the most prominent actors implementing adaptation, they are the least involved in institutional responses, particularly in the global south. Governments are most often involved in planning and civil society in coordinating responses. Adaptation of individuals or households is documented especially in rural areas, and governments in urban areas. Overall, understanding of institutional, multi-actor and transformational adaptation is still limited. These findings contribute to debates around 'social contracts' for adaptation, that is, an agreement on the distribution of roles and responsibilities, and inform future adaptation governance. For global adaptation effort, it is essential to understand which actors are participating and what their roles are. This Analysis, based on comparative case studies, displays the dominant actors in adaptation, and how the actor-role patterns vary across regions

A systematic global stocktake of evidence on human adaptation to climate change

Assessing global progress on human adaptation to climate change is an urgent priority. Although the literature on adaptation to climate change is rapidly expanding, little is known about the actual extent of implementation. We systematically screened >48,000 articles using machine learning methods and a global network of 126 researchers. Our synthesis of the resulting 1,682 articles presents a systematic and comprehensive global stocktake of implemented human adaptation to climate change. Documented adaptations were largely fragmented, local and incremental, with limited evidence of transformational adaptation and negligible evidence of risk reduction outcomes. We identify eight priorities for global adaptation research: assess the effectiveness of adaptation responses, enhance the understanding of limits to adaptation, enable individuals and civil society to adapt, include missing places, scholars and scholarship, understand private sector responses, improve methods for synthesizing different forms of evidence, assess the adaptation at different temperature thresholds, and improve the inclusion of timescale and the dynamics of responses