A flood vulnerability index for coastal cities and its use in assessing climate change impacts

Worldwide, there is a need to enhance our understanding of vulnerability and to develop methodologies and tools to assess vulnerability. One of the most important goals of assessing coastal flood vulnerability, in particular, is to create a readily understandable link between the theoretical concepts of flood vulnerability and the day-to-day...

City Blueprints: 24 Indicators to Assess the Sustainability of the Urban Water Cycle

Climate change, population growth and increased consumption, coupled with urbanization, are all placing increased pressure on water management. This global challenge can often best be addressed at the local level, e.g. in cities by optimizing the role of civil society. Although there are approaches for assessing the sustainability of countries...

Flushing Toilets and Cooling Spaces with Seawater Improve Water-Energy Securities and Achieve Carbon Mitigations in Coastal Cities

Exploring alternative water sources and improving the efficiency of energy uses are crucial approaches to strengthening the water-energy securities and achieving carbon mitigations in sub(tropical) coastal cities. Seawater use for toilet flushing and district cooling systems is reportedly practical for achieving multiaspect benefits in Hong...

The Texas Coast: Ship Channel Network of the Petroleum Age

This article provides an overview of the Texas Gulf Coast as a port city region dedicated above all to oil and gas. By the late 1800s, the same trends in transportation and industry that encouraged ship channel construction around the world drew attention to schemes to transform the Gulf Coast’s shallow bays and estuaries into inland deep-water...

An Evidence-Based Review of Impacts, Strategies and Tools to Mitigate Urban Heat Islands

The impacts of climate changes on cities, which are home to over half of the world’s population, are already being felt. In many cases, the intensive speed with which urban centres have been growing means that little attention has been paid to the role played by climatic factors in maintaining quality of life. Among the negative consequences of...

Coping with the impacts of Urban Heat Islands A literature based study on understanding urban heat vulnerability and the need for resilience in cities in a global climate change context

The urban heat island (UHI) is a phenomenon whereby temperature levels in urban areas are higher than in surrounding rural settings. Urban heat islands are a matter of increasing concern, since they can affect communities by exacerbating air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions (due to the greater use of air conditioning) and the occurrence of...

Can Tho, how to grow? Flood proof expansion in rapidly urbanising delta cities in the Mekong delta: The case of Can Tho

Since 2008, for the first time in history, more than 50% of the world’s population lives in cities. This development can be seen in the Mekong delta in Southern Vietnam, one of the world’s most threatened delta areas related to climate change. This area is experiencing a quick process of urbanisation and economic growth. Meanwhile, large areas...

Resilient DenCity: Building With Water

This thesis is part of a bigger project called Resilient DenCity, which is the title of a group project taking place at TU Delft and more specifically within Explore Lab 19 and it is conducted by four students: Cosimo Conserva (Public Realm), Matteo Ferrarese (Green Network), Vince Marchetto (Density) Mattia Tintori (Multi purpose flood...

Urban Vegetation Modeling 3D Levels of Detail

3D city models are now common planning and analysis tools. Urban vegetation as a feature in these models, however, is neglected overshadowed by the focus on buildings, so its inclusion in 3D city models is often symbolic. On the other hand, urban vegetation improves the comfort and social well being of a city’s inhabitants and is a resource for...

Flood adaptive cities: Towards climate change adaption and urban development in the Mekong Delta

For three hundred years, Mekong delta has become a water society where inhabitants in this region developed adaptive strategies, often called “shaking hand with floods”. Historically, people first settled on the lightly higher terraces and later on the levees along the river. With the digging of canals, people started to settle along the canal...

Comparative assessment of the vulnerability and resilience of 10 delta cities

In this collaborative project of the Delta Alliance a framework for delta assessment is proposed, building on the work done for the Aquaterra 2009 conference in Amsterdam and elaborating recent recommendations of the World Estuary Alliance conference (hosted by WWF in Shanghai, June 2010) regarding the development of a worldwide assessment of...

A Floating Circular Future: Utilizing the changing landscape as a driving force to a circular economy

While attempting to find an answer to the question of how we could become sustainable and circular by 2050, we discovered that it was quite difficult to even imagine what South Holland, the Netherlands or the world, for that matter, would look like. The questions that arose quite quickly were, among others: how many people will live here then?...