Resilience of coastal cities with accumulating climate-change coupled threats; Depends on the cooperation of government, experts and the citizens

Abstract

Most cities in the world are coastal cities, especially facing accumulating climate-change coupled threats. These cities are precisely the ones that are growing the fastest, what makes this development a risk for millions of people in our world. These accumulating threats happen when seawater-level rise, clustered heavy rainfall, and meltwater river-level rise fall occur simultaneously. Within the H2020 Marie Curie 'SOS Climate Waterfront' 2019-2021 research program, researchers exchanged between coastal cities in Europe to explore whether they are aware of the need for resilience, and how the resilience in these cities is structured systematically. Aiming for the accelerated adjustment of the research methodology, the situation of three EU islands was examined as a sidekick. Thereby Actions/Actors-diagram is developed as a tool. The conclusions are: this diagram helps to make the positions of actors clear, helps to clarify which measures are being worked on, and can help to identify any obstacles to work on resilience. In relation to the situation on the three islands, the diagram also helped to clarify the reason for the blockade. It has been concluded that for this type of research it is important to first properly visualize the local situation, and to make extra efforts to talk to many experts and make extra additions to interview citizens connected to community initiatives.