The research project “Vulnerability and risk analysis as an instrument for the advancement of resilience of cities and urban infrastructure” (acronym: ZURES) is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research in the course of social-ecological research.
The ZURES consortium comprises 7 partners, including three research institutes, two planning offices and two case study cities. The partners involved were selected based on an optimal coordination of expertise to cover all relevant aspects of the development steps and analysis. IREUS is responsible for the coordination of the project.
The project is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (supervision: DLR) within the scope of “Sustainable Transformation of Urban Areas” of socio-ecological research.
nochn test
Institute of Spatial and Regional Planning (IREUS, University of Stuttgart)
The Institute of Spatial and Regional Planning stands for a research and teaching agenda that aims to enhance the sustainability and resilience in spatial and infrastructure development. The courses and research focus at the institute are designed to develop tools and methods, as well as process-related knowledge in spatial and environmental planning and risk management. The emphasis is on the transfer of methodological competence related to analysis and assessment of spatial development trends, structures and uses. At the same time, courses cover the legal basis of spatial and environmental planning. The institute has a particular focus on empirical methods in impact-oriented spatial and environmental research. It aims at supporting an inter- and transdisciplinary approach that connects research subjects of planning and engineering, as well as environmental, economic and social sciences. An additional focus is on international comparative studies that deal with selected questions of environmental change, spatial development and planning systems.
Prof. Dr.-Ing. habil. Jörn Birkmann (project leader) is the director of IREUS and lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for the special report SRES and the fifth progress report (AR5). Furthermore he is member of several national and international expert networks (ARL, IRDR). Prof. Birkmann published over 100 publications in the area of vulnerability, risk and adaptation to climate change, as well as adaptation planning. He already coordinated and led several joint projects.
Dipl.-Ing. Linda Sorg is working in the fields of risk, climate adaptation, assessment of vulnerability and development of indicators and indices, inter alia in the European PEARL project.
Institute for Spatial Planning of the University of Dortmund (IRPUD)
The Institute for Spatial Planning (IRPUD, established in 1974) is the scientific organization of the faculty for spatial planning of the University of Technology Dortmund. It serves the purpose of integrating input of the faculty’s disciplines with cross-sector research projects and services. IRPUD has long-term experience in the range of city-, risk- and climate impact research on all territorial levels (international, national, regional, local). The institute offers broad expertise in theories, concepts, as well as quantitative and qualitative analysis methods, in addition to implementation skills regarding planning experience.
The ZURES project team of IRPUD comprises the three employees:
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Stefan Greiving (project management): Member of the academy for spatial and regional planning and the Chamber of Architects of NRW. More than 170 publications concerning climate impact and risk research, environmental review, public services, as well as legal and administrative issues. Manager of overall 25 relevant EU-, BMBF- and DFG-projects at the IRPUD.
Dr. rer. Pol. Mark Fleischhauer (reviser): Employed in research for more than 18 years. Besides about 60 publications, he worked in 30 national and international projects and studies. Major focus in the range of spatial planning related to risk, climate change and indicator systems, as well as information and communication processes in risk management.
As of august 2017 Hanna Arens will support the project team.
agl Hartz / agl Saad, Saarbrücken
The individual entrepreneurs Hartz and Saad cooperate in the shared office agl Hartz Saad Wendl. They work on all issues relevant to spatial development and combine them with communication, cooperation and participative processes. Agl works in many projects at the interface of spatial research and planning in practice, such as the management of complex projects of INTERREG-, MORO- and ExWoSt-programs. A focus of agl is on the mentoring of local and regional transformation processes, for example within the scope of risk management, climate change and adaptation, as well as in the field of urban development and environmental impact assessment, see www.agl-online.de.
The project team is formed by Andrea Hartz and Sascha Saad.
GEO-NET Umweltconsulting GmbH, Hannover
GEO-Net is an interdisciplinary, technology-oriented company for wind energy services and climate services. Currently, the GEO-NET staff consists of 34 scientific-technical employees, prior from the fields of geography, meteorology/climatology and environmental sciences. In the field of climate service, the company provides expert reports, concepts and strategies since 1996. The customer base comprises public clients from municipalities to federal and state authorities. Key activities are climatic phenomena in the scale of cities and regions in addition to climate protection and adaptation to climate change on municipal level.
With FITNAH and ASMUS, GEO-NET runs its own climate models on the micro and meso-scale and uses, next to the development of diverse other analysis and planning instruments based on GIS which are used for decision support for municipal stakeholders. In the business area of „urban climate services“ GEO-NET conducted more than 100 model-based city climate analyses and expert reports for municipal clients, e.g. Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Karlsruhe and private project developers. Due to this work GEO-NET has a very good overview of the usage of the protection good „climate/air“ in city planning and environmental agencies. Moreover, GEO-NET is involved in diverse climate adaptation processes on the municipal level. In order to be up to date on the latest developments in a highly dynamic working field, GEO-NET engages itself in applied research and development projects.
The GEO-NET project team consists of Dr. Björn Büter and Cornelia Burmeister.
UN University, Institute for Environment and Human Security, Bonn (UNU-EHS)
The United Nations University (UNU) is the academic arm of the United Nations and acts as a global think tank. The mission of the Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS) is to carry out cutting edge research on risks and adaptation related to environmental hazards and global change. The institute’s research promotes policies and programmes to reduce these risks, while taking into account the interplay between environmental and societal factors. Research areas include climate change adaptation incorporating insurance-related approaches, environmentally induced migration and social vulnerability, ecosystem services and environmental deterioration processes, models and tools to analyze vulnerability and risks linked to natural hazards, with a focus on urban space and rural-urban interfaces. Research is always conducted with the underlying goal of connecting solutions to development pathways. Additional information can be found here: http://ehs.unu.edu/
Dr. Matthias Garschagen is the Head of Vulnerability Assessment, Risk Management and Adaptive Planning (VARMAP) at UNU-EHS. His main research focus is on urban vulnerability, social resilience and climate change adaptation, particularly in Asia. Dr. Garschagen has been an invited contributing author to the IPCC´s Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) in WG II, chapter 24 on Asia. He further was an invited member to the FP-7 IDEAS Working Group ‘Towards a Joint Research Programme on the Mekong Delta, Vietnam. His research findings have been featured, for example, in the latest UN-ISDR Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction (GAR 2013).
Dr. Simone Sandholz is Research Associate in the VARMAP section of UNU-EHS. In her research Dr. Sandholz focusses on, sustainable urban and regional development, in particular on urban regeneration, nature-based solutions for disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation, good governance and livelihood approaches, based on empirical social research methods.
City of Bonn, Amt für Umwelt, Verbraucherschutz und Lokale Agenda
The city of Bonn works in the field of climate protection since 1995. The resulting structures of intra-municipal networks regarding climate change serve as a good precondition to address questions of adaptation to climate change within the city administration.
In the current integrated climate protection concept of the City of Bonn, the issue of climate change was included as a separate component for the adaptation to climate change. Here, the focus mainly refers to the question of how to include climate change adaptation measures as demands of the building code into the administrative procedure of urban land-use planning.
On behalf of the City of Bonn, Achim Helbig and Jessica Löffler are working on the ZURES project.
City of Ludwigsburg, Referat Nachhaltige Stadtentwicklung
The city of Ludwigsburg is affected by heat stress, simultaneously there is a conflict of objective between the high demand for the development of residual building land on the one hand, and open space development and climate protection and adaptation objectives on the other hand.
A whole range of approaches (e.g. energy and climate protection concepts) have already been developed but the connection to local development scenario - which is aspired in ZURES - is innovative.
The project team comprises the department of sustainable city development with Charlotte Klose, as well as the department of urban planning and land surveying, Albrecht Burkhardt.