Abstract Body

Cities are becoming increasingly vulnerable to climate change, and there is an urgent need to make them more resilient. Online knowledge-sharing platforms contribute to an accelerated climate adaptation by promoting more green and blue spaces in urban areas. Climatescan.org is a citizen science tool created through ‘learning by doing’, which is interactive, open source, and provide more detailed information on Best Management Practices (BMPs) as: exact location, website links, free photo and film material. BMPs such as stormwater infiltration by swales, raingardens, subsurface infiltration in Sponge cities are mapped and published on social media.

Climatescan is in continuous development as more data is uploaded by over 1000 people around the world, and improvements are made to respond to feedback from users. This tool in 2021 is the biggest database on green blue measures around the world. It helps policy makers and practitioners to gather valuable data for decision-makers in a rapid appraisal at neighbourhood and city level. Climatescan.org provides insights, create awareness and builds capacity. Climatescan.org has over 5000 NBS uploaded on the open source platform and over 200.000 unique visitors and an an average of more than 100 visitors a day.

Analysing the open source Change Adaptation Platform ClimateScan shows that bio filtration is the category with most uploads (1181 projects) with the highest contributions from The Netherlands and Australia. Despite that these two countries are separated by significant geographical distance, climate and geohydrological circumstances, cross collaboration between the countries has seen the open and detailed exchange of knowledge regarding the implementation, maintenance and design of NBS.

However, points of concern are identified regarding the data quality and the aspect of community-building. Although the numbers of users are rising, only a few users have remained involved. Learning from these remaining top users and their motivations, we draw general lessons and make suggestions for stimulating long-term engagement on online knowledge-sharing platforms.

Abstract Body

The effects of global climate change on weather patterns will result in more extreme heat, drought and rainfall. Urban areas are particularly vulnerable to these effects as a large share of these environment are soil-sealed and densely constructed. In order to prepare for extreme weather, many urban environments are currently aiming to increase the carrying capacity of the environment through climate change adaptation. In current practice, urban climate change adaptation is mainly aimed at assessing the vulnerability of the environment through climatological modelling and risk assessment and not as much on identifying opportunities and barriers for climate change adaptation. An example of this can be seen in the Dutch Delta programme on climate change adaptation. This national policy document emphasises the need for monitoring climatological risks on a five-year basis and making policies to reduce vulnerability. There is currently a lack of knowledge regarding which climate adaptative measures can be implemented in different urban spatial configurations. This, in addition to the focus on vulnerability has led to a situation where the risks of extreme weather are developing faster than adaptive measures are implemented.

Using a GIS-based method that combines public land-use data with data from climatescan.org, a database on the locations of adaptive measures, can aid in finding opportunities for adaptation in different neighbourhood typologies. This study made use of these datasets to gain insight in the relationship between public land-use and potential for implementing climate adaptation measures in urban environments throughout the Netherlands. The outcome of this analysis shows that there seems to be a relationship between neighbourhood characteristics and the implementation of climate adaptive measures. This indicates that neighbourhood typologies could potentially have major implications on which green-blue measures can be taken in different urban landscapes. The outcome of this study can give urban planners more grip on the effectiveness of policy instruments and public investments on urban climate resilience and to monitor the implementation of adaptive measures in the urban context.