ExTrass Plus – urban resilience against extreme weather events

In Germany it is especially large cities, which have begun to develop strategies and plans for the adaptation to the consequences of climate change, disaster prevention and climate protection. Small and medium-sized cities often lack the necessary resources in this regard. Still, some promising examples of climate adaptation can be found here. However, activities relating to climate adaptation, risk communication and climate protection have hardly yet been documented and analysed.

The definition phase of the project (ExTrass) already – in close cooperation between research and practice – pursued the goal of increasing the resilience of small and medium-sized towns to extreme weather events. The results of the preliminary phase provided the basis for the main funding phase (ExTrass plus). The project investigated how widespread and detailed climate adaptation strategies in large cities and larger middle-sized towns are, which inhibiting and favourable factors influence climate adaptation, as well as how and to what extent good practice examples can be identified and replicated in other cities.

In this context, adelphi conducted a systematic evaluation of the existing urban land-use planning with regard to entry points for adaptation measures. Furthermore, adelphi analysed planning strategies and tools for the integration of aspects of climate adaptation into urban land-use planning, evaluated them with regard to their potential for further development and formulated corresponding recommendations. The implementation of different workshop formats served the topic-relevant exchange between actors from science as well as municipal planning and administration. In addition, transfer potentials of the analysed approaches were estimated and integrated into a transfer strategy for practical partners.

Further information can be found on the ExTrass website of our project partner, the University of Potsdam.