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Heat waves and floods in urban areas: a policy-oriented review of ecosystem services

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Abstract

Urbanisation is increasing and today more than a half of the world’s population lives in urban areas. Cities, especially those where urbanisation is un-planned or poorly planned, are increasingly vulnerable to hydro-meteorological hazards such as heat waves and floods. Urban areas tend to degrade the environment, fragmenting and isolating ecosystems, compromising their capacity to provide services. The regulating role of ecosystems in buffering hydro-meteorological hazards and reducing urban vulnerability has not received adequate policy attention until now. Whereas there is a wide body of studies in the specialised biological and ecological literature about particular urban ecosystem features and the impacts of hazards upon people and infrastructures, there is no policy-driven overview looking holistically at the ways in which ecosystem features can be managed by cities to reduce their vulnerability to hazards. Using heat waves and floods as examples, this review article identifies the aggravating factors related to urbanisation, the various regulating ecosystem services that buffer cities from hydro-meteorological impacts as well as the impacts of the hazards on the ecosystem. The review also assesses how different cities have attempted to manage related ecosystem services and draws policy-relevant conclusions.

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Notes

  1. Ecosystems are the dynamic complexes of plant, animal, and microorganism communities and the nonliving environment interacting as a functional unit, including humans (MA 2005, p. 27).

  2. Ecosystem services are the benefits people obtain from the ecosystem (MA 2005, p. 27).

  3. Hydro-meteorological hazards are processes or phenomena of atmospheric, hydrological or oceanographic nature that may cause loss of life, injury or other health impacts, property damage, loss of livelihoods and services, social and economic disruption, or environmental damage (UNISDR 2009, p. 18).

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Acknowledgments

The work presented in this paper was carried out as part of the EU funded Seventh Framework project MOVE (Methods for the Improvement of Vulnerability Assessment in Europe, project no. 211590).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals (ICTA), Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), ETSE, QC/3103, 08193, Bellatera, Barcelona, Spain

    Yaella Depietri & Giorgos Kallis

  2. Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats (ICREA), Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), ETSE, QC/3103, 08193, Bellatera, Barcelona, Spain

    Giorgos Kallis

  3. United Nations University, Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS), UN Campus, Hermann-Ehlers-Str. 10, 53113, Bonn, Germany

    Yaella Depietri & Fabrice G. Renaud

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  1. Yaella Depietri
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Correspondence to Yaella Depietri.

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Handled by Victor Savage, National University of Singapore, Singapore.

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Depietri, Y., Renaud, F.G. & Kallis, G. Heat waves and floods in urban areas: a policy-oriented review of ecosystem services. Sustain Sci 7, 95–107 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-011-0142-4

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