Development of a regional collaborative platform for the adaptation of urban water systems to climate change

Introduction:

Climate change is negatively affecting the entire globe. However, cities as the main population settlements and locations for huge economic activities are highly vulnerable locations in this phenomenon. Such a vulnerability can be attributed to the climate change impacts on the water cycle, more frequent and severe extreme weather events, and more uncertainties in forecasting systems. These issues are creating serious threats to water supply, wastewater, and stormwater systems as well as city management planning and development.

The RCUWM Governing Board (GB) member states are also facing the aforementioned challenges that require urgent and wise adaptation policies. Defiantly, it can be enhanced and strengthened by knowledge sharing, collective actions, and regional collaborations. For this aim, the development of a collaborative platform is an effective initiation.

Objectives:

The most important objectives of this proposal are as follows:

• Sharing and introducing the adopted polices, implemented measures and developed tools by the member countries;
• Foster an online professional community of practice around climate change adaptation and supporting research and development;
• Recording the crises that initiated from climate variability in the region of the RCUWM GB member states;
• Developing standards in which the risk of climate-based events can be indicated for cities through a relevant labeling system.

Target Groups:

Major target groups for this project are policymakers, mangers, water authorities, municipalities, universities and private sector as well as civilians as the main elements.

Outline of Activities:

• Development of the required web-based infrastructure to support the platform;
• Introducing successful measures of the GB member states through suitable media using the facilities of platform;
• Introducing the challenges and engaging the research centers to address them;
• Role of media in the climate change adaptation of cities
• Planning for a number of workshops between member states and relevant international agencies to address the objectives of this proposal such as:
• How the climate change/climate variability are affecting the cities of member states?
• What have been the applied measures to manage the climate-based events and how the effectiveness of measures is evaluated?
• How can civilians be involved in the adaptation measures?
• How can private sector be prompted to invest in the adaptation measures?
• What should be the role of insurance companies to increase resiliency of cities?
• How the global climate databases can be applied for the forecasting and warning systems?

Expected Outcomes:

• Improving knowledge exchange among GB member states to adapt urban water systems to climate change
• Providing a number of resilience management guidelines/publications regarding adaptation of cities to climate change;
• Developing a network of universities, research centers and experts from GB member states for joint studies on the objectives of this proposal

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