City planning for climate change

The SUDPLAN, sustainable urban development planner for climate change adaptation, project has developed a web-based planning, prediction and training tool, which can be used to support decisions in long-term urban planning, reports the Community Research and Development Information Service (CORDIS). Under the "ICT for environmental services and climate change adaptation" Theme of the EU's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7), the project has received more than EUR 2.5 million.

For example, many European cities are already dealing with the impact of climate change as the occurrences of river flooding increase, a kind of phenomenon linked to precipitation and melting snow in upstream river basins. SUDPLAN makes it easier to plan for such flooding, as well as for other scenarios such as storm water flooding, or, at the other extreme, droughts and water shortages, according to CORDIS. Moreover, with its open nature and architectural design, SUDPLAN contributes to a shared information space in Europe by taking predictions regarding climate change and distilling its impact to the city level.