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Table 1
Data types
Partner level
Social Infrastructure (schools, hospitals, emergency services, care homes, prisons, etc.)
Civil infrastructure (utility services, railway stations, roads at risk of flooding, waste
disposal facilities, etc.)
Population structure (population density, areas of deprivation)
Green and blue space (parks, trees, playgrounds, sports fields, water bodies,
cemeteries, etc.)
Vulnerability (population ages over 75 and under 4, people with poor health, people on
low income, people vulnerable to high temperatures and to flooding, properties
vulnerable to flooding, population living on a ground floor or basement and living on
a third floor or higher)
Hazards (flood zones, historic flooding events, surface water flooding, groundwater
flooding, sewer flood risk)
Urban development (current and proposed residential and industrial development,
historic and cultural buildings)
European level
Climate (including the 2080 IPCC A2 emissions scenarios and PRUDENCE 1961-1990
mean temperature and precipitation)
Climate hazards (drought, extreme temperature, river flooding, forest fires, storm surge,
storm events)
Civil infrastructure (airports, major roads and railway lines)
Population structure (density, growth, 0-14 and 60+ years)
Urban development (degree of urbanisation, urban areas)
Green and blue space (urban green space, blue space, protected areas)
Number of
layers
55
55
14
79
60
45
7
15
5
3
4
2
3
layers (see Table 1). This reflects the extent to which
different municipalities have been collecting relevant
data and their ability to work across departmental
boundaries to obtain necessary data. In the UK the
Cabinet Office’s PAT 17 and 18 reports 5,6 have
helped local authorities to put in place robust
systems for the collection and storage of spatial
data. At the EU level 32 spatial layers are available.
To complement the UNRA, a review of climate
change vulnerability, risk and adaptation assessment
tools was undertaken. 7 This review concluded that a
wide range of online tools are available for risk
assessment and risk management, but that there
was debate surrounding what comprises such a tool
in relation to climate adaptation. The review also
identified that there was no existing tool specifically for
vulnerability assessment, and that there was a scarcity
of tools specifically focused on cities and urban areas.
This assessment was further enhanced by a
review of the available technology: at the time of
development only the Google Maps platform
provided an API, allowing software developers to
customise and build other tools on top of a
common map base. Given the popularity and
familiarity of the Google Maps interface, this was
deemed a suitable platform on which to build the
Tool. The combination of the above aspects of
development revealed that the Tool needed to:
● map risk (where data is available) and vulnerability
to climate change hazards and show spatial
distributions;
● allow map overlay to enable identification of
priority areas for adaptation actions;
● identify relative patterns of risk in urban
environments;
● show the severity of the impacts;
● generate a list of climate hazards and receptors;
● inform preparation of planning documents to
enable accounting of climate change impacts on
people, property, assets and infrastructure (i.e.
the AAPs); and
● be fully accessible to all stakeholders online,
including residents, developers, local business,
utilities, and councils.
User testing
The Tool has been built in a single technical
environment which can be used seamlessly across
Europe – both during the project and after its lifetime.
The project budget and timetable did not allow for
11 individual partner approaches to the underlying
technical development of the Tool, but the approach
266 Town & Country Planning June 2011 : GRaBS Project – INTERREG IVC; ERDF-funded