Saarland Regional Report - C-Change

• The state capital Saarbrücken is one of nine model
cities taking part in the German Experimental Housing
and Urban Development programme on urban strategies
tackling the impacts of climate change - www.stadtund-klimawandel.de
- ExWoSt. Starting from the
Saarbrücken Open Space Development Programme
(OSDP), the climatic relevance of open spaces is being
examined with the aim of demonstrating how open
spaces can help cities improve their adaptation to the
consequences of climate change. The fundamentals and
strategies for this have been developed as part of the
C-Change project. Building on this, a broad involvement
process has been started in order to sensitise the
population for this subject and jointly explore definitive
action options.
All regional projects have been presented to a broader
audience and local stakeholders at the Regional Park
Forum. It took place on the 28th March 2012 in
Saarbrücken and was dedicated to the topic of climate
change.
2. Key Outputs, Activities and
Achievements
The C-Change project provided an excellent opportunity
to elaborate conceptual proposals for adequately
addressing adaptation strategies in the redraft of the
formal and binding Saarland State Development Plan.
Several workshops and bilateral coordination meetings
with the various sector departments on state level
ensured that sectoral as well as regionally specific
requirements found intensive consideration. The main
results were compiled within the final reports:
• The first step was made by evaluating regional climate
models to track climate change and its impact. This
leads to a broader understanding of the complex and
spatially relevant climate change consequences on
regional level. The results indicate that summertime heat
stress in the Saarland will show an above average
increase in comparison with Germany as a whole.
Declining summer precipitations in combination with
rising summer temperatures may furthermore lead to
more frequent and/or longer dry periods. As heavy
precipitations are on the increase nationwide, the
frequency of flooding events and risk of soil erosion may
also increase in connection with rising precipitation
volumes in winter.
• The second step focused on the analyses of the
vulnerability of land uses and structures regarding
thermal stress, dry periods and flood risks. The results
show that urban areas and the soil, in particular, show
a high vulnerability, but also agriculture and the nature
conservation areas. It became clear that the cold air
supply of the densely settled areas is of key importance.
For this reason C-Change also included an analysis of
climate-active areas and cold air outflow routes
throughout the Saarland, which will need to be further
concretised in both the state development planning and
the local planning.
• Exploring adaptation capacities is a major step when
it comes to concrete planning and realisation of
measures. Adaptation potentials regarding the heat
stress in urban environments are for example provided
by the development of a system of interconnected urban
green spaces, an optimisation of air exchange processes
between the city centre and surrounding areas, and in
the linkage of nearby recreational spaces with a bioclimatic
and air hygiene welfare function. Adaptation
potentials regarding an increased number of flooding
events are most of all provided in the fields of land use
and building precautions and risk management, and by
an active promotion of risk awareness.
• Considering the binding character of the Saarland
State Development Plan, it has been necessary to
provide suggestions for integrating the topic of climate
change and adaptation into the formal state planning,
and in particular for designing and further developing the
formal planning tools of state development planning. The
investigation proved e.g. the importance to determinate
green corridors especially throughout the Saar
agglomeration. The results will be directly included
in the planning processing to follow.
Sensitivity of municipalities regarding heat stress
(source: HHP / JRU 2011)
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