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Auflistung nach Autor:in "Downes, Nigel"

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  • Konferenzbeitrag
    Downscaling Climate Change Impacts to the Urban Area of Ho Chi Minh City using an Urban Structure Type Approach
    (Environmental Informatics and Industrial Environmental Protection: Concepts, Methods and Tools, 2009) Storch, Harry; Downes, Nigel; Moon, Kiduk; Rujner, Hendrik
    Climate risk arising from both climate variability and change is heterogeneous across a diverse range of spatial scales. At the global scale climate risk is generally assessed to be more acute in the coastal regions of developing and emerging countries which have significant exposure to climate hazards, but is additionally associated with the specific socio-economic context that exacerbates those hazards (Preston et al., 2006). At the national level, various sectors, ecosystems and regional subpopulations within these countries have been identified as being more or less vulnerable to changing future climatic conditions (IPCC, 2001). However, until today only few studies have attempted to explore the spatial heterogeneity of climate risk at smaller spatial scales, such as on the metropolitan or urban scale (Rosenzweig et al., 2000). As part of the research programme 'Sustainable Development of the Megacities of Tomorrow’ by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), a suite of projects is being funded in conjunction with other partners to assess climate change risks and possible adaptation and mitigation strategies at the scale of mega-urban regions. These projects are linked through an emphasis on the integration of knowledge about changes in the climate system together with knowledge over the regional context of urban growth centres in which those changes will occur. These projects are focused, on building energyand climate-efficient urban structures to mitigate climate risk and to enable adaptation strategies on the urban scale. The research project ‘Integrative Urban and Environmental Planning for Adaptation Ho Chi Minh City to Climate Change Sustainable Strategies for Climate-Oriented Urban Structures, Energy-Efficient Housing Typologies and Comprehensive Environmental Protection for Megacities of Tomorrow’ emphasises the impacts of climate change and the identification of adaptation strategies for ameliorating those risks, including constraints and barriers on decision making.
  • Konferenzbeitrag
    The Challenge of Spatial Information Management for Adaption to Climate Change in Ho Chi Minh City
    (Integration of Environmental Information in Europe, 2010) Storch, Harry; Downes, Nigel; Rujner, Hendrik
    The environmental dimension of spatial planning in emerging Asian megacities such as Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) has become a strong rationale for coordinating spatially well defined adaptation actions and integrating mitigation policies. Climate change is changing the traditional context of urban development planning and is shaping the priorities of sustainability. While urban development trends in HCMC are addressing both mitigation needs and the rationale of adaptation to the effects of climate change, the main focus of combating climate change impacts in the megaurban region of HCMC has to be the practical implementation of adaptation measures. Planned adaptation implies policy decisions and measures at the urban-scale that facilitates the reduction of the adverse impacts of climate change. For HCMC it creates the necessity to take climate change responses into account in spatial planning practices. This will also lead to changes in the traditional administrative structures that spatial planning is accustomed to. Since many of the main impacts of climate change have a land-use or water-management dimension, a downscaled and spatially explicit urban environmental planning information system can function as a switchboard for mitigation, adaptation and sustainable development objectives. Currently there are large differences in the way knowledge is produced, the analytical approaches that are used and the designed urban and environmental planning strategies. The proposed sharing of a commonly accepted spatial information base can engage the dialogue between stakeholders and scientists in order to support the development of spatially explicit planning strategies that anticipate the climate change risks at the mega-urban scale and contribute to sustainable and resilient settlement structures for HCMC.