The impact of climate change on local water management strategies. Learning from Rotterdam and Copenhagen

Cities around the world, as highly anthropized areas, are negatively suffering the impact of climate change. The awareness of intergovernmental and national institutions, has allowed the development in recent decades of policies and strategies for the reduction of climate-changing gas emissions in the environment, through the implementation of adaptation and mitigation actions, in order to implement local actions aimed at managing the different problems arising from the effects of climate change in the cities. The characteristics of the urban environment amplify the effects of climate change, sometimes with disastrous consequences, especially on people. Among the phenomena that have most direct effects on the population, extreme rainfall and pluvial flooding put the safety of people at risk. Water management has thus become one of the most addressed topics in local adaptation policies and strategies. The objective is to investigate policies, strategies and plans for adapting to climate change by the cities of Copenhagen and Rotterdam, in order to understand the implementation processes and identify environmental climate adaptive design actions as best practices to be replicated in others urban contexts relating to the water management issues, to define an urban system of spreaded actions on the surface of cities to make them climate proof.