The goals with the project is to provide a demonstrator providing climate information over cities. The usefulness of urban SIS information will be demonstrated for two pilot cities, selected to be Bologna, Italy and Stockholm, Sweden. SMHI, the sector experts from WSP, Umeå University and Reading University will collaborate with the end users, to learn on user requirements and support the use of the downscaled ECV data and impact indicators. To show the scalability of the Urban SIS information, there will also be a full delivery of ECV and impact indicator data over the Netherlands, including a comparison between delivered data and measurements, as well as interviews with end users. However, there will be no use case where a local partner demonstrates the usefulness of the Urban SIS information over the Netherlands.
The Municipality of Bologna has expressed a large interest in accessing improved information concerning the local climate and the expected trends coupled to climate change. The Municipality and the water providing company ATERSIR will participate as stakeholders in the project. There are two technical partners from Bologna that will perform in total four uses. The Stockholm use case will focus on urban flooding. The use case demonstrations, in which the stakeholders in Bologna and Stockholm participate, will respond to the requirements from the two types of end users defined in Section 1.1.4.
Use case on urban flooding: Southern Europe
Hourly gridded urban ECV data will be used to assess the present and future risk of storm water flooding and also the risk of river flooding within the city area. Impact indicators related to intensive rainfall will be analyzed in comparison to larger infrastructure projects considered in Bologna. ARPA will run the hydrological model Criteria 3D for simulate Ravone river discharge at the closure of the hill basin to evaluate the risk of flash floods using urban ECV information as input.
Use case on urban flooding: Northern Europe
The urban flooding will be driven by intensive rainfall through both direct surface run-off over the city infrastructure and through the influence of heavy rainfall upstream the city, the latter manifested as flooding of the rivers and creeks inside the city borders.
Use case on urban heat
Impact indicators of relevance for the health sector will be analyzed in comparison to the expected changes in the infrastructure of Bologna and the evolution of its population. ARPA will assess the impact of local climate changes on health sector by calculating specific indices such as heat wave duration and Thom index. The Urban SIS data and those provided by the statistical downscaling models developed by ARPA will be taken into account. In addition, the model ENVIMET will be applied to identify synergic effects of heat waves and heat island phenomena in test areas over the town of Bologna.
Use case on urban air pollution
Po Valley is densely populated and heavily industrialized. PM and NO2 concentrations are particularly high during wintertime, while in summer limit values for O3 are extensively exceeded. The primary objective of this use case will be to integrate the analysis already done on the multi-annual plan for air quality improvements PAIR, to assess its long-term effectiveness when climate change and changes in long-range pollution are taken into account. Results from WP5 will be the base to assess the usefulness of Urban SIS data provided by WP3. Where needed, model estimates will be post-processed to account for systematic errors. Bias removal is likely to be required to assess the compliance with daily PM10 limit value in future scenarios, especially when the EU legislation threshold on daily values is taken into account.