Sub-project 3

Urban environmental risks

Unravelling the dynamics of exposure and adaptive behavior

Cyclist with sensor Photo: A. Künzelmann/UFZ
 To understand and solve the challenges of urban transformations, it is necessary to analyze perceptions, motivations, and behavior of relevant actors (home-owners, vulnerable persons, city officials, ...). As climate adaptation is always a local process, a challenge for SP3 is to consider and link different scales.

The sub-project will assess exposure and risks for persons, groups and cities/neighborhoods (urban exposomes) as well as perceptions of urban environmental risks and behavior, because individual and collective adaptation have a decisive impact on future climate impacts. To overcome sectoral approaches, we will co-design (communicative) strategies and (modelling) tools for individual & urban adaptation to climate change. This work addresses the specific demands for novel visions and concepts for the adaptation of cities; we provide an interdisciplinary approach and cooperate within IPl6 and IPl4-IPP-CityTech.

Tasks

Our tasks include:

  • Empirical studies and their innovative evaluation by means of newly developed approaches combining modelling, measurements, observations, perceptions, as well as longitudinal study designs
  • Assessment of long-term trends (incl. meta analyses) of adaptive behavior in large networks, its motivating/limiting factors (socio-psychological, resources, capacities, etc.), coping with higher-order risks
  • Recommendations for (urban and personal) adaptation, prevention, and precautionary measures − co-developed with and tailored to the end users

Projects

Projects, we are contributing to or which we coordinate:

Contact

Prof. Dr. Uwe Schlink and Prof. Dr. Christian Kuhlicke, Deptartment of Urban and Environmental Sociology