ENGAGED
Project
How do you make a city climate-resilient for everyone – from leafy villa districts to high-rise flats in Overvecht and Nieuw-West? Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences is working with five knowledge institutions and three municipalities to investigate how cities can adapt to a changing climate - with the most vulnerable residents as the starting point, not an afterthought.
Distributing climate adaptation fairly
The Netherlands is legally required to make cities climate-resilient, but in practice the benefits are not shared equally. Climate adaptation policy is currently driven largely by stress tests: maps that identify where heat, flooding or drought affect infrastructure, but that rarely account for the people who live there. Factors such as socio-economic vulnerability, health status and population composition remain out of view. As a result, the most vulnerable neighbourhoods and residents consistently receive too little attention.
ENGAGED (the equity nexus of governance, adaptation planning & design for urban climate resilience) aims to break this pattern by developing a new, practice-based approach that places equity and inclusion at its core. The result will be a set of directly applicable tools for municipalities: an interactive dashboard on the Climate Impact Atlas(hyperlink to this https://www.klimaateffectatlas.nl/en/ (opens in new window)) (Neighbourhood Dashboard 2.0), along with a toolkit and roadmap for designing equitable climate adaptation plans.
Three cities, four lines of research
The research is carried out by a consortium of six knowledge institutions, with HvA as the lead. The project is structured around four research strands: governance, planning, design and stakeholder participation. The municipalities of Amsterdam, Utrecht and Capelle aan den IJssel serve as living labs where methods are developed, tested and refined alongside urban professionals, neighbourhood organisations and residents. Examples include mapping the locations of heat-vulnerable elderly people in Amsterdam Nieuw-West, prioritising climate measures in a deprived district of Utrecht, or involving residents in the redesign of a public square in Capelle. Co-creation sessions, interviews, design workshops and open workshops bring theory and practice together. Spatial analyses (GIS) and multi-criteria analyses provide the quantitative underpinning.
Students in the living lab.
HvA students are involved in the research in a variety of ways - through the Climate-Resilient City elective as well as the Built Environment, Urban Technology and Urban Management degree programmes. They conduct fieldwork, contribute to the development of interventions, and work alongside municipalities and neighbourhood organisations on concrete challenges across the three living labs. Through Communities of Practice such as CoP Just City and CoP Climate-Resilient Cities, students can contribute to projects that directly address questions of climate justice. More than 600 students are expected to take part in educational activities linked to this project.
Team
- Stephanie Erwin (Project Leader and senior researcher)
- Elzemieke Brouwer (junior researcher)
- Jeroen Kluck (professor)
Partners and funding
ENGAGED is a collaboration between the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences (RUAS), Utrecht University, TU Delft, Deltares and Climate Adaptation Services (CAS). The municipalities of Amsterdam, Utrecht and Capelle aan den IJssel are closely involved as practice partners, as are the public health services GGD Gelderland-Zuid and GGD Rijnmond-Rotterdam, the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL) and the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI). Learning municipalities such as Arnhem, Amersfoort and Middelburg, and networks including Klimaatverbond and Samen Klimaatbestendig, participate as advisory partners. The project is funded by Regieorgaan SIA, part of the Dutch Research Council (NWO), through the RAAK-Pro scheme.
Research group: Climate-Resilient City
ENGAGED connects closely with the core themes of HvA’s Climate-Resilient City research group, which has been conducting research into climate-resilient urban environments for more than fifteen years. The research group develops approaches, tools and guidelines that help municipalities address heat, drought and flooding, with particular attention to the liveability of vulnerable neighbourhoods. ENGAGED deepens this work by explicitly linking climate adaptation to questions of equity and inclusion, building on earlier projects such as Interreg Cool Towns, Interreg Cool Cities and the Neighbourhood Dashboard on the Climate Impact Atlas.