Planning for extreme heat: How can cities beat the heat?
18. October 11:30 - 12:45
Some of the biggest challenges that cities have when responding to heat are how to ensure the continuity of heatwave plans and how to communicate with residents. As well as how to measure the direct and indirect losses that extreme heat brings to the economy and society. Addressing the urban heat challenge requires multi-faceted solutions: urban planning, policy changes, governance changes, technological innovations, and community engagement, among others.
Over the past 10 years, cities across Europe and the world have been implementing urban heat solutions based on evidence and data. Aiming to maintain function and ensure the most vulnerable are protected, using awareness campaigns, systems thinking, stakeholder engagement and participatory planning.
Urban heat impacts are intensifying with climate change, local governments need to continuously refine their approaches to keep up. This session brings together a panel of expert urban practitioners, including Chief Heat and Resilience Officers, who will explore state-of-the-art approaches and actions that are enabling them to build urban heat resilience.
The objective of this session is to bring expert city officer working at the forefront of heat resilience to share their innovative actions and experiences. The session will go beyond the recommendation of best practices, e.g. deployment of Nature Based Solutions, by exploring specifically how such these can become mainstreamed and how cities can assess their benefits. The session will engage the audience through Q&A, and will be open to collect new ideas that have proved valuable for other cities.
This session is part of the Mainstreaming solutions for a just transformative pathway: an integrated approach to resilience stream.
Speakers
City of Athens
Elissavet Bargianni, City of Athens
Chief Resilience Officer and Director of the Urban Resilience Department, City of Milan
Ilaria Giuliani,Chief Resilience Officer and Director of the Urban Resilience Department, City of Milan
Before joining the City Resilience Department, she worked as researcher in urban planning for universities and cultural foundations, such as the Politecnico di Milano, Fondazione Giangiacomo Feltrinelli and City University of New York. She also worked as advisory staff for the Urban Planning Deptuy Major, leading the development of urban transformations projects and focusing on the coordination of EU projects.
She holds a degree in Architecture (IUAV University of Venice) and master degree and PhD in Urban Planning and Territorial Policies (Politecnico di Milano).
Deputy director of ecological transition for the City of Paris
Yann Françoise, Deputy director of ecological transition for the City of Paris
27 years serving to cities for tackling climate change. Yann FRANÇOISE is Deputy head of Climate and Ecological Transition Directorate. Since 2004, he has been led Paris Climate Action strategies gathering commitments and actions of all Paris’ community, from citizens to companies. This department has developed different tools and plans for reducing Paris’ carbon footprint and adapting Paris face to climate change issues. UNFCCC awarded in 2021 the Paris Climate Action. In 2021, he published “Paris face to climate change” a survey on Paris climate change vulnerability. In 2022, with IOM, he coordinated a survey about “climate migrations and Paris, risk and opportunities”. He represents the city of Paris at technical level at Global Covenant, C40, and other international organisations. He is co-author of Summary for Urban Policymakers of IPCC reports (SR1.5 & AR6).
Urban Resilience Manager, Greater London Authority
Kristen Guida, Urban Resilience Manager, Greater London Authority
Kristen has been Urban Resilience Manager at the Greater London Authority since March 2022. Before that, she worked for more than 15 years coordinating partnerships supporting climate change adaptation in London and South East England, and as Chair of Climate UK, the network of regional climate change partnerships. Her major interest is in bringing together people and ideas from across sectors to respond to social and environmental resilience challenges. In particular, she is interested in the social justice issues raised by climate change and the need to incorporate equity in resilience policy and planning.
Moderator
Lead for Programs, Climate Resilience, Global Resilient Cities Network
Leon Kapetas, Lead for Programs, Climate Resilience, Global Resilient Cities Network
A hydrologist by training, Leon is Lead for Climate Resilience at the Resilient Cities Network. He works with cities to support them in the deployment of climate resilience-building projects. He is interested in the integration of blue-green and grey infrastructure as means for adapting to climate change, protecting natural capital, and meeting community development objectives. He previously worked as consultant for the World Bank on climate resilience projects, with an emphasis on the African region. He also worked in South America on water resources development. As research associate at the University of Cambridge he developed innovative valuation methodologies for NBS schemes. Leon is NBS subject matter expert for ERDF and the Covenant of Mayors Policy Support Facility and has offered capacity building schemes on climate resilience & NbS mainstreaming. Leon holds his PhD on Geosciences from the University of Edinburgh and an MSc on Hydrology from Imperial College London.