Water Management and Municipal Climate Adaptation Plans: A Preliminary Assessment for Flood Risks Management at Urban Scale

Abstract

Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy is the largest movement of local governments committed to going beyond their own national climate and energy objectives, fully in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals and climate justice principles. Every signatory develops a Sustainable Energy and Climate Action Plan (SECAP) to mitigate climate change. In the Plan for the Protection of European Water Resources, the European Commission expresses the urgency that EU-members focus on environmentally friendly growth and make the resources used more efficient, including water resources, in order to sustainably overcome the current economic and environmental crisis, adapt to climate change and increase the possibility of strengthening the competitiveness and growth of the European water sector. A component of urban systems affected by climate change is the hydrological one. The leading causes affecting hydrological component are floods. The Floods Directive 2007/60/EC establishes a framework on the assessment and management of flood risk, aiming at the reduction of the potential adverse consequences of flooding for human health, the environment, cultural heritage and economic activity. In this work, we propose a first-level framework to identify critical areas for water management in urban contexts. This study involves 13 sub-catchments located in the urban area of the Municipality of Potenza, in Southern Italy. The proposed approach could promote, in the ambit of SECAP (Sustainable Energy Climate Action), the development of mitigation actions and investment sizing for urban water management strategies in critical urban contexts.