SAFERPLACES employs innovative climate, hydrological and hydraulic, topographic and economic modelling techniques to assess pluvial, fluvial and coastal flood hazard and risk in urban environments under current and future climates. The service is designed to support the identification and assessment of flood risk mitigation measures and plans, inform climate adaptation and disaster risk reduction strategies, and help to foster multi-stakeholder agreements and partnership for resilience building. SAFERPLACES builds upon the successfully completed 2017 Climate KIC Pathfinder project ‘PLACES – Pluvial flood hazard and risk assessment and mitigation in European cities’.

General Objectives

• To further develop and enhance, test, demonstrate applicability of efficient and scalable flood hazard and risk mapping and assessment service in urban context, largely needed for devising climate adaptation and disaster risk reduction strategies and plans;
• To facilitate multi-stakeholder dialog and identification of disaster risk reduction and climate adaptation measures and strategies, new business opportunities, and financial and economic incentives for behavioural and land-use changes, by employing nature- or ecosystem-based solutions such as natural water retention and urban requalification.

Expected Results

• SAFERPLACES flood hazard characterisation and risk assessment services; scalable and adaptable for different circumstances, computationally efficient and able to assess the benefits of a range of flood prevention and protection measures.
• A series of pilot/demonstration cases in which the SAFERPLACES has been delivered to stimulate multi-stakeholder dialog and identification of disaster risk reduction and climate adaptation strategies and plans. The results of the flood hazard and risk assessment in the pilot studies will be delivered as open-access data on OASIS HUB portal.
• SAFERPLACES will deliver peer reviewed research papers to (i) demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the flood hazard modelling framework, and (ii) explore the value-for-users generated by the developed services.