Design of urban services as a soft adaptation strategy to cope with climate change

Abstract

Climate change is increasingly threatening anthropic systems, which are calibrated on climate parameters that have been mostly stable during the last millennium. Reducing its impact on urban centres is one of the most pressing global challenges of our time. This study develops the concept of soft-resilience, the ability of systems to absorb and recover from the impact of disruptive events without fundamental changes in their function or structural characteristics. Starting from this assumption, this paper explores the potential of the urban services field in a perspective of city adaptation to climate change, suggesting that measures based on ICTs applications and information exploitation represent one of the pillars of soft strategies.