*2.2. RESCCUE Methodology*

The RESCCUE project is being implemented through a set of eight WPs (work packages) described below (WP1 to WP6 is where the technical work is focused, whereas WP7 deals with communication and exploitation and WP8 is related to project management). Figure 1 depicts the project structure adopted by RESCCUE, specifying the relations among WPs and the main outputs.

**Figure 1.** Resilience to Cope with Climate Change in Urban Areas (RESCCUE) Project structure and technical details. Source: [7].

The use of detailed models and software tools is essential to analyze the behavior and the response of strategic services and critical infrastructures with respect to specific pressures and drivers related to climate change. Moreover, the outputs of these sectorial models will be used to assess hazard, vulnerability, and risk levels for current and future scenarios, where a large set of measures and strategies will be simulated and evaluated in terms of impacts reduction.

Once the detailed knowledge of each urban service has been acquired through available data, past experiences, and simulation results, then the interdependencies between them and the cascade effects due to failures or extreme climate events can be studied. Within RESCCUE, this is done with two different approaches characterized by a different level of detail (Figure 2):

1. Detailed approach: advanced models and tools to describe specific cascading effects produced by extreme climate events on several urban services are developed. Then, the analysis of certain impact events could be achieved via the use of loosely coupled models and tools (integrated models), using the outputs of one as inputs of the other, being able to simulate cascading effects in a detailed but simple way. In this case, adaptation strategies and measures will be proposed

and prioritized based on hazard and risk reduction but, also, through multi-criteria analysis, providing an overview of other kinds of co-benefits

2. Holistic approach: using a methodology for holistic resilience assessment, the relations and the cascading effects among the different urban services can be analyzed. In this case, adaptation measures and strategies will be focused on the recovery of the normal functioning of the city and, specifically, of its strategic urban services and infrastructures. This concept will be expressed by the concept of recovery time and the efficiency of the measures and strategies, in terms of decrease of recovery.

**Figure 2.** Summary of RESCCUE framework. Source: [7].

With the detailed approach, the analysis of hazard and risk produced by complex interactions and cascade effects involving different urban sectors is done. Then, as not all sectorial models are studied in detail and coupled with others, the whole spectrum of interdependencies and cascading effects is then covered by the holistic approach with a minor level of detail.

The two approaches presented before, coexist in the several different work packages studied in the RESCCUE project. Whereas some tasks are only part of the detailed approach, some others only focus on the holistic one, while there are a few that belong to both, linking the two and allowing to combine them.

The combination of both approaches allows to understand the functioning of the city as a whole, while focusing on some very detailed impacts that are crucial to understand how the several city services affect each other.

By having this detailed–holistic approach, the RESCCUE project has been able to deliver a very useful resilience roadmap for the cities in the form of a RAP, where the strategic lines in which the city must focus are also fed with concrete measures that will be applied to solve specific problems.

### **3. Special Issue**

During the four years that the RESCCUE project has lasted, many outputs have been produced related to urban resilience. Obviously, during the first years of the project, the main results generated were related to climate change scenarios and modelling of climatic variables [8–10], hazard assessment for several specific urban services [11,12], impact assessment methodologies and implementations to specific sectors [13–15], and the preparation of the resilience assessment framework to be used in the project [16,17].

As the project advanced, some of the initial WPs finished, and thus, right now there are no new results related to climate change scenarios, for example. This is precisely why the current Special

Issue has been mainly dealing with the topics of impact assessments, urban resilience assessments, adaptation strategies, flood risk and urban services.

Due to the complexity of cities, urban resilience is a transversal and multi-sectorial issue, affecting different urban services, several hazards and all the steps of the risk management cycle. This is precisely why the topics contained in this Special Issue overlap (Figure 3), which is why all the papers presented deal with at least two of these topics (Table 1).

**Table 1.** List of the papers published in this Special Issue, classified by the several topics addressed in them.


**Figure 3.** Main topics analyzed in the papers of this Special Issue.
