Climate Proof Territories: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Urban Resilience

Dear Colleagues,

We would like to invite you to contribute to the Special Issue “Climate proof territories. An interdisciplinary approach to urban resilience”, to be published in MDPI Open Access Journal Urban Science.

This Special Issue aims to present state-of-the-art research from multiple disciplines that address the urban environment and its sustainability, and to integrate different strands of research into a coherent common framework, thus accounting for the complex interactions and interconnections of the different components and scales involved. Indeed, in endeavoring to understand the processes that shape and sustain contemporary cities, urban science needs to develop beyond the limits and abilities of any single research community, to develop a formal transdisciplinary reference theory and analytical methods for the city as a unit of analysis, by confronting and synthetizing the knowledge arising from the socioeconomic, planning, architectural, engineering, physical, natural and computational sciences.

In addition to the social and environmental stressors that have long been acknowledged to affect urban areas, IPCC Reports (https://www.ipcc.ch/) have unequivocally identified cities as exposed and vulnerable to climate change, and liable to be subject to the projected impacts of sea level rise and of an increased frequency of extreme events, such as heatwaves and floods. At the same time, due to their high population density and concentration of human activities, cities are themselves major contributors to greenhouse gas emissions. It is therefore urgent that specific planning strategies are developed and implemented, jointly addressing both mitigation and adaptation targets, highlighting potential synergies, and resolving conflicts and trade-offs.

This Special Issue encourages submissions that are oriented to promote a transdisciplinary approach to the climate-proof planning and management of cities, including, but not limited to, the following topics:

• Characterization of the urban environment via ground- and satellite-based techniques for knowledge-based preventive risk analysis;
• The use of innovative computing platforms to manage and process huge volumes of data, both socio-economic and environmental, regarding the built environment, and the creation of updated open databases by public administrations;
• The definition of efficient inclusion and integration paths for stakeholders to participate in the definition and implementation of feasible and effective policies;
• Numerical modelling of the urban climate as a constituent of preparatory environmental assessments in support of adaptive urban development;
• The integration of monitoring techniques, numerical modelling and policy planning;
• The replicability of approaches and methodologies in contexts exposed to similar hazards or characterized by similar vulnerabilities;
• The implications of scale complexities and interactions for future governance of the urban environment: social and administrative limitations and potential responses, with special focus on local urban plans as a privileged instrument to design climate change mitigation and/or adaptation strategies.

Prof. Carmela Mariano
Dr. Giovanna Pisacane
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Urban Science is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• climate-proof urban planning
• urban resilience
• local plan
• nature-based solutions
• urban climate
• environmental monitoring
• numerical modelling
• Big Data
• social-ecological systems
• mitigation
• adaptation
• sustainability