Joern Birkmann

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Verified

Joern verified their affiliation via an institutional email.

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• Prof. Dr.-Ing. habil.
• Director at University of Stuttgart

Purpose The interaction between urban development and climate change significantly impacts local public health services. Unfortunately, cities and involved institutions often fail to prioritize and integrate spatial planning when dealing with these unprecedented future challenges. This study aims to offer Health Integrative Climate Resilience and A...

For next-generation weather and climate numerical models to resolve cities, both higher spatial resolution and sub-grid parameterizations of urban canopy-atmosphere processes are required. Key is to better understand intra-urban variability and urban-rural differences in atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) dynamics. This includes upwind-downwind effec...

Managed retreat, a key strategy in climate change adaptation for areas with high hazard exposure, raises concerns due to its disruptive nature, vulnerability issues and overall risk in the new location. On-site upgrading or near-site resettlement is seen as more appropriate and effective compared to a relocation far from the former place of living....

Managed retreat, a key strategy in climate change adaptation for areas with high hazard exposure, raises concerns due to its disruptive nature, vulnerability issues and overall risk in the new location. On-site upgrading or near-site resettlement is seen as more appropriate and effective compared to a relocation far from the former place of living....

Urban areas in all world regions are experiencing increasing heat stress and heat-related risks. While in-depth knowledge exists in terms of the urban heat island effect and increased heat stress in cities in the context of climate change, less is known about how individual heat perceptions and experiences differ between urban forms or with differe...

The Stuttgart region in southwest Germany already experiences heat stress and extreme precipitation events. According to German law, spatial planning at the municipal and regional levels has an important role in adapting to such events. However, this is a challenge to achieve alongside other demands on land-use. One important resource to support ad...

The flood disaster of July 2021 claimed the lives of more than 220 people in Western and Central Europe – particularly severely affected was the Ahr Valley in Germany, where the floods caused at least 135 fatalities, damaged and destroyed more than 9,000 buildings, and caused billions of euros in damage. To prevent such a disaster from happening ag...

The role of vegetation in urban climate has been in the spotlight in recent years, as it can play significant roles in carbon sequestration through photosynthesis as well as in the urban energy balance, mainly through evapotranspiration and shading. Based on these, the green infrastructure of cities is considered as a potential solution to lower th...

Nach Katastrophen wie im Sommer 2021 im Ahrtal stellt sich die Frage, ob es Sinn macht, zerstörte Gebäude an gleicher Stelle wiederaufzubauen, oder sie besser proaktiv umzusiedeln. Dabei bieten sich gerade beim Wieder- und Neuaufbau nach Extremwetterereignissen neue Gelegenheitsfenster für die Resilienzsteigerung und Klimaanpassung.

Independent Expert Report to the European Commission

Managed retreat, a key strategy in climate change adaptation for areas with high hazard exposure, raises concerns due to its disruptive nature, vulnerability issues and overall risk in the new location. On-site resettlement or near-site retreat are seen as more appropriate and effective compared to a relocation far from the former place of living,...

Conceptual frameworks are vital for identifying relevant components, dimensions and indicators to assess vulnerability to natural hazards and climatic change. Given the fact that vulnerability is applied and used in various disciplines and by multiple schools of thought, several conceptual frameworks to assess and conceptualise vulnerability have b...

Heat emissions from buildings in many cities play an important role for the urban surface energy balance (USEB) and the urban micro-climate. Heat generated indoors from human activities (e.g., use of electrical appliances, space heating, metabolic rate) is conducted through the building fabric and affects the USEB through long-wave radiation and tu...

Climate resilience and building back better (BBB) are key concepts in the present disaster risk/resilience discourse; however, these concepts often remain vague for many stakeholders involved in recovery. Based on the reconstruction process in Germany after the extreme floods of 2021 with that caused more than 180 deaths, we explore challenges and...

This chapter presents an integrated risk assessment and management methodology for cultural heritage sites encountering the adverse effects of natural hazards and climate change-related events. A Cultural Heritage Risk Index was developed within the context of the EU-STORM (Safeguarding Cultural Heritage through Technical and Organisational Resourc...

This article contributes to developing an indicator-based vulnerability assessment framework for cultural heritage sites. It provides a vulnerability index for heritage sites potentially exposed to multiple hazards, including sudden-onset and slow-onset hazards, while considering climate change influences. Through determining particular criteria an...

More than 130 lives were lost in the 2021 heavy precipitation and flood event in the Ahr Valley, Germany, where large parts of the valley were destroyed. Afterwards, public funding of about 15 billion Euros has been made available for reconstruction. However, with people and settlements being in highly exposed zones, the core question that is not s...

O livro pretende contribuir com estratégias para aumentar a resiliência do setor Saúde e das comunidades em face das mudanças climáticas e seus impactos. A obra mostra que mudanças ambientais e climáticas interagem entre si, abordando como a complexa relação entre saúde e ambiente vem sendo cada vez mais discutida. Apesar de avanços na saúde e cons...

The combined effects of global warming, urbanization, and demographic change influence climate risk for urban populations, particularly in metropolitan areas with developing economies. To inform climate change adaptation and spatial planning, it is important to study urban climatic hazards and populations at risk in relation to urban growth trends...

The Working Group II contribution to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) provides a comprehensive assessment of the scientific literature relevant to climate change impacts, adaptation and vulnerability. The report recognizes the interactions of climate, ecosystems and biodiversity, and human societie...

Increases in the frequency and magnitudes of extreme events, attributed to anthropogenic climate change by WGI (IPCC, 2021a), are now causing profound negative effects across all realms of the world (marine, terrestrial, freshwater and polar) (medium confidence) (Fox-Kemper et al., 2021; Seneviratne et al., 2021) (Sections 2.3.1, 2.3.2, 2.3.3.5, 2....

The impact of climate change and related hazards such as floods, heatwaves, and sea level rise on human lives, cities, and their hinterlands depends not only on the nature of the hazard, but also on urban development, adaptation, and other socioeconomic processes that determine vulnerability and exposure. Spatial planning can reduce climate risk no...

Various research communities focus on specific aspects of climate change, issues of mitigation or adaptation or disaster risk reduction. In recent years, a more integrative perspective and additional linkages between these communities have developed that particularly focus on the interplay between environmental and societal changes and issues of cl...

Birkmann, J., E. Liwenga, R. Pandey, E. Boyd, R. Djalante, F. Gemenne, W. Leal Filho, P.F. Pinho, L. Stringer, and D. Wrathall, et al. 2022. Poverty, Livelihoods and Sustainable Development. In: Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel...

The juxtaposition of climate change and development changes is vital for understanding the future impacts of heat stress in urban areas. However, an approach that considers the relationship between climatic factors and socio-economic vulnerability in a forward-looking and stakeholder-involved manner is challenging. This article demonstrates the app...

Cities are key to climate change mitigation and adaptation in an increasingly urbanized world. As climate, socio-economic, and physical compositions of cities are constantly changing, these need to be considered in their urban climate adaptation. To identify these changes, urban systems can be characterized by physical, functional, and social indic...

Climate change impacts and their consequences are determined not only by the intensity and frequency of different climatic hazards but also by the vulnerability of the system, society or community exposed. While general agreement exists about the importance of assessing vulnerability to understand climate risks, there is still a tendency to neglect...

The resilience measurement focuses on urban shocks and stresses, which are excluded from current spatial resilience assessments. As a result, existing literature suggests that research in secondary cities of the global south is needed to understand better spatial resilience in the face of multivariate, intersecting, and uncertain challenges. This s...

Reducing vulnerability is essential for adaptation to climate change. Compared to approaches that examine vulnerability to a specific hazard, our analysis offers an alternative perspective that conceptualizes vulnerability to climate change as a phenomenon that is independent of any specific type of hazard but relevant to multiple hazards. Vulnerab...

Climate change is a severe global threat. Research on climate change and vulnerability to natural hazards has made significant progress over the last decades. Most of the research has been devoted to improving the quality of climate information and hazard data, including exposure to specific phenomena, such as flooding or sea-level rise. Less atten...

Climate Resilient Trajectories are routes to development progress that take into account aspects of climate change adaptation and mitigation in a sustainability context, offering a way to explicitly consider impacts of development and climate change choices on different sectors, scales, and socio-economic effects. Due to their scope and relevance,...

In 2019, record-setting temperatures in Europe adversely affected human health and wellbeing (WMO 2020) and cities—thus, people in urban areas suffered particularly under heat stress. However, not only heat stress but also the differential vulnerability of people exposed is key when defining adaptation priorities. Up to now, local data on vulnerabi...

Adaptation strategies to climate change need information about present and future climatic conditions. However, next to scenarios about the future climate, scenarios about future vulnerability are essential, since also changing societal conditions fundamentally determine adaptation needs. At the international and national level, first initiatives f...

The climate resilience of nations is imperative for a sustainable future. The way that nations respond to climate change needs to adapt from a reactive and backwards-focused disaster management approach, to become more proactive and to anticipate what is yet to come. Two key challenges restrict climate resilience. First, the social aspects are rele...

Managed retreat has become a recommended adaptation strategy for hazard-prone coastal cities. The study aimed to improve considerations for the contextual factors that influence the success of managed retreat and resettlement projects in Metro Manila. Data were collected through a mixed-method approach consisting of a screening of relevant literatu...

Extreme flood events can lead to dramatic changes in societal processes, disrupt rural-urban linkages and affect rural vulnerabilities. Changes in rural-urban linkages due to extreme flooding have been theoretically discussed with limited empirical evidence. Therefore, this paper investigates the impacts of a flood event on linkages between rural a...

Spatial planning has an important role to play in climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction. Particularly in growing urban regions, cities are expanding into hazard-prone areas and lack of planning is leading to increased vulnerability of people and structures and is exacerbating hazards. Gathering and understanding information about th...

In 2016, heavy precipitation events in Southern Germany demonstrated that pluvial flooding can cause serious damages, not just in large cities but also in small and medium-sized cities. Hazard-oriented disaster management approaches to better address such spatially ubiquitous extreme events are already being developed. However, integrated strategie...

Vulnerability to environmental hazards has widely been assessed in disaster risk science and climate change literature by integrating socio-economic and geographical features of a community or a place. However, the role of spatial proximity to cities – an important geographical feature – in influencing household vulnerability has not been scrutiniz...

Wildfires, drought, insect outbreaks, and windstorms are altering the forest‐associated ecosystem services that are essential for human well‐being, and the impacts of such events are likely to increase under ongoing climate change. However, a widely accepted and operational framework for evaluating forest vulnerability and risk to these disturbance...

In response to the adverse effects of natural hazards and climate change threats on cultural heritage, a methodology of risk assessment and management was developed and applied to five pilot sites: the Historical Centre of Rethymno in Greece, the Mellor Heritage Project in the United Kingdom, the Roman Ruins of Tróia in Portugal, the Baths of Diocl...

Purpose Enhancing the resilience of cities and strengthening risk-informed decision-making are defined as key within the Global Agenda 2030. Implementing risk-informed decision-making also requires the consideration of scenarios of exposure and vulnerability. Therefore, the paper presents selected scenario approaches and illustrates how such vulner...

High uncertainty in the occurrence of extreme events and disasters have made resilience-building an imperative part of society. Resilience assessment is an important tool in this context. Resilience is multidimensional as well as place-, scale-and time-specific, which requires a comprehensive approach for measuring and analysing. In this regard, co...

Socio-economic indicators are key to understanding societal challenges. They disassemble complex phenomena to gain insights and deepen understanding. Specific subsets of indicators have been developed to describe sustainability, human development, vulnerability, risk, resilience and climate change adaptation. Nonetheless, insufficient quality and a...

Rural areas are highly vulnerable to floods due to limited social, economic, and physical resources. Understanding rural vulnerability is vital for developing effective disaster risk reduction strategies. Even though rural areas and cities are intrinsically linked, rural vulnerability was assessed without considering its relation to cities. Numerou...

To date, much of the research on the dynamics of vulnerability has been done on a regional or national spatial scale comparing vulnerability of countries or counties or assessing the influence of city size on the vulnerability of the city itself. Little attention has been paid to how city size influences the vulnerability of surrounding rural areas...

This chapter studies impacts of flood events on the livelihoods of rural communities in Pakistan. It explores the adverse effects of extreme flooding, as well as how communities learn and adapt their livelihoods in the wake of such events. Three flood-affected districts in the province of Punjab were selected as case study areas. A household survey...

Die Region Stuttgart als dicht besiedelter und wirtschaftlich dynamischer Raum ist – wie auch andere Regionen – bereits heute erheblichen Naturgefahren ausgesetzt. Dazu gehören zum Beispiel Hitze oder auch Hochwasser. Letztere haben in der Vergangenheit insbesondere an den Flüssen Rems und Murr zu erheblichen Schäden geführt. Neben den Natur- und T...

Purpose The extreme flood event of 2010 in Pakistan led to extensive internal displacement of rural communities, resulting in initiatives to resettle the displaced population in model villages (MVs). The MV concept is quite new in the context of post-disaster resettlement and its role in building community resilience and well-being has not been exp...

Within the framework of disaster risk management, this article proposes an interdisciplinary method for the analysis of multiple natural hazards, including climate change’s influences, in the context of cultural heritage. A taxonomy of natural hazards applicable to cultural heritage was developed based on the existing theoretical and conceptual fra...

Abstract: Enhancing the resilience of cities and implementing risk-informed sustainable development are defined as key within the Global Agenda 2030, particularly in the Sustainable Development Goals (UN 2015a), the Sendai Framework (UN 2015b), the Paris Agreement (UN 2015c) and UN Habitat III (UN Habitat 2016, UN 2017). Up to now, various risk ass...

While climate change is already a real issue in many parts of the world, it is even more threatening the well-being of future generations. The SDG 1.5 explicitly aims to reduce the vulnerability and exposure to climate related hazards by 2030. TheWorld Risk Index (WRI) is one well-respected approach in profiling countries risk to natural hazard. To...

The overarching nature of building resilience across disciplines and its inherent positive mutual understanding due to the association with the immune system also amongst the non-scientific community, makes it an attractive and increasing popular concept which everybody seems able to grasp its necessity. Hence, there is an exponential increase, eve...

In the face of accelerating climate change, urbanization and the need to adapt to these changes, the concept of resilience as an interdisciplinary and positive approach has gained increasing attention over the last decade. However, measuring resilience and monitoring adaptation efforts have received only limited attention from science and practice...

Vulnerability and capacity assessment of hazard-prone communities is integral to the development of efficient disaster risk reduction strategies. Both concepts are known to be inter-linked and inter-dependent in disaster risk science as well as climate change adaptation literature. However, a holistic relationship between these two concepts is rare...

The protection and conservation of cultural heritage is important for our society, not only in order to preserve cultural identity, but also because it acts as a wealth creator, bringing tourism-related opportunities on which many communities depend. However, Europe’s heritage assets are highly exposed to extreme weather events and natural hazards,...

This research was conducted in the northern region of Ghana to examine the role of International NGOs in the adaptation to climate change in the agricultural sector. The study employed descriptive research design and case study strategy within the qualitative approach. The data was obtained through the conduct of in-depth interviews with officials...

This chapter discusses literature that justifies the emBRACE approach to community disaster resilience. It reviews literature from different disciplines associated with the concept of resilience that informed the emBRACE project. The chapter provides an overview about concepts, methods, and indicators that paved the way towards the conceptual devel...

Climate change is already reality in many parts of the world and even more threatening our future well-being. The SDG 1.5 explicitly aims to reduce by 2030 the vulnerability and exposure to climate related hazards.The World Risk Index (WRI) is one well-respected approach in profiling countries risk to natural hazard. To effectively monitor developm...

Vulnerability defined as the predisposition to be negatively affected, often decide whether hazards and extreme natural events can lead to disasters or severe suffering or not. The WorldRiskIndex (WRI) is an approach to assess exposure, vulnerability and risk patterns at the global scale and it is based on national scale resolution data. The new re...

Vulnerability and disaster risk assessment has been evaluated from different perspectives with focus on global or national scale. There is a lack of methodologies on city scale, which are able to capture inner-city disparities with regard to socioeconomic aspects. Therefore, the main objective was to develop a transparent and comprehensive indicato...

Vulnerability and response capacities of disaster-affected communities might change due to extreme events and response measures taken thereafter. This has also been acknowledged there are only very few empirical studies on how spatio-temporal changes in vulnerability and response capacities at community level occur and how they affect risk manageme...

Die Risiken und möglichen Folgen des Klimawandels für Menschen, Produktions- und Ökosysteme sind eng mit sozioökonomischen Entwicklungen und Rahmenbedingungen verflochten. Die Schlüsselbegriffe „Vulnerabilität“, „Risiko“ und „Unsicherheit“ werden näher beleuchtet, um u. a. deutlich zu machen, wie sie im neueren Risikoansatz des Fünften Sachstandsbe...

The measurement of community disaster resilience through the development of a comprehensive set of composite indicators is becoming increasingly commonplace. Despite this growing trend, there is neither an agreement upon a standard procedure nor a comprehensive assessment of existing measurement frameworks in the relevant literature. To tackle thes...

The concept of vulnerability is essential when aiming to understand the societal construction of disasters. However, definitions and concepts vary between different research fields and disciplines. The concept of vulnerability can explain why similar hazards and extreme events, such as severe earthquakes, storms or floods, can have quite different...

Coastal urban regions in low-lying areas in developing countries are often hotspots of climate change related risks and therefore the analysis of different characteristics of vulnerability, resilience and transformation is an important prerequisite for planning and decision making. Even though the concepts of resilience and transformation have been...

The importance of critical infrastructures and strategic planning in the context of extreme events, climate change and urbanization has been underscored recently in international policy frameworks, such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030 (UNISDR (United Nations/International Strat...

The following paper presents an approach to measure the vulnerability of urban megacities with a comparative approach across cities in the Global North and South. The assessment of city vulnerability is key in order to inform risk management and adaptation strategies that are needed to build resilience against extreme events, natural hazards or con...

The reasons for concern framework communicates scientific understanding about risks in relation to varying levels of climate change. The framework, now a cornerstone of the IPCC assessments, aggregates global risks into five categories as a function of global mean temperature change. We review the framework's conceptual basis and the risk judgments...

In the Paris Agreement, it is stated that country's vulnerability to climate change is a key factor to decide where and how to allocate adaptation funds. However, the distribution of available funds continues to be a controversial point of discussion. To inform this discussion, we look at how policy makers could be differentiating regions for finan...

Extreme events do not necessarily trigger extreme impacts. Exposure and vulnerability levels often decide whether hazards and extreme events lead to disasters or severe suffering or not. Measuring and assessing different levels of exposure, vulnerability and risk is therefore crucial in order to inform decision making and to provide guidance for de...

Smaller settlements are growing faster than megacities — and they need more protection from extreme events, write Joern Birkmann and colleagues.

Introduction Resilience has become a prominent concept in the field of disaster risk reduction (DRR). Yet, analysis of whether and how the conceptual claims of resilience are translated from the planning stage into practical implementation is often lacking or thin (Garschagen, 2013). In this chapter, ‘disaster resilience’ is defined as the ability...

A series of large scale disasters has long impacted Indonesia, and the tsunami in 2004 hit the hardest. The Indonesian government has indeed accelerated its policies and activities to be better prepared and to manage the impacts of disasters. Immediately after the 2004 tsunami the Hyogo Framework for Action was adopted globally. In Indonesia a seri...

The DRIB Index- Disaster Risk Indicators in Brazil - provides a tool to help assess, visualise and communicate different levels of exposure, vulnerability and risk in Brazil. The index may sensitise public and political decision-makers towards the important topic of disaster risk and climate change adaptation. This article aims to explore the feasi...

[Book Abstract] Cities on a Finite Planet: Transformative responses to climate change shows how cities can combine high quality living conditions, resilience to climate change, disaster risk reduction and contributions to mitigation/low carbon development. It also covers the current and potential contribution of cities to avoiding dangerous climate...

The IPCC Special Report on Managing Risk of Extreme Events to Advance Climate Adaptation (SREX report; IPCC 2012) as well as the contribution of working group II to the IPCC fifth assessment report (IPCC 2014a, b; hereafter, WGII AR5) have been important milestones marking the confluence of the fields of climate adaptation and risk managment. Both...

The demand for information and understanding on natural hazard related risk on a global scale has grown in recent years. Such information is crucial for stakeholders who are working in the field of disaster risk reduction, spatial planning and (re-)insurance. This article provides a new approach to assess risk and vulnerability towards natural haza...

EXTENDED ABSTRACT Coastal floods are among the most harmful natural hazards affecting urban areas adjacent to shorelines. Rapid urbanization combined with climate change effects and poor governance structures lead to a significant increase in the risk of coastal communities in terms of their livelihoods, the socioeconomic structure and technical in...

Responding to recently identified challenges in the comprehensive evaluation of climate change adaptation, we suggest an assessment framework that incorporates a multidisciplinary viewpoint on adaptation. The framework combines three major components to link system-oriented concepts of risk and vulnerability to natural hazards and climate change wi...

Preventing and reducing loss and damage due to extreme events is an important topic for the international community, especially in the context of climate change negotiations and disaster risk reduction. The paper outlines the latest state-of-the-art approaches to assess loss and damage and the risk of loss and damage. Against this background, a mor...