Resilience
Planning and designing resilient societies together
Take part of trend analysis, reports and activities
This year Sweco’s knowledge initiative Urban Insight takes a deep dive into the concept of resilient societies.
During the year, Urban Insight, Sweco´s international knowledge initiative will share reports, trend analysis and articles provide you with the latest solutions and practices in resilient development. Global and local initiatives will be organised during the year to inspire, and to open up for discussions about needed actions to keep inhabitants safe and thriving.
Together with experts, we present data, facts and expert opinions on what it means to be resilient and how it can become a natural part of the built environment around us.
Resilient infrastructure
The EU has one of the densest transport infrastructure networks in the world, but age and increasing pressure due to rising traffic is taking its toll. Moreover, the impact of climate change is exacerbating the situation.
Europe is experiencing an increase in extreme rain events. These events can cause significant damages, both direct and indirect, as evidenced by rainfall-induced floods in 2021 that resulted in damages exceeding EUR 38 billion in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany.
How to plan, design, and build more resilient infrastructure?
Resourceful societies
The health crisis, and the ongoing conflicts have revealed the vulnerabilities of our society, highly dependent on the flow of supplies on a global scale. However, crises also represent opportunities to learn and to prepare for the future.
By exploring needed measures to develop “Resourceful Societies” Sweco experts highlight several actions needed to increase the communities’ capacities to assess, adapt and act; on methods to support alternative supply chains and collective management of resources; and on strategies to optimize resources and develop sustainable and resilient food, water, and energy systems.
The search for resilience in a world of polycrisis
The so called polycrises affect various sectors of society simultaneously with unintended threats to emerge. In this report “The search for resilience in a world of polycrisis”, Sweco is addressing resilience, global risks and the required actions to plan and design resilient communities.
“The risks are far from independent of each other. We will likely increasingly be exposed to situations where risks interact and lead to events we did not expect,” says Thomas Elmqvist, professor in Natural Resource Management at Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University
To succeed with resilience, we need to understand what we want to protect and keep safe.
Why is resilience important?
- By 2030, without significant investment in making cities more resilient, natural disasters may cost cities worldwide 314 billion dollars each year, up from around 250 billion dollars today.
- Every year, an estimated 26 million people are pushed into poverty by natural disasters.
- Biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse are viewed as the fastest deteriorating global risks over the next decade.
- The energy supply crisis, the cost-of-living crisis, rising inflation, the food supply crisis and cyber attacks on critical infrastructure are among the top risks for 2023 with the greatest potential impact on global scale, according to World Economic Forum Global Risks Perception Survey 2022-2023.
Resilient Societies
Resilience refers to the ability of systems to respond, adapt, mitigate or even benefit from shocks and changing conditions. In constant changing society, resilience is about reducing vulnerabilities by reinforcing capacities associated to short-term adaptation and long-term transition.
This year Urban Insight dive into various strategies towards resilience, focusing on different actions to minimize the impact of crisis; to bounce forward to respond to multidimensional challenges; and to promote systemic change by supporting innovative urban governance. How do we build a resilient society? How do we anticipate and prepare for changes and crises? How to bounce forward for long term societal and environmental responses?
What experts at Sweco think about resilience
“Finding a balance between resilience and sustainability is important to create a safe environment”
Erle Kristvik is a civil engineer specialising in water and environmental engineering at Sweco in Norway and she is focusing on how to manage stormwater in a resilient and sustainable way.
“The challenge is related to how we perceive risk. There are many examples of high-risk perception leading to very technically robust measures, such as large-scale, grey infrastructure for stormwater detention and conveyance that are not necessarily the most sustainable ones”.
“Mobilising a diverse network of experts is key to the global transition”
Diego Luna Quintanilla is an architect and urban planner at Sweco in Belgium. Most of his projects are in Brussels where he also lives, and range from urban design to strategic planning and regional visions.
Resilience becomes apparent in cities where people, economies and technologies are linked in a network.
“A new toolkit provides key steps towards urban resilience”
“Digital tools and methods could tell us more about a neighbourhood’s local resources and help map and visualise sources, reduce carbon emissions and increase climate resilience”, says Elise Grosse Chief Sustainability Sweco Architects, working at the forefront of development for the sustainable built environment at the Architects division for Sweco in Sweden.
Sweco uses a combination of different digital tools in the form of a toolkit to support cities who wish to build more resourceful neighbourhoods and specifically with the aim of boosting resilience by visualising and quantifying all relevant information from carbon emissions to social-value creation.
