Bristol (United Kingdom) has laid out its path towards greater resilience by officially launching its Resilience Strategy last Monday, comprising resilience pillars, goals and transformative actions to be realised over the next 50 years. The council shared the ‘Bristol Resilience Strategy’ - a framework to protect Bristol against potential shocks and pressures it may encounter in the future.

As the plan is looking ahead over the next 50 years, there is a large focus on young people and how they can help build a more resilient future for the city. Many of the ideas included in the strategy will benefit the next generation, these include; votes for 16 year olds, free bus travel for U16s and a vision for a child-friendly city.

Marvin Rees, Mayor of Bristol, said: “Resilience speaks to everything that we do and this strategy will help us, our partners and the community develop a strong plan for our shared future.

“By setting out a clear and deliberate vision of what and where we want to be as a city, we hope to be better placed to deal with issues that affect us now and into the future.

“We need to take bold action to make sure that Bristol is able to adapt, develop and deliver change effectively and in the best interests of everyone who lives and works here. I’m pleased that we have this opportunity to work with our communities and include people in owning and shaping our long term future. Together we can help make sure everyone feels the benefit of Bristol’s strengths and success whilst being best protected from everything life throws at us.”

The strategy, which has been drawn up with key stakeholders, aims to build on the work already being done to make the city socially, environmentally and economically sustainable. It sets out intentions to create a ‘flourishing’ city and tackle some of Bristol’s major issues, including, traffic congestion, affordable housing and child poverty.

Bristol is a Tier-2 city of Smart Mature Resilience. As part of the project, Bristol is working closely together with its Tier 1 city partner of Donostia (Spain) and the project scientists to develop tools to support resilience development in both cities and in other cities around Europe.

Bristol City Council has already contributed to the development of the new Resilience Information Portal, a collaborative environment designed to facilitate awareness and engagement among key partners in resilience building. A prototype of the platform is already available online, and cities are invited to make use of this free tool to complement their internal and external communication platforms within their city administration and as part of communicating resilience-related information with their citizens.

Bristol has also been actively involved in developing the Resilience Maturity Model, which enables cities to self-assess its resilience status and provides a roadmap for how cities’ resilience development could be rolled out. The Maturity Model is already online and available for cities to download and use.

Bristol has also contributed to pilot testing of the Risk Systemicity Questionnaire, which is currently under development by the University of Strathclyde. The Risk Systemicity Questionnaire is an interactive tool that allows users to assess their cities’ risks and risk preparedness and suggests possible policies that could be adopted in order to make the cities more resilient against these risks.

The city’s engagement in the Smart Mature Resilience project is one of the ways in which Bristol is taking steps to achieve its resilience aims, such as making the city’s success available to all and addressing the challenges of inequality in health and access to economic opportunities by supporting and empowering the city’s diverse communities.

The Smart Mature Resilience (SMR) project launched the pilot implementation of its tools in partner city Donostia/San Sebastián, Basque Country (Spain) on 13 April 2016 at a kick-off workshop in the project host institution of Tecnun, University of Navarra. According to Diario de Noticias de Gipuzkoa, Mayor of San Sebastián Eneko Goia opened the meeting, noting that San Sebastián faces “two risks associated with the global phenomenon of climate change that test the resilience of the city itself: these are the sea and the river.”

He further noted the importance of the event in Tecnun, as it marks the launch of the testing phase of the SMR project's pilot tools, which aim to enhance cities’ capacity to resist, absorb and recover from the hazardous effects of climate change. SMR researchers work with the project partner cities of San Sebastián, Glasgow (UK) and Kristiansand (Norway) to develop tools to assess and develop cities’ resilience. Together, they develop and pilot tools in these three core cities. The tools are then reviewed and evaluated by researchers and by a group of four other partner cities. It is foreseen that they will be spread to cities in Europe and beyond.

The testing process was launched in February 2016 in Kristiansand with a workshop focusing on water, and continued in San Sebastián, where the main focus of the workshop was communication flows in the energy and telecommunication security sector, particularly in emergency situations. The next launch of tools testing will take place in Glasgow. The other four project cities – Bristol (UK), Vejle (Denmark), Rome (Italy) and Riga (Latvia) – will closely observe the testing process and learn alongside the pilot cities.

For more information, visit smr-project.eu.

The first workshop of the SMR project was organised by the council of Riga and took place from the 26th to the 29th of October 2015 in Riga, Latvia. The main objective of this first workshop in Riga was to gather useful information from experts regarding Critical Infrastructures (CI) and their dependencies to be able to develop the tools proposed in the project proposal. The attendees of the workshop included sixteen participants from the seven partner cities of Bristol, Donostia, Glasgow, Kristiansand, Riga, Rome and Vejle, and also a number of observers from academic-partner institutions.

In the case of each city, climate-related disasters were subsequently followed by reactions in city halls whether by means of legislation, infrastructure or simply greater prioritisation of the issue. Resilience-building would prevent the need for disasters to happen in order for preventative action to be taken, and each city is participating in SMR in order to be able to pre-empt these disaster situations.

The cities agreed that volunteers play a crucially important role in dealing with disasters and crisis. Secondly, they found that it is important to be prepared for unexpected circumstances. Finally, in each case, information and knowledge -sharing among stakeholders was agreed to be vital.

Flooding

Bristol, Riga, Vejle and Donostia found that they had all dealt with similar challenges related to flooding.

Bristol’s power and water supply were affected by flooding in 2007, which led to the introduction of new flood and water management legislation in 2010, which empower city councils and local coordinators to make more decisions regarding flooding.

In the spring of 2013, the main road between the east and the west of the city council in Riga was completely submerged and the transport system was unable to function as normal. In both Riga and Bristol’s case, flood events provoke cities into action. In both cases, local risk management strategies had also been developed to work with communities and different stakeholders.

In 1999, a heavy storm in Vejle caused a power outage that lasted for four days, causing manufacturing to grind to a halt for several businesses. This event led to companies planning alternative emergency supply generators for crisis situations, and also fostered networking and information sharing among electricity suppliers.

Donostia’s communication system was affected by flooding in 2007, incapacitating emergency services during the peak of the crisis. This led to the improvement of emergency services and alarm warnings that capitalise on neighbourhood outreach via social media. Companies and industries located in flood-prone areas have also been moved to lower-risk areas.

Snowstorms

In 2007, a heavy snowfall affected Kristiansand, confining people to their homes and gridlocking the city. The impact of the event was so high that intervention at the regional level and volunteer teams’ help were necessary. The following year, the city invested new equipment to improve their ability to respond to snowfalls. The snowfall event also fast-tracked the construction of an already-planned highway that was better prepared to deal with this type of crisis.

Crowding

The city of Rome presented the problems produced by the unexpected high affluence of people visiting Rome in 2005 because of the Pope’s funeral. 4 million people descended on the city and approximately 8.5 million people used the underground system in one week. Numerous volunteers provided their help to organise this event. This event also led to the overuse of some basic services like telecommunication and hotspots. To solve this, the city needed to increase the amount of infrastructures to ensure the provision of these basic services was founded. Therefore, local authorities delegated the responsibility to deal with this event to national authorities.

Electricity failure

Riga faced a blackout in electricity supply in 1980 and consequently the consumers were switched off the grid. After this event, they increased the number of electric supply infrastructure to prevent this from happening again.

In 1994, Glasgow was affected by flooding that had an economic impact on the city. This disaster led the authorities to think collectively at a strategic level and to develop risk plans to mitigate the flood impacts. Moreover, partnerships were created among private consultancies, private companies, and the Scottish water agency. In 2011, engineering works were developed to prevent flooding and these risk plans have been improved over the last years.

As a result of heavy snowfall in Riga during November 2013, the roof of a popular shopping mall collapsed under the accumulated snow, causing the deaths of fifty-seven people. Since this event, the societal awareness of the importance of structural building maintenance increased. A new construction department was also created in charge of analysing buildings and determining which buildings are no longer fit for use.

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