We are assisting the Rotterdam and The Hague metropolitan areas on behalf of 100 Resilient Cities, pioneered by the Rockefeller Foundation. The goal is to develop a resilience strategy to future-proof cities in order to ensure they are ready for challenges associated with climate change, the new economy, digital society and more. The cities select their areas of focus based on the specific challenges they expect to face.
For the city of Rotterdam, AECOM supported the municipality in drafting their resilience strategy, with a focus on six areas:
• Social resilience and education
• Climate change resilience
• Critical infrastructure
• Cyber resilience and big city data
• Changing governance
• Energy and port resilience
The resilience strategy for Rotterdam – which was the second and final step in the roadmap developed by 100 Resilient Cities – was successfully launched in the spring of 2016.
Following Rotterdam’s success, we were appointed again by 100 Resilient Cities to support The Hague. We assisted with the first step on the roadmap, which is the organization of a workshop to explore the focus areas for the city based on potential challenges. This effort will lead to the Preliminary Resilience Assessment, a focus-area report that is due for delivery by the end of 2016. The challenges The Hague will most likely encounter are sea-level rise and coastal erosion, an increase in refugee population, eroding infrastructure, cyber-crime, and terrorism.