When (smart) cities are under pressure: digital government for urban climate resilience

Abstract

Climate-related crises expose weaknesses in the capacity of cities to coordinate actors, use information, maintain public services, communicate risks, and support affected communities. Recent floods, heat waves, droughts, and storms in Europe and South America have shown that smart city initiatives do not necessarily create the institutional, digital, territorial, and community capacities needed to anticipate, respond to, recover from, and learn from disruption. Although digital government can support coordination, communication, decision-making, service delivery, and early warning across the disaster risk management cycle, its contribution to urban climate resilience remains insufficiently explored. This workshop examines how digital government capacities can support urban climate resilience under pressure.