RESIN City Assessment Report - Paris

Description

RESIN is a 3.5-year EU-funded interdisciplinary research project investigating climate resilience in European cities. Four city assessment reports written on the RESIN cities Bratislava, Bilbao, Greater Manchester and Paris will allow the cities as well as RESIN project partners to assess which adaptation and critical infrastructure protection strategies, plans and measures are already in place or planned as well as enable the local government and the stakeholders to better understand each city’s needs in the adaptation and critical infrastructure protection process.

The report presented here focuses on the situation of the city of Paris, capital of France and centre of the Ile-de-France region, with around 2.25 million inhabitants. As a dense and active city, Paris is the core of the new Greater Paris, created on the 1 January 2016. Because of its crucial economic activity, its population density but also its built environment (e.g., urban services’ networks, monuments, public institutions) the city is facing challenges that are of socio-economic nature as well as others, which are more environmental, notably deriving from climate change. Climate change may aggravate these risk factors, which – in the case of Paris – are heat waves, floods (through flooding caused by the Seine River or runoff), droughts and torrential rainfall. The City of Paris has already in the past had to deal with heat waves and flooding. Should these extreme weather events occur, then all citizens are endangered. To protect the city’s critical infrastructure as well as its inhabitants and to adapt to climate change, the City of Paris has taken action. Several strategies and action plans are already being implemented, which ensue from the national (PNACC, PAPI) regional (SRCAE) and local policy-making levels (Paris Climate Actions Plan and its annex –the Adaptation Strategy-, PPRI, PCA, PCS).

Reference information