Economic costs of heat and flooding in cities

The overall aim of this report is to set out a transferable method for generating data on the economic costs of climate change impacts in cities. City-wide costs were generated for  London, Antwerp and Bilbao, the  three core case study cities of the RAMSES project. In this report, an economic cost  methodology is developed through which the costs of various climate change hazards, acting through different channels, can be evaluated. The focus is on  the effect a climate hazard has on inputs of the production activity – for example, by decreasing capital or labour levels, or reducing their productivity – to work out the overall effect to urban production. By focusing on one hazard and one channel through which it affects costs at a time, the model remains  tractable, which facilitates the interpretation of the results. This is vital for identifying the most effective climate change adaptation strategies.