- How do heatwaves, droughts, or lack of shade affect your neighbourhood and daily activities?
It affects directly the citizens health and increases the population vulnerability. In some parts of the city, namely the ones where this phenomenon has a high expression in houses where older citizens and vulnerable population lives and because of their social condition, they don’t have means to perform interventions in their houses to reduce the energy poverty, so this affects directly the thermal comfort, during the summer and in the winter, to this population.
- BLOSSOM is working to improve climate resilience in Lisbon. What local issues should it address first?
Lisbon has signed different strategies to promote climate resilience, the most part of them in public spaces, green areas and at the mobility sector. Also aiming at the mitigation of urban floods Lisbon Drainage Master Plan is being implement, but in my opinion, measures dedicated to the building stock are still missing. So, BLOSSOM will be a good opportunity to look at the building scale and define a list of measures that could be implemented to adapt and mitigate the impact of natural hazards, considering also the bankability of the solutions that is an innovative approach and the possibility to co-create the solutions with different stakeholders.
- Which parts of the city would benefit most from BLOSSOM-supported green or cooling solutions?
Lisbon present different problems in different neighbours, most of them increased by the urban occupation and others resulting from the lack of land planning. However, the city presents a lot of opportunities and solutions to promote urban resilience to natural phenomena.
Some parts of the city were built in the 19th and early decades of the 20th century, so the construction codes did not consider the needs concerning seismic and climate resilience, so in these parts of the city the measures to be applied should take this into consideration.
The recent areas, mainly the municipal building stock, present problems related with the occupation of less favourable terrains with different exposition to natural hazards, increasing the effects of the phenomena in the buildings and in the population that lives in those areas.
Through BLOSSOM several measures aiming at the mitigation of urban floods, thermal behaviour and seismic resilience at the building scale will be tested with the cooperation of the private, financial and insurance sectors.
So, I think the different parts will benefit, even though through different solutions.
- Do you feel residents’ voices are heard in projects like BLOSSOM that plan climate and urban improvements?
I think it will depend on the approach and dissemination strategy implemented by the public authorities and other stakeholders, because sometimes the means that are used to disseminate don’t reach the common citizen. Awareness campaigns to engage with the citizens should be a starting point.
Article signed by: Cláudia Pinto, Project Director @ Lisbon Municipality / LinkedIn
