Samenvatting

The changing climate has an effect on the quality of life in our cities: heavier rainfall (resulting in floodings), longer periods of drought, reduced air and water quality and increasing temperatures in cities (heat stress). Awareness about these changes among various stakeholders is of great importance. Every Dutch region is required to perform a stresstest indicating the effects of climate change (o.a. flooding and heatstress) before 2020. The level of execution, area size and level of participation of stakeholders, has intentionally been made flexible. To provide more insight into the approaches and best management practices to climate resilience, this article provides 3 examples of stresstests performed on several levels: single object real estate level, city level and national district level. The method ‘stresstestíng’, involves flood and heatstress modeling, defines the current status of climate adaptation characteristics of an object, city or district. The stresstest form the base line and starting point for the national 3 step approach adaptation strategy ‘analyse, ambition and action’. The 3 pilots have been evaluated as ‘successful’ by stakeholders and yielded a significant amount of valuable information, further improvement is recommended as increasing the participation of the private sector, in a ‘quadruple helix approach’. The learning points from these 3 examples of stresstests will subsequently be implemented in the form of improved stresstesting in the near future in (inter)national cities around the world.