Sustainable and future-proof: resilient cities in the digital age

How can cities and urban areas better equip themselves against crises? Natural disasters such as the current widespread flooding in northern parts of Germany, changing climatic conditions as a result of climate change, but also pandemics that can shut down entire cities, show us how vulnerable cities and their structures can be. To counteract this, it is necessary to create more resilient and adaptable structures that can withstand future crises and disasters without permanent damage. It is important to strengthen resilience – and digital solutions can help with this. Over the past two years, the National Smart Cities Dialogue Platform has investigated the extent to which digitalization and its technologies can strengthen the resilience of cities and urban spaces. The results were presented at the Smart Country Convention in November 2023. The four interdisciplinary guidelines developed focus on resilience as a guiding principle of sustainable urban development. They are intended to provide assistance in the design and implementation of digital strategies and measures that can be used to exploit the potential of digitalization in transformation processes. These guidelines can be used by the federal government, federal states and municipalities to promote resilience at various spatial levels of action with the help of digitalization. The four guidelines at a glance:

• Guideline 1: Enable forward-looking, adaptive and smart urban development with the help of integrated structures
• Guideline 2: Use digital technologies to pave the way for achieving climate targets
• Guideline 3: Understanding information security and data protection as key factors for resilience – developing and implementing concepts with corresponding standards
• Guideline 4: Designing digital services in the local authority group in an ecologically, economically and socially sustainable way

At the Smart Country Convention, interested parties and participants were asked about resilient urban development and the role of digitalization, among other things. interviewed. It became clear that digitalization can be an important factor in making certain data visible and thus making it easier to analyse impacts and possible solutions. This includes the digital twin, for example. The digital replication of cities makes it possible to correlate different data and test changes without great effort. aconium GmbH is also active in this forward-looking field, for example by currently supporting various Bavarian municipalities in the TwinBy project with the development and implementation of 3D city models. These in turn serve as the basis for various use cases, which can be made accessible to administrative staff and citizens. They make it possible, for example, to simulate heavy rain and flood events or to display mobility behavior in city centers live. Publisher of the publication “Accelerated change and resilience – guidelines for the development of resilient cities in the digital age” are the Federal Institute for Research on Building, Urban Affairs and Spatial Development (BBSR) and the Federal Ministry of Housing, Urban Development and Building (BMWSB). The National Dialogue Platform Smart Cities was set up by the German government in 2016 to identify the opportunities and challenges of digitalization for urban development with the aim of shaping the digital transformation in municipalities in a sustainable, public welfare-oriented manner and in the interests of integrated urban development. The topic of resilience also plays a major role in the Smart Cities model projects, which are also part of the BMWSB, and is the subject of accompanying research. This came to the conclusion that digitalization can strengthen urban resilience, e.g. through improved information and planning bases such as real-time monitoring of environmental and weather data or concepts for the sustainable use of water. This allows a city to benefit, for example, from protection against flooding and low water levels and draw conclusions about future-relevant adaptation measures in the area of water management.

In order to better understand the current challenges, principles and changes in water management, in particular urban water management and wetland management, the aconium Academy is currently offering a series of seminars series.

In addition to resistant and adaptable structures, social components also play a decisive role in the resilience of a city. How much change can and should the population be expected to accept and in what time frame? How much change can social cohesion tolerate and how much security and stability must be maintained at the same time? aconium GmbH is addressing these questions in a study on the transformation competence, crisis resilience and willingness to change of citizens in the Chemnitz/Southwest Saxony region. The study focuses on the economic and social adaptation processes that occur as part of the structural change promoted by the mobility transition. How local people deal with change, how crisis-proof they are and how ready they are for new things is explored, among other things, in a trend analysis of the media and social media landscape. Established scientific methods such as digital surveys and focus groups will also be used. The aim of the study is to determine the “resilience capacity” of the regional population and, based on the results, to provide recommendations for action to increase crisis resilience and resistance. With the help of the study, the Initiative Transformation Automobilregion Südwestsachsen (ITAS) can now develop needs-based approaches to empower citizens, but also companies and employees in the region to actively shape local change. Resilient cities and urban areas are necessary in order to be able to react flexibly to more or less unforeseen events in the future. By establishing resilience as a cross-cutting issue in municipal decision-making processes and procedures, the sustainable development of cities and urban areas can be strengthened so that crises are less likely to affect them. Digitalization opens up new opportunities to find efficient, versatile solutions. It is now important to empower those in the municipalities who are not yet confident in using digital tools. In this way, the full potential of digitalization and expert knowledge can be exploited for the individual needs of cities and urban areas.