Call for Contributions: Smart Tools in Climate Change Adaptation

Urban Planning, the peer-reviewed journal indexed in the Web of Science-ESCI and recently also in Scopus, welcomes article proposals for its thematic issue "Smart Tools in Climate Change Adaptation." 

Flooding and urban heat is among the most expensive natural hazards in various parts around the Globe. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change expects that extreme hydro-meteorological events will likely increase in the future due to climate change (IPCC, 2014). Making cities climate-resilient therefore is an urgent challenge to sustain urban living in the face of climate change. Consequently, to protect cities from flooding and urban heat waves, homeowners need to be involved. There is, however, a traditional assumption in individuals that managing flood hazards is a governmental responsibility and that engineers are capable of providing protection (Hartmann & Juepner, 2014; Thaler & Hartmann, 2016). In the current flood risk reduction debate three assumptions prevail: (1) stakeholders are generally aware of the flood risk; (2) stakeholders know what to do and have the capacity to engage in Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR); and (3) stakeholders are motivated to act accordingly and their engagement is effective. In such an instance, risk communication alone would have solved most of the remaining issues. Therefore, adaptation measures to reduce the impact of climate change exist; such elements are built on strong and quite questionable assumptions and our current understanding of risk perception, underlying motivations and capacities, is still limited and fragmented.

Authors interested in submitting a paper for this issue are asked to consult the journal’s instructions for authors and send their abstracts in a Word file (about 250 words, with a tentative title and reference to the thematic issue) by email to the Editorial Office (up@cogitatiopress.com). When submitting their abstracts, authors are also asked to confirm that they are aware that Urban Planning is an open access journal with a publishing fee if the article is accepted for publication after peer-review (corresponding authors affiliated with our institutional members do not incur this fee).

Submission of Abstracts: 1-15 July 2020

Submission of Full Papers: 15-30 November 2020 Publication of the Issue: May/June 2021