Climate Change: Can any City Avoiding it?

Nowadays, incorporating climate change adaptation input in all planning and implementation sphere of development is unavoidable. Climate change resulting in sea water level up, rainfall intensity increased and extreme weather impacted on many facet of life and module of development. Adopting and adjusting to the changes is not a choice but rather a necessity. Soonest or latest is only a matter of time but the more preparation is made will determine the competitiveness and resilience of a city.

We experience the sudden flooding in the urban area even with good drainage system in Orchard Road of Singapore. At the same time the long and sustained flooding in Bangkok Metropolitan is another example that require the city planner to re-access and reshape strategies to combat these changes. For example, drainage system design specification of 100 years has been reduced to 70 years life span due to the sea water level increases in which engineers would have to design for a higher loading factor. This, of course will increase the cost of infrastructure construction.

The increase of rainfall intensity doubled with lesser green coverage in the city has also resulted in heavy runoff during rainy day. Hard surface denies the chance for water to sip through the earth, but rather to let heavy downpour to spell over the road. The risk of flooding for a low land area with insufficient capacity of drain doubled with a clogged drain is definitely higher now. As an adaptation measure, providing larger green coverage area is essential and at the same time retain and slow down the runoff during heavy downpour is critical. Making sure that every building owner shares the responsibility of collecting rain water is hence become a must. City manager need to ensure that the system of rain water harvesting is installed correctly and functioned properly and efficiently.

The above justifies the call for all cities regardless of low land, coastal, highland, inland or basically all settlements to prepare plan for climate change adaptation and mitigation. For the case of some cities who might not see the need of doing it urgently as they are not affected directly, however sooner or later it will become a crisis and caught unprepared if no advance preparation is made.