Bratislava has received funding from “EEA Grants and Norway Grants” (hereafter called EEA Grants) for an urban climate adaptation project. The project entitled ‘Bratislava is preparing for climate change’ implements measures to enhance the resilience of Bratislava city to the adverse impacts of climate change, in particular intense rainfall and heat. These measures include tree planting, green roofs and rainwater retention facilities. The benefits are primarily for the most vulnerable inhabitants of Bratislava: elderly people and children.

Lisbon is located in Southern Europe, a region that is generally identified as one to be likely affected by droughts if current climate change scenarios do occur. Over the last 40 years, Lisbon geographic area has witnessed an increase in the rainfall variability. Projections up to the end of the century agree that these trends will intensify. Leakage reduction at the distribution network arises as one of the most significant adaptation measures to be implemented.

Bilbao’s ‘Zorrotzaurre’ district is currently a degraded, flood-prone industrial peninsula. With increasing extreme precipitation predicted across the Basque country in the future due to climate change and a need for new housing to accommodate citizens of Bilbao, a major urban regeneration project is currently underway to redevelop Zorrotzaurre district into a new flood-proof residential quarter.

Malmö is experiencing negative effects from climate change due to rising temperatures and excessive rainfall. The city therefore aims to realise climate adaptation measures by integrating it directly in the design of urban development projects, such as in the case of the Western Harbour. The private funding to realise these measures is provided by developers, who realise the actual construction of the projects.

Vrijburcht is a multipurpose living-and-working complex in Amsterdam. It offers many shared social amenities for both the residents and the people from the neighbourhood. The heart of the complex is the courtyard garden with trees, a vegetable garden, lawns, flowers, benches and a greenhouse. The garden provides various solutions to the expected impact of climate change; it offers residents a cool environment during warmer summers; rain water is stored in underground tanks for irrigation in dry periods; the unsealed area permits maximum rainwater permeability.

In response to flooding causing damage in Smolyan’s Ustovo neighbourhood in 2005, the city implemented a number of flood protection measures that presumably have paid off already during the wet year of 2014. Under the project, river banks were widened, existing protection walls were reinforced and new walls constructed. The cost of about 480,000 EUR was mainly derived from funding by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).

The former industrial area “Luciline” in Rouen, along the Seine river, has been profoundly re-designed into an ecodistrict covering 9 hectares in total and including both climate change adaptation and mitigation solutions. Sustainable living is the core principle of the neighbourhood re-design. Sustainability solutions are implemented in fields playing an important role in climate change adaptation and mitigation, such as energy, water, biodiversity, transport and planning.

Over a century ago a sparsely populated landscape of water meadows was transformed into an industrial conurbation, and the untamed river Emscher, in the Ruhr area, turned into a man-made system of open waste waterways. Due to subsidence caused by mining, it was impossible to build an underground sewer system. Therefore, the Emscher and its tributaries were regulated and used to transport the wastewater together with rainwater on the surface. This made the Emscher simply a great open wastewater channel.

The Albert canal in the eastern part of Flanders connects the industrial zones around Liege with the harbour of Antwerp. Ships can continue their way at both ends of the canal: via the river Scheldt to the Netherlands and via the river Meuse to France. In the future, the Meuse basin, from which the Albert canal receives its water, is projected to experience more and longer periods of low river discharge, as a consequence of climate change. Thus, less water is expected to be available for sluicing ships. This would limit inland navigation.

To combat the impacts of cloudbursts, the City of Copenhagen developed a Cloudburst Management Plan in 2012, which is an offshoot of the Copenhagen Climate Adaptation Plan. The Plan outlines the priorities and measures recommended for climate adaptation including extreme rainfall. The City carried out an overall assessment of the costs of different measures (traditional vs different options including adaptation measures), the cost of the damages despite the measures and resulting financial impact.