Enhancing resilience in a changing climate through comprehensive urban flood design

The ECCO project aims to enhance our understanding and preparedness for the impact of water-related hazards due to climate change in urban areas of the Nordic-Baltic region, with a specific focus on floods. It takes a comprehensive approach, mapping precipitation extremes over the whole study region, and considering other various factors that can increase flooding, assessing the risk of unfavourable events happening simultaneously. The primary goals of the ECCO project include providing robust precipitation statistics for any location in the Nordic-Baltic region, developing methodologies for urban flood modeling through case studies in participating countries, and assessing the probability of compound events leading to flooding. To ensure the usability and practical uptake of the research, ECCO will involve relevant stakeholders throughout the project. The results and knowledge gained from ECCO will be disseminated through a detailed communication plan, considering the specific needs of each country and stakeholder. Ultimately, ECCO aims to contribute valuable insights and practical, open tools for addressing the challenges of water-related climate change impacts in urban areas, promoting more resilient and adaptive strategies.

The general objective of ECCO is to enhance climate adaptation by providing design values for future climate for heavy precipitation, urban flooding, and compound events leading to urban flooding. ECCO emphasises knowledge transfer and aims to meet user needs within the area of water management for proper infrastructure design in a changing climate. The project will focus on the following research questions: - How can we provide robust intensity-duration-frequency (IDF) values for any point in the Nordic-Baltic region and how can we make this information accessible to users? - How can heavy rainfall statistics be used in urban flood modelling to give more realistic and reliable design flood estimates? - How can we expand our knowledge of the frequency of compound events that cause flooding and further develop methods to estimate the risks and impacts of such events? ECCO will address subtopics 1.1 and 2.1 of the call. Concerning sub-topic 1.1, we will particularly address knowledge gaps associated with compound events (see WP4), but also the complexities associated with extreme precipitation, antecedent moisture conditions and flooding (see WP2 and WP3). Sub- topic 2.1 will be addressed by providing a large-scale tool for gridded IDF values, providing design precipitation in arbitrary locations where adequate observational time series are not available (see WP2). We will also establish benchmark studies to support the development of a tool for design flood analyses (see WP3).