“Logroño City Council has had the support of TECNALIA, which has developed a tool to help the city adapt to the increase in heat waves”
TECNALIA has worked with Logroño City Council to speed up its process of adapting to climate change and, in particular, adapting to the increase in heat waves and urban overheating.
Logroño has devised a strategic plan to put behavioural protocols in place to determine and disseminate alert levels, and adapt the city to the increase in heat waves. The City Council has been supported In this process by TECNALIA, which developed the Thermal Assessment Tool to identify the critical areas of the city.
- This tool provides information on the evolution of heat waves taking past, present and future data into account in different European regions and cities, including Logroño.
- This solution also produces land surface temperature maps (based on satellite images) and can be used to view the evolution of this temperature in recent years (2019-2023) in cities.
- This makes it possible to spatially identify the city's hotspots and to get a better understanding of how urban morphology affects surface temperature during summer heat episodes.
The assessment of these climate impacts has been complemented by social vulnerability mapping. This makes it easier to identify the most vulnerable areas of the city where it would be most appropriate to implement resilience strategies, taking the presence of citizens in more vulnerable age groups, with limited economic resources, etc. into account.
These tools were developed in the framework of the European Reachout initiative and have been used in Logroño to prioritise the areas in which to act in the climate adaptation process.
Urban heat island effect
During these persistent extreme heat events, cities such as Logroño are particularly vulnerable, as being urbanised increases the concentration of heat. This produces the urban heat island effect which can become particularly intense at night. This has consequences for human health, labour productivity, and energy consumption for cooling. It is therefore essential to identify measures and strategies to help minimise these impacts.
Solutions to create greater thermal comfort in Logroño
Using the tools developed, Logroño plans to implement several solutions between 2025 and 2028, which fall under five types:
- Increased urban canopy due to new tree cover
- Solar protection of recreational areas in the city
- Water misting in pedestrian areas
- Water infrastructures such as fountains, water features, water walls and water curtains
- Creation of new parks
About Reachout
The Reachout initiative provides a set of tools, climate services and consultancy services for urban adaptation and resilience planning. The tools and services are grouped according to the Triple A approach, which focuses on three key phases: analysis, ambition and action.
This approach has been applied in seven European cities (Milan, Athens, Lillestrøm, Gdynia, Cork, Amsterdam and Logroño) to help analyse risks of and vulnerability to climate change and formulate solutions for climate-resilient urban development, but above all, to act to identify and select the most appropriate adaptation measures for implementation.
As part of this project, Logroño has focused on mitigating and preventing environmental degradation by addressing the risks posed by heat waves, rain flooding and droughts.
