We already live in a world of cities, and that trend will continue in the future. Today, 54% of the world’s population lives in urban areas, a proportion that is expected to increase to 66% by 2050. Moreover, climate change will cause pressures and uncertainties that will pose challenges to the society, economy, and environment. In this case, focusing on the impacts on the urban living, this can affect basic urban services, such as water or energy supply, making the city capacity of continuously functioning crucial for the most part of the world’s population.

Urban resilience refers to the ability of human settlements to withstand and to recover quickly from any plausible hazards. The repercussions of each crisis depend on the city’s preparedness to respond to specific predictable impacts. As such, cities are taking steps towards becoming more resilient and to protect their residents, their assets, and to remain functional during crises.

In this context, RESCCUE, Europe’s first large-scale innovation and urban resilience project, will organise the Urban Resilience in a context of Climate Change (URCC) conference. This event, under the slogan “URCC: You are climate change”, will take place in Sant Pau Art Nouveau Site, in Barcelona (Spain) on 9-10 March 2020 and aims to bring together different actors from academia, administrations, businesses and local communities to discuss the multiple aspects of urban resilience and climate change.

The URCC conference organising committee is made up by representatives from UN-Habitat, Barcelona City Council, Aquatec-SUEZ Advanced Solutions and Cetaqua, Water Technology Centre, all RESCCUE partners. Besides, a Scientific Committee with more than 20 experts from different backgrounds has been defined to ensure the best possible quality of the conference.