Water, energy, food, land and climate form a tightly-connected nexus in which actions on one sector impact other sectors, creating feedbacks and unanticipated consequences. This is especially because at present, much scientific research and many policies are constrained to single discipline/sector silos that are often not interacting (e.g., water-related research/policy). However, experimenting with the interaction and determining how a change in one sector could impact another may require unreasonable time frames, be very difficult in practice and may be potentially dangerous, triggering any one of a number of unanticipated side-effects. Current modelling often neglects knowledge from practice. Therefore, a safe environment is required to test the potential cross-sectoral implications of policy decisions in one sector on other sectors. Serious games offer such an environment by creating realistic ‘simulations’, where long-term impacts of policies may be tested and rated. This paper describes how the ongoing (2016–2020) Horizon2020 project SIM4NEXUS will develop serious games investigating potential plausible cross-nexus implications and synergies due to policy interventions for 12 multi-scale case studies ranging from regional to global. What sets these games apart is that stakeholders and partners are involved in all aspects of the modelling definition and process, from case study conceptualisation, quantitative model development including the implementation and validation of each serious game. Learning from playing a serious game is justified by adopting a proof-of-concept for a specific regional case study in Sardinia (Italy). The value of multi-stakeholder involvement is demonstrated, and critical lessons learned for serious game development in general are presented.

This paper outlines the work carried out within the RESCCUE (RESilience to cope with Climate Change in Urban ArEas) project that is, in part, examining the impacts of climate-driven hazards on critical services and infrastructures within cities. In this paper, we examined the methods employed to assess the impacts of pluvial flooding events for varying return periods for present-day (Baseline) and future Climate Change with no adaptation measures applied (Business as Usual) conditions on traffic flows within cities. Two cities were selected, Barcelona and Bristol, with the former using a meso-scale and the latter a micro-scale traffic model. The results show how as the severity of flooding increases the disruption/impacts on traffic flows increase and how the effects of climate change will increase these impacts accordingly.

With the increase of the frequency and severity of flooding events, coupled with population growth, the risks posed to people from flooding is ever more apparent. This paper proposes a methodology to examine the risks posed to vehicles' occupants and pedestrians simultaneously in an urban context. Through considering stability functions of a range of vehicle types and pedestrian, a risk assessment profile for a vehicle occupant was derived. Using a historical 1-in-20-year rainfall flood event that took place in the city of Exeter (UK) in 2014, and a synthetic 1 in 100-year rainfall flood event, the potential risks posed to vehicle occupants were analysed. The results showed that for these events the potential risks posed to people travelling by car and caught in flood waters were likely to be more severe if they were to remain within their vehicles than if they were to exit said vehicles. Analysis of the changes in risk over time further revealed that if a vehicle was to become immobilised in flood water, they would only have a short timeframe (~10 min) before the level of risk increases. This is a critical finding, highlighting that remaining inside an immobilised vehicle during flood event and waiting for assistance may increase the level the risk the individual is exposed to, with the results showing the significance of such studies in reducing the risk of flooding to people.

The results of recent climate projections for the city of Barcelona show a relevant increment of the maximum rainfall intensities for the period 2071–2100. Considering the city as a system of systems, urban resilience is strictly linked to the proper functioning of urban services and the knowledge of the cascading effects that may occur in the case of the failure of one or more critical infrastructures of a particular strategic sector. In this context, the aim of this paper is to assess urban resilience through the analysis of the behavior of the main urban services in case of pluvial floods for current and future rainfall conditions due to climate change. A comprehensive flood risk assessment including direct, indirect, tangible and intangible impacts has been performed using cutting edge sectorial and integrated models to analyze the resilience of different urban services (urban drainage, traffic, electric and waste sectors) and their cascade effects. In addition, the paper shows how the information generated by these models can be employed to feed a more holistic analysis to provide a general overview of the city’s resilience in the case of extreme rainfall events. According to the obtained results, Barcelona could suffer a significant increase of socio-economic impacts due to climate change if adaptation measures are not adopted. In several cases, these impacts have been geographically distributed showing the specific situation of each district of the city for current and future scenarios. This information is essential for the justification and prioritization of the implementation of adaptation measures.

Impacts from floods in urban areas can be diverse and wide ranging. These can include the loss of human life, infrastructure and property damages, as well as other kinds of nuisance and inconvenience to urban life. Hence, the ability to identify and quantify wider ranging effects from floods is of the utmost importance to urban flood managers and infrastructure operators. The present work provides a contribution in this direction and describes a methodological framework for analysing cascading effects from floods that has been applied for the Sukhumvit area in Bangkok (Thailand). It demonstrates that the effects from floods can be much broader in their reach and magnitude than the sole impacts incurred from direct and immediate losses. In Sukhumvit, these include loss of critical services, assets and goods, traffic congestion and delays in transportation, loss of business and income, disturbances and discomfort to the residents, and all these can be traced with the careful analysis of cascading effects. The present work explored the use of different visualization options to present the findings. These include a casual loop diagram, a HAZUR resilience map, a tree diagram and GIS maps.