How to future-proof a city

On October 20, 1982, extreme rainfall hit eastern Spain. The resulting torrent of water caused Valencia’s Jucar river to rise and spill over a major dam above the town of Tous. At least eight deaths, the evacuation of 100,000 people, as well as serious economic and environmental damage were the consequences of what has been described as one of the worst socio-natural disasters in 20th-century Spain.

Earlier this month, deadly flooding returned to Spain; with more than 200 fatalities reported, Valencia was among the worst-hit provinces. Many people in this region will sympathise – in April, Dubai was struck by the worst floods on record and more than a dozen people lost their lives in neighbouring Oman as a direct result of powerful storms and torrential rainfall. All these cases prove the critical need to future-proof our communities in a rapidly changing climate.

The question is: how best to do so? Research on the topic has made it clear that effective future-proofing should combine improvements to roads, homes and drains with non-engineering solutions. An investigation into the Tous Dam disaster published by academics from the Autonomous University of Barcelona and the University of California, Berkeley found that some policymakers prioritised flood protection measures of the “‘hard’ engineering kind” over non-structural preparations such as insurance programmes or land-use planning.

The UAE is combining the best of both approaches and the response to the worst rains in 75 years was swift. President Sheikh Mohamed ordered a review of the country’s infrastructure and during a Cabinet meeting on April 24, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai set out a Dh2 billion ($540 million) relief package for citizens.

Since then, there has been multi-agency emergency planning and the creation of a special committee to come up with practical solutions. Two months after the April floods, Dubai Municipality completed a Dh93 million revamp of its public beaches to reduce erosion, as well as raising beach levels to avoid flooding during storms. In Sharjah, the government last month approved the first phase of a Dh400 million rainwater drainage project.

However, this engineering and relief work is being complimented by new ways of thinking about urban planning and preparedness. Transport is a good example of how the UAE is exploring ways to avoid the kind of scenes witnessed in April when floods halted traffic, stranded motorists and damaged cars for a few days. This week, the results of two surveys by the Roads and Transport Authority and Dubai government found that flexible hours and remote-working policies could ease road congestion by cutting peak-hour traffic by 30 per cent. At the same time, work on the country’s first air-taxi station has begun at Dubai International Airport.

If, as Dr Mohammad Al Ebri, director of meteorology at the National Centre of Meteorology suggested at a crisis-management event Dubai this week, there could be a 30 per cent increase in rainfall in the future having more employees working from home and off the roads could keep people safe and reduce disruption to the economy. This is just one example of the sort of joined-up thinking that will be vital in the years ahead.

Centuries ago, the inhabitants of low-lying Amsterdam worked hard to protect their city after the catastrophic All Saints’ Flood of 1170. Emirati cities are much younger and have the time and resources to adapt. More widely, the UAE is acutely aware of “the nation's vulnerability to even slight increases in sea levels, coastal erosion and flooding of low-lying areas” as a November report from the Ministry of Climate Change and Environment makes clear.

Urban planning is one of the topics for discussion at the Cop29 climate summit currently taking place in Baku. The approach taken by the UAE to future-proof its cities for a changing world could inform that conversation and many like it in the years ahead.