Scoping

Žilina is the fourth largest city of Slovakia, and capital town of a region and a district of the same name, home to around 80 000 inhabitants. The municipality recognizes the need to address the current and projected impacts of climate change on the urban environment. The Žilina valley is confronted with several climate-related risks, resulting from pluvial and fluvial floods, forest fires, extreme heat, and landslides.

As part of the CLIMAAX project, Žilina aims to

• develop a system for regular assessments of climate risks on the territory of Žilina to be available on hand when needed, including a data collection system,
• gather scientifically supported arguments for further city planning and communication with stakeholders asking the city’s approval for their development plans.

For this purpose, the city of Žilina applied the CLIMAAX Handbook to explore future risks the municipality will be facing. In the following, we explain how the risks related to heatwaves were assessed step by step.