Ongoing 2019-2024

The Future Ground: Urban Planning Under Climate Uncertainty

Ph.D. Project at TU Delft TPM Resilience Lab

Urban planning faces significant challenges due to climate-related disruptions, intensified by rapid urban growth and increasing pressure on infrastructure and resources. Traditional planning frameworks, such as master plans and zoning laws, often struggle to address climate uncertainties effectively because they focus on fixed structures and isolated urban systems like land use, transportation, and energy.

Newer tools, including Planning Support Systems (PSS), offer valuable data-driven insights but are frequently limited by poor integration into broader strategies and high resource demands. A fundamental shift in urban planning is therefore necessary to balance immediate urban needs with long-term resilience objectives. Planning must become flexible, adaptive, and capable of addressing complex, interconnected challenges.

This research examines how planning theories and methods can better handle climate uncertainties and considers how resilience goals differ among urban areas at varying stages of development. The study addresses three key areas: (1) the evolution of planning theories in response to climate challenges; (2) the role of analytical tools like PSS in fostering urban resilience; and (3) aligning infrastructure lifecycles and temporal dynamics with long-term planning.

The contributions of this research include a new framework for resilient urban planning, insights into strategic timing and lifecycle management of urban systems, and a practical scenario-planning method integrating computer models with real-world insights. The findings emphasize the need for planning practices that are responsive, adaptive, and capable of reconciling short-term demands with long-term resilience in the face of climate change.

Featured

Stories of Science by TU Delft (Click here ︎)
Allianz Climate Risk Award 2024 (Click here ︎)

Publications

Krishnan, S., Aydin, N.Y. and Comes, T., 2021. Planning support systems for long-term climate resilience: a critical review. Urban Informatics and Future Cities, pp.465-498.

Krishnan, S., Aydin, N.Y. and Comes, T., 2023. RISE-UP: Resilience in urban planning for climate uncertainty-empirical insights and theoretical reflections from case studies in Amsterdam and Mumbai

Aydin, N.Y., Krishnan, S., Yu, H. and Comes, M., 2022. An integrated framework for incorporating climate risk into urban land-use change modeling. In Proceedings of the 32ND EUROPEAN SAFETY AND RELIABILITY CONFERENCE (ESREL 2022)

Krishnan, S., Aydin, N.Y. and Comes, T., 2023. TIMEWISE: Temporal Dynamics for Urban Resilience-Theoretical insights and empirical reflections from Amsterdam and Mumbai. NPJ Urban Sustainability

UNDER REVIEW. Krishnan, S., van Delden, H., Aydin, N.Y. and Comes, T., 2024. FutureScapes: Blending Computational Models and Scenario Narratives to Design Urban Futures

Talks

Riding Out the Storm. Allianz Climate Risk Award, 2024.
Data-rich vs. Data-poor? Developing Regional Land-Use Models for Urban Resilience: Insights from the Mumbai Metropolitan Region. International Workshop on Climate-Resilient Development in Southeast Asia, Harvard University, 2024.
Who Plans? Knowledge Paradigms in Urban Planning and Policy Processes. 5th India Public Policy Network Conference, IIT Bombay, 2024.
RISE-UP: Resilience in urban planning for climate uncertainty-empirical insights and theoretical reflections from case studies in Amsterdam and Mumbai . Reinventing the City , Amsterdam, 2024.
Risk to Resilience: Dealing with Uncertainty in Urban Planning. Global Coastal Cities Summit, Mumbai, India, 2023 (Speaker & Session Moderator).
Predicting Land-use for Urban Resilience: The knowledge divide between the Global North and Global South. International Conference on Resilient Systems, Mexico, 2023. Slides here︎.
WHEN TO PLAN? Understanding temporality for urban planning for an uncertain future. Society for Decision Making under Deep Uncertainty, Mexico, 2022
Exploring Resilient and Equitable Urban Scenarios. TU Delft Summer School on Planning and Designing the Just City, Netherlands, 2022.
Geospatial Tools for Urban Resilience. Geospatial World Forum, Netherlands, 2022.
Planning for a Resilient Mumbai. Dutch Answers to Flood Management & Land Subsidence, Netherlands Consulate Mumbai & Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai, 2021.
Planning Support Systems for Long-Term Climate Resilience. International Conference on Computational Urban Planning and Urban Management, Finland, 2021
Towards a framework for long-term climate resilience in complex urban environments. Joint Resilience Engineering Conference, Delft, 2020.
The uncertainty space in urban planning. Society for Decision Making Under Deep Uncertainty, Delft, 2019.

Experts Consultation

RE-GROUND: Exploring resilient future land-use scenarios for the Metropolitan Region of Amsterdam, Consultation with experts from the Metropolitan Region of Amsterdam, 2021.