Port of Valencia – Increasing resilience to climate change

The Valencia Port Authority (APV) has been leading and undertaking climate change mitigation actions for years with its stakeholders. Recent extreme weather events have demonstrated the need to improve resilience, not only of port infrastructure, but also of the activity of the supply chains using the port of Valencia. Therefore APV, with the support of the Valenciaport Foundation (VPF), has initiated a line of actions on prevention, adaptation and mitigation of the effects of climate change on the port activity as a whole. Thus, it participates in two projects whose main objective is to improve knowledge on extreme events related to climate change and their consequences. The aim is to be able to take measures on planning, infrastructure development, operation and maintenance as soon as necessary.

In the ECCLIPSE project (Assessment of Climate Change in Ports of Southwest Europe, co-financed by the Interreg SUDOE programme), the APV leads a stakeholders’ working group for collecting information, testing modeling tools on climate and physical marine environment, to discuss and propose strategies for prevention, adaptation and minimization effects, and to define actions to raise awareness on the matter. In addition, a permanent climate observatory will be established. The project also includes the participation of ports of Aveiro and Bordeaux. The knowledge acquired will be transferable to other ports and other climatic conditions.

Further to that, the APV participates in the CRISI_ADAPT II project (Climate Risk Information for Supporting Adaptation Planning and Operation – Phase II framed in the Climate-KIC initiatives and financed by the EIT) because of its commitment as the leader of the stakeholders and its interest in providing all the agents involved with the best information services, in this case, on weather and climate alerts, improving the adaptability and responsiveness of the port community.

Both the ECCLIPSE and the CRISI ADAPT II projects kicked-off in late 2019 and will be completed by the end of 2022.