COPENHAGEN CLOUDBURST PLAN

Copenhagen, Denmark
City of Copenhagen

In 2011, Copenhagen was struck by a 1,000 year storm event, a Cloudburst, that flooded the city with three feet of water, causing over $1 billion damage across the city. The city engaged in a planning period to create the Cloudburst plan with the idea of Blue-Green solutions. These solutions are low-tech, on the surface, not engineered underground, and interactive. These climate adaptive solutions take place within the confines of urban space. The process followed a six step procedure to integrate a Blue-Green approach beginning with a period of data gathering and investigation, modeling and mapping, a cost-of-doing-nothing scenario, a design period, community involvement and design interaction, and concluded with a detailed socioeconomic cost benefit analysis that tested two masterplan solutions. The masterplan variations, the conventional scenario and the Blue-Green scenario were developed together to quantify the benefits of the adaptive scenario. The project was financed through a public-private partnership and called the Copenhagen Formula, in which existing cities are retrofit through Blue-Green solutions. Private developers invested in the government’s plan, and it gained traction for its focus not only on the areas where flooding occurs, but also upstream and upland areas where residents do not see the consequences of heavy rainfall. The plan designates a clear order of priority, in which high risk areas as identified in a climate adaptation plan, are addressed first, followed by areas where measures are easy to element, areas with ongoing urban development projects and lastly in areas where other policy directives are being followed.

2012
21810 acres
26 feet above sea level

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