Profiling urban vulnerabilities to climate change: An indicator-based vulnerability assessment for European cities

•We introduce an indicator-based vulnerability assessment to five climate threats for 571 European cities.•We benchmark the sampled cities in a coherent, flexible, robust, scalable and transparent way.•Our method was systematically applied, without any substantial variation across cities and climate threats.•We use 61 sensitivity and adaptive capacity indicators, including new proxies based on Big Data.•We provide relevant information towards a new-generation of urban adaptation policies at the EU level.

Governing climate change in cities entails a good understanding of urban vulnerabilities. This research presents an Indicator-based Vulnerability Assessment for 571 European cities. Basing on panel data from Urban Audit database and a set of newly developed indicators, we assessed urban vulnerabilities for the following impact chains: (i) heatwaves on human health; (ii) drought on water planning, and; (iii) flooding (sub-divided into pluvial, fluvial and coastal) on the socio-economic tissue and the urban fabric. Results shed light on the key challenges that specific groups of European cities face in order to better deal with the expected impacts of climate change. This knowledge is a necessary step to advance in the understanding of urban risks to climate change and the development of effective EU policies for urban adaptation.