Urban-Act Project Field Mission to the Philippines and Thailand
The overarching objectives of the mission were to exchange knowledge on climate resilience spatial planning between local planners and the German universities team; verify scientific findings on local climate vulnerability assessment and transport modelling; and conduct participatory-based evaluation and prioritisation of practical and feasible climate resilience interventions for Bacolod City and Chiang Mai City.
In the first leg to Bacolod, stakeholder workshops on climate-resilient intervention measures and a participatory mapping exercise have been conducted with the relevant city’s offices to obtain inputs from a city-wide perspective and with residents to understand the needs and concerns from a community perspective. The potential intervention measures have been discussed and evaluated using a tailor-made evaluation toolkit. Moreover, the stakeholders also set priority of flagship interventions that are feasible and highly relevant to the local context and needs (Figure 1-2).
With a warm welcome from the City of Bacolod and its residents, the research team had the opportunity to conduct a rapid reality visit to hotspot (highly vulnerable to flooding) communities based on vulnerability assessment results (Figure 3).
Besides focusing on the Urban-Act project, Dr. Wolfgang Scholz and Dr. Wiriya Puntub (RER) also led the collaboration talks with the University of Negros Occidental, the City of Bacolod, and GIZ in preparing joint activities for the F06 Project 2025/26 “Integrated Climate Resilience Planning in Bacolod, Philippines. Flood resilience interventions for urban poor communities” at our faculty.
In collaboration with GIZ, Chulalongkorn University, and political partners, the second leg of the Thailand visit began with Thai-German knowledge exchange sessions in Bangkok. The knowledge exchange sessions were with the Department of Public Works, Town and Country Planning (DPT) and Office of Transport and Traffic Policy and Planning (OTP), focusing on mainstreaming climate change considerations into plan M&E and the Climate risk assessment methodology as well as on Urban and Transport Planning Methodologies.
To intensify academic exchange with Chulalongkorn University, Dr. Wolfgang Scholz held a special public lecture at the Faculty of Architecture at Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok on “Spatial planning and climate adaptation. Examples of Germany and The Philippines”, where more than 100 people joined the talk and discussion.
The field mission was concluded with the activities in Chiang Mai. In addition to conducting a reality visit of highly vulnerable (to flooding) communities based on vulnerability assessment results. The stakeholder workshop on the evaluation and prioritisation of potential climate-resilient intervention measures has been conducted. Relevant provincial and local officials/leaders, NGOs, and local community networks (especially informal settler communities) discussed their concerns and needs, as well as mapped practical, feasible intervention measures for Chiang Mai City (Figure 6).
This field mission not only grants the project team the ability to strengthen a working network with local partners and stakeholders. The inputs received from workshops and meetings will be further utilised to verify the climate vulnerability assessment and the integrated transport planning analysis. Importantly, inputs from the stakeholder workshops help us derive a participatory-based evaluation and prioritisation of practical, feasible climate-resilient interventions for Bacolod City and Chiang Mai City, which should be further taken up and scaled for funding opportunities.