Under the regional project Green Agenda: Climate Change Adaptation in the Western Balkans implemented by GIZ, the Municipality of Tirana has launched its comprehensive Climate Risk Assessment (CRA) and Urban Mobility Action Plan. This study establishes the empirical foundation needed to integrate long-term climate resilience directly into Tirana’s future Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan (SUMP) and municipal infrastructure procurement.
Tirana’s topographically constrained basin and rapid urbanization face an acute intersection of intense Urban Heat Island (UHI) effects and volatile pluvial flooding sinks. With extreme summer heat expected to skyrocket to 90–110 days per year under the RCP 8.5 scenario, physical asset mapping tracks severe vulnerabilities:100% of underpasses, 93% of traffic signaling systems, and 76% of cycling tracks sit in high-risk thermal zones. Concurrently, high surface sealing transforms primary intersections (such as Zogu i Zi and Sheshi Shqiponja) into stormwater bottlenecks during flash cloudbursts.
