Kick off REACHOUT project this week: making European cities climate resilient
Expert(s) |
Ad Jeuken
While the world community is trying to reach an agreement in Glasgow to achieve a faster and further reduction of greenhouse gases in order to prevent dangerous climate warming, climate adaptation experts and representatives of 7 European cities are settling down in Rotterdam (3-4 November) for the kickoff of the European REACHOUT research project.
This 3.5-year project coordinated by Deltares, CAS and funded by the EU under the Green Deal aims to stimulate climate resilient urban development. As climate change is already leading to extreme events affecting cities worldwide, local governments, citizens and the private sector need to jointly develop solutions that contributes to both climate adaptation and mitigation.
Feasible solutions
Whether it is in Amsterdam, Athens, Milan, Cork, Gdynia, Lillestrom or Logroño, we need to rethink our ways of designing and building our urban waters systems, public spaces, buildings and traffic systems to cope with the challenges of climate change (e.g. increasing heatwaves, higher sea levels, more intense rainfall events, droughts and forest fires and the energy transition.). To support this ambition, information services are needed to prioritize risks, identify opportunities, formulate realistic strategies and implement feasible solutions. With the kick-off event in Rotterdam, the research consortium is starting the co-development of those information services building upon existing data and information portals within the EU.
Ad Jeuken (coordinator REACHOUT and project leader Deltares) – “We will have two interesting days where both the cities involved will share their resilience challenges and experts show the many existing decision support tools and information services already available. I’m really excited to see if we can find a good match.”
