Space for resilience - how do we plan for stormwater, biodiversity and recreation to increase urban resilience?

To build a more resilient society, the SPARE research project looks at how the multi-functionality of blue-green infrastructure (BGI) can be used for integrated management of stormwater, biodiversity and recreational aspects in urban areas. An interdisciplinary consortium with partners from research, business and public administration is jointly developing knowledge and delivering tools to municipalities, which will contribute to more sustainable land management by integrating these considerations and reconciling them with other purposes such as high land utilization, public health, traffic, safety, climate adaptation and greenhouse gas reduction. Silo-thinking i.e. focusing on certain sectors in the municipality can lead to sub-optimal planning execution and operation of BGI i.e. they do not utilize the full potential that BGI has. So the question we have asked ourselves in SPARE is whether polycentric processes and forms of management and governance for BGI will lead to better integration and management of stormwater, biodiversity and recreational aspects in urban areas. There are examples from abroad where some of these are being tried. After a literature review and a needs analysis in the SPARE municipalities, a solution is now being piloted. In order to create a meeting place where municipalities, contractors, academia and anyone interested in BGI can exchange their experiences of stormwater management, biodiversity and the use of BGI for recreation, SPARE has partnered with the Norwegian Municipal Technical Forum (NKF) and started the “Blue Green Forum” (BGForum) - an interdisciplinary meeting place on stormwater and blue-green infrastructure in cities and towns. In 2023 and 2024, a total of 4 electronic gatherings were organized consisting of lectures and group work dealing with - opportunities and challenges of BGI - management, operation and maintenance of BGI - Blue-green solutions in planning work - legal basis and implementation in practice - Restoring biodiversity through BGI In addition, a teams group was established where members could communicate with each other and share files as needed. BGForum has 270 members and is now in an evaluation phase. In the start-up years, BGForum membership was funded from the SPARE project to attract as many members as possible. Opportunities to transfer to a new long-term operating model led by NKF, which can be operated without SPARE funding, are now being considered. Although the use of BGI has become more popular in recent years, there are still knowledge gaps, e.g. regarding the effectiveness and impact of various blue-green measures. Through several master's theses supervised by NMBU, the BGI located on NMBU's campus was investigated for various aspects including public perception of the BGF, the presence of amphibians in the BGF and the change of physico-chemical parameters along a blue-green stream. A studio was held where landscape architecture students drafted an urban upgrade project including a stream opening at Haugerud in Oslo. To highlight the value of BGI, SPARE has several activities aimed at economic assessment and accounting for BGI. A multi-criteria tool for assessing and placing trees in the city was developed by NINA and a scientific publication is on the way. An accounting tool for the blue-green factor is also being developed, and workshops are currently underway to validate and collect the latest missing data. The next step will be testing an ecosystem accounting tool for Oslo. To get the population on board, i.e. to motivate them to preserve existing or build new BGI on their own land or contribute to maintaining BGI on public land, the SPARE project has studied opportunities to promote such behavior. Through an extensive literature search, we found several examples of different incentive schemes, both financial and non-financial. The next step, based on the insights from the literature review, will be to propose and discuss an incentive scheme suitable for the Oslo region. The tool that will ensure geo-documentation and good operation and maintenance routines for BGI, which is being developed by industry partner Volue, has entered a new phase. Volue has put together a development team to ensure that the knowledge base created through the SPARE project can be used to formulate a business case and prepare for a move from TRL 6 to TRL 9 after completion of SPARE. Besides scientific dissemination (peer-reviewed articles, conference visits), SPARE has published a popular science report on the study tour to the UK (conducted in autumn 2023) and SPARE funds are used to run NBSone, a Norwegian webinar series organized by NIVA, that deals with nature-based solutions and which has approximately 1500 registered participants. The SPARE consortium had the pleasure to congratulate consortium member Bent Braskerud from Oslo Municipality, to the Water Prize 2024. On behalf of the SPARE consortium, NIVA gave a speech at the award ceremony.

The COVID-19 pandemic has raised public awareness about the importance of societal preparedness and of access to space to reduce exposure to the virus and mitigate the effects of lockdowns. The main hypothesis of SPARE is that there will be an increased public and political willingness in the aftermath of the pandemic to also plan for sufficient space for resilient function of biodiversity, stormwater and recreation and thus to conserve, restore or implement more blue-green infrastructure (BGI) in our cities. SPARE is both the title of our project and a planning and management concept (SPARE-management) at the core of the proposed research. SPARE has gathered a multidisciplinary consortium with partners from research, business and public administration. They will jointly work on providing new knowledge, evidence-based management approaches and tools to better integrate stormwater management, biodiversity support and recreation in urban land-use management by use of BGI and thus increase the space for resilience. Main research activities of SPARE include: - Uncover policy conflicts challenging the implementation of SPARE-management, - Increase our understanding on how design and maintenance of BGI – including re-surfaced streams, other BGI with aquatic components and urban trees – contribute to urban biodiversity and how synergistic effects for biodiversity, stormwater and recreation can be created at the landscape level - Develop and apply city-wide accounting mechanisms for costs and benefits of BGI and enable also reporting for UN Sustainable development goals - Develop, test and evaluate interventions and polycentric management approaches for stronger involvement of citizens and to foster cross-sectoral cooperation for integrated stormwater, biodiversity and recreation management. - Integrate relevant findings from all WPs into tools or tangible outputs, which can be used by the cooperation partners and are easily transferable to other municipalities