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JPIURBAN-Urban Europe

Climate resilient coastal urban infrastructures through digital twinning

Alternative title: Climate resilient coastal urban infrastructures through digital twinning

Awarded: NOK 4.0 mill.

Project Number:

334008

Project Period:

2022 - 2025

Funding received from:

1.1 Project Progress in the Reporting Period The CREST project made good progress, in general aligned with the initial project planning. The project team managed to produce most due technical deliverables (D1.2, D2.1, D2.1, D3.1) and all transversal deliverables (D4.1, 4.2, D5.1, D5.2). Importantly, the project team defined what sustainability and resilience monitoring framework(s) to use in the 3 urban areas, determined the state of the art is in terms of climate change related policy environment, designed the research methodology for deciding the use cases to work with in the project and for engaging stakeholders in the participatory activities, and developed the first versions (alpha versions) of the digital twins of the 3 urban areas. Due to the initial staff contracting processes and the data scarcity verified in some urban areas, some milestones (KPI and data, and use case identification) will be accomplished in the second project year, which, however, is not expected to induce an overall delay in the project completion. 1.2. WP1 - Sustainability and resilience monitoring framework of urban areas The first year of the WP1 was devoted to the setting up of the WP1 work organization framework within the partner organisations leaders of WP1, and the contracting of a staff member at these institutes dedicated to the sustainability and resilience monitoring framework related research in WP1. The work focused on the identification of sustainability and climate resilience KPIs through an extensive inventory that was carried out based on the review of relevant gray and scientific literature. Finally, the U4SCC evaluation framework, combined with certain indicators from the ISO DIS 37123 framework were deemed as the most appropriate for the project purpose and thus were selected for the monitoring work. The main results to highlight in WP1 is the elaboration/selection of the sustainability and climate resilience monitoring and impact assessment framework for the purpose of the project which is the U4SCC framework combined elements from the ISO DIS 37123 framework. The description of this selection/elaboration work is included in Deliverable 1.2 Impact and Monitoring assessment framework. Milestone 2. KPI and data available for developing the DTs for the 3 urban areas has been partially achieved. 1.3. WP2 - Policy co-creation processes based on participatory/citizen science approach The research in WP2 concentrated on the exploring the state-of-the-art in regard to international, national and regional/local climate strategies and policy instruments to give an overview of the existing policy measures on climate mitigation, climate adaptation and related matters, as well as to identify concrete climate threats/challenges in the 3 urban areas and specific use cases that can serve as topics of debate at the future co-creation workshops. Partners from all 3 urban areas contributed to this exploratory work. In parallel, the research methodology for the participatory activities was also designed. Led by the WP leader, this exercise started with the definition of hypotheses and research questions together with the project partners. Both deliverables due for first year were developed: Deliverable 2.1 State of the art compact report on regional climate strategies and challenges and Deliverable 2.2 Citizen Science research protocol. 1.4. WP3 - Digital Twins In WP3, the first project year was devoted to creating an understanding within the project about the digital twin technology and how it can be applied for the project activities. The first critical step in WP3 was also to develop the alpha version of the backend digital twin architecture using our Augment City’s platform. The virtual sandbox of the 3 urban areas will be created in detail and will be visualized in the AugmentCity Tool in the co-creation workshops of each urban area. In the first project year, the alpha versions for all the 3 project urban areas were developed which are ready to receive sustainability and resilience related data and data on concrete climate challenges from WP1. The results of the tool are visualized in a user-friendly interface where users can navigate in the 3D-environment. The main results to highlight in WP3 is the development of the alpha versions of the digital twins and thus the delivery of D3.1 Digital Twin alpha version. No milestones related to WP3 were due in the first project year. 1.5 - WP4 - Communication, dissemination and sustainability The work in WP4 started with the elaboration of a communication and dissemination strategy and a visual guide providing guidelines to the partners for the implementation of the related actions. The project website (www.crestproject.eu) and a range of visual materials have been elaborated. The deliverables due in the first year were delivered (Deliverable D4.1 Communication and dissemination strategy and Deliverable 4.2 Project website + kick-off video material).

Climate change largely impacts urban life. Extreme temperatures have an impact on sea level rise and, subsequently, nefarious events such as floods, droughts and storms have costly impacts on cities' basic services, infrastructure, housing, livelihoods and health. Cities are responsible for 75% of CO2 emissions, and so its stakeholders must come forward with out of the box solutions to promote innovation and stimulate urban resilience by limiting negative impacts of climate change. But for a problem to be addressed, it must first be seen and felt. Visualization is a potential way of increasing engagement with climate change, and IT developments, such as Artificial Intelligence and Augmented Reality, provide significant advancements that can be transformative in engaging audiences with climate change issues. This is at the basis of Augmentcity which developed a ground-breaking way to operate digital twins of cities, enabling data and “what-if” scenarios to be analysed and visualised in an interactive and immersive visualisation tool to be used by policy-makers, researchers, companies and citizens. Our proposal builds on AugmentCity and apply it in terms of demonstration, co-creation and mobilization of stakeholders for capacity-building and collective decision-making in 3 European urban areas for resilient urban infrastructure adaptation to climate change.

Funding scheme:

JPIURBAN-Urban Europe