The NATURE-DEMO project is funded by the European Union under the Horizon Europe programme, through the call “HORIZON-MISS-2023-CLIMA-01“. The project is a collaborative effort involving a diverse consortium of leading research institutions, organisations and industry experts from across Europe.
This ground-breaking initiative integrates Nature-based Solutions (NbS) into the planning and development of climate-resilient infrastructures. The project will validate a general methodology for prioritising NbS and their integration into digital platforms, addressing climatic threats such as floods, landslides, and wildfires on civil engineering infrastructure. The project will support people in European regions vulnerable to climatic impacts and demonstrate the effectiveness of NbS in safeguarding local infrastructures.
NbS are innovative approaches that use natural processes and ecosystems to address societal challenges, such as climate change, water security, and disaster risk reduction. They include practices like ecosystem restoration, green infrastructure implementation, sustainable land management, and coastal protection, offering multiple co-benefits such as improving biodiversity, enhancing recreational spaces, and supporting local economies.
Telespazio UK contribution consists of refinement and adaptation of the infrastructure structural health in-house suite of products called MonARIS. The goal is to assess the current health of critical infrastructures and their future projections by time series analysis using Machine Learning techniques. This will be implemented in two demonstrator sites in Europe to inform an infrastructures disaster risk assessment tool providing measurements of the impact that NbS may have in the sites. Both sites are assessed at two scale levels: regional using Sentinel 1 interferometric synthetic-aperture radar (InSAR) inputs from the European Ground Motion Service (EGMS) EEA (European Economic Area) project; and at asset level using Cosmo-SKyMed InSAR inputs into the models.
The project website will be communicating on progress and results.
Dr Geoff Busswell, Telespazio’s Head of Marketing and Sales said: “As climate change increases the risk to our infrastructures, satellite-based radar techniques can help evaluate and measure their integrity prior and after the implementation of Nature Based Solutions (NbS). These technologies and solutions are crucial to mitigate and adapt to the impact of more severely occurring natural hazards."
NATURE-DEMO Project Coordinator, Mohamed Eldessouki, said: “This project brings experts from all over Europe to work on the latest technological and nature-based approaches to maximise the resilience of our infrastructures and influence new designs of the ones to be built in the future."
NATURE-DEMO (Nature-Based Solutions for Demonstrating Climate-Resilient Critical Infrastructure) is a research and innovation action funded under the European Union’s Horizon Europe Programme, grant No. 101157448. The project will run for 4 years, from May 2024 to April 2028, with a total budget of €9.19 million and an EU contribution of almost €7.76 million. The remaining project funding (over €1.54 million) comes from the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI) and the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).