NBSINFRA supports the enhancement of the local urban critical infrastructures protection against natural and manmade hazards through the Nature-based solutions (NBS) co-design and co-creation for a climate change resilient society. NBSINFRA will demonstrate that the Nature-based solutions are: (a) technically viable for the protection of critical infrastructures against hazards, (b) socially acceptable and cost-effective at the local scale; and (c) efficiently capable to increase the empowerment of communities, through the increase of their ecological, social, and economic resilience. To achieve those goals, NBSINFRA will establish five (5) representative European regions with an equal number of “City Labs”. NBSINFRA City labs shall assess the cost-effectiveness of NBS in the protection of local infrastructure and shall maximize their impact based on solutions which will be citizen owned and co-created by end-users and managers and civil society. NBSINFRA will provide a toolkit that the different stakeholders and society can use to compare and choose the most effective NBS for local critical infrastructure protection, being the main goal the support for the enhancement of the local urban critical infrastructure protection against hazards through NBS co-design, co-monitoring, and co-creation for a sustainable and resilient society.

In Re-Value, 9 European waterfront cities (Ålesund, Bruges, Burgas, In Re-Value, 9 European waterfront cities (Ålesund, Bruges, Burgas, Rimini, Cascais, Constanta, Izmir, Písek, and Rijeka) will test, capture and share how to create value through urban quality, in a holistic approach towards climate neutrality. They will cover 6 systemic challenges of urban planning and design, aligned with the Cities Mission: - Systemic changes in governance, regulatory structures, advocacy - Societal and spatial quality - Financial and circular value chains - Data-driven co-creation, digital twins - Energy and mobility - Nature-based solutions The model will be supported by 3 Innovation Cycles that run across the cities - Aligning climate neutrality and urban quality, using participatory story-building to identify co-benefits - Co-creating data-driven transition scenarios, empowering cities to use better data / data better - De-risking investments, through value-based financial and partnership models to enable the cities to document and capture different values in urban complexity, and to synthesise them into a holistic approach towards climate neutrality. Supported by this approach, the 9 Re-Value Cities will fine-tune, share and test a Portfolio of Urban Design and Planning Methods in the project’s Community of Practice. 4 Leading Cities (Ålesund, Bruges, Burgas, and Rimini) will demonstrate full-scale how integrated urban planning and design can be optimally deployed to achieve climate neutrality and significantly reduce GHG emissions by 2030. 5 Replication Cities (Cascais, Constanta, Izmir, Písek, and Rijeka) will learn, replicate and develop their own visions, scenarios and investment plans to accelerate their journeys to climate neutrality. While geographically and culturally diverse, the 9 cities share a curiosity and ambition to experiment, learn from each other, and share the Re-Value results and outcomes together with other cities in the Cities Mission communities.