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.

HARMONIA will leverage existing tools, services and novel technologies to deliver an integrated resilience assessment platform working on top of GEOSS, seeing the current lack of a dedicated process of understanding and quantifying Climate Change (CC) effects on urban areas using Satellite and auxiliary data available on GEOSS, DIAS, urban TEP, GEP etc. platforms. HARMONIA will focus on a solution for climate applications supporting adaptation and mitigation measures of the Paris Agreement. HARMONIA will test modern Remote Sensing tools and 3D-4D monitoring, Machine Learning/Deep Learning techniques and develop a modular scalable data-driven multi-layer urban areas observation information knowledge base, using Satellite data time series, spatial information and auxiliary data, in-situ observing systems, which will integrate detailed information on local level of neighborhoods/building blocks. HARMONIA focuses on two pillars: a) Natural and manmade hazards intensified by CC: urban flooding, soil degradation and geo-hazards (landslides, earthquake, ground deformation) and b) Manmade hazards: heat islands, urban heat fluxes, Air Quality, Gas emissions. Sustainable reconstruction of urban areas and the health of humans and ecosystems, are top priorities. HARMONIA will take into account the local ecosystems of European urban areas, following an integrated and sustainable approach by incorporating the active communities’ participation initiative, which will involve the use of a social platform. Paying extra attention to Sustainable Urban Development, one of the Societal Benefit Areas posits that use of EO is a crucial tool towards resilient cities and the assessment of urban footprints, to promote equity, welfare and shared prosperity for all, feed new indicators for the monitoring of progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals in an EU context.