It is demonstrated that Nature Based Solutions (NBS) efficiently and effectively contribute to climate adaptation. However NBS need to be adapted locally and to be coherently chosen in order to assure sustainability and “no side effects”. To achieve this, ARCADIA will mobilise 8 European regions and communities – from Italy, Croatia, Austria, Denmark, Sweden, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovenia - to accelerate NBS adoption and assist them in accessing up-to-date, evidence-based actionable knowledge, guidance, knowledge-intense tools and services, mutual learning and networking opportunities. The project will foster enabling conditions to accelerate regeneration using NBS, by analysing individual and socially determined perceptions of risks and solutions, and experimentally designing incentives and behavioural nudges fostering social acceptance and community actions. In ARCADIA, the definition of regional ambitions and of methodologies and approaches co-developed at consortium level, will be followed by the implementation of 15 co-innovation labs with the engagement of the interested communities and societal partners; the learning across policy areas will be exploited to up-scale and deploy at large scale the solutions in the regions, developing robust policy and economic tools (regulations, funding schemes, business models, investment tools). Strategic objectives of the proposal are: 1. Co-design regional strategies to accelerate transformative adaptation, building upon and mainstreaming innovative, actionable NBS with demonstrated feasibility, effectiveness and social value 2. Assist and empower communities, public administrations and businesses 3. Stimulate collaborative knowledge building and transfer, developing capacities and capabilities 4. Promote coherence and exploit synergies, value and production chains, and public and private spheres of business innovation 5. Advance EU research & innovation agenda on NBS and EU Mission Adaptation.

Today public authorities need to provide better services with fewer resources. Citizens require accessible, user-friendly, personalised, and integrated public services that match their needs and circumstances. At the same time, trust in the public sector deteriorates. We argue the solution rests in enhancing existing relevant EU work (on policies, models, frameworks, roadmaps etc) by adopting best research and practice (e.g. in public service co-creation) and by exploiting relevant technologies particularly mobile apps, virtual assistants (chatbots), knowledge graphs, and linked data. We acknowledge that for many years, the EU is providing useful practical advice including frameworks (e.g. EIF), models (e.g. CPSV), architectures (e.g. EIRA), roadmaps, etc. These however are not directly applicable anymore as they do not incorporate the latest research and practice, e.g. in public service co-creation. Similarly, research is not related to EU work and practice is not related to research. The vision of the inGov project is to provide innovative ICT-supported governance models as well as mobile apps including chatbots, which will enable stakeholders' collaboration in co-producing inclusive and accessible Integrated Public Services (IPS) thus increasing trust and satisfaction. For that purpose, multidisciplinary scientific methods will be used including design science, multiple case study and variants of the technology acceptance model. The project results will be piloted in Malta to modernise the digital family household public service (affecting 200,000 households), in Austria to deploy IPS for collecting tourism tax (affecting 3,200 accommodation providers), in Greece to digitise the disabled card renewal service (benefiting 11,500 disabled, low-income citizens) and in Croatia to create AI-driven virtual assistants and services (affecting 32,000 citizens). We aim to feed our results back to EU policies hence achieving alignment between policies, research and practice.