ARCH will develop a unified disaster risk management framework for assessing and improving the resilience of historic areas to climate change-related and other hazards. This will be achieved by developing tools and methodologies that will be combined into a collaborative disaster risk management platform for local authorities and practitioners, the urban population, and (inter)national expert communities. To support decision-making at appropriate stages of the management cycle, different models, methods, tools, and datasets will be designed and developed. These include: technological means of determining the condition of tangible and intangible cultural objects, as well as large historic areas; information management systems for georeferenced properties of historic areas and hazards; simulation models for what-if analysis, ageing and hazard simulation; an inventory of potential resilience enhancing and reconstruction measures, assessed for their performance; a risk-oriented vulnerability assessment methodology suitable for both policy makers and practitioners; a pathway design to plan the resilience enhancement and reconstruction of historic areas; and an inventory of financing means, categorised according to their applicability in different contexts. The project ensures that results and deliverables are applicable and relevant by applying a co-creation process with local policy makers, practitioners, and community members. This includes the pilot cities Bratislava, Camerino, Hamburg, and Valencia. The results of the co-creation processes with the pilot cities will be disseminated to a broader circle of other European municipalities and practitioners. ARCH includes a European Standardisation organization (DIN) as a partner in order to prepare materials that ensure that resilience and reconstruction of historic areas can be progressed in a systematic way, through European standardisation, which will ensure practical applicability and reproducibility.

ATELIER is a smart city project that demonstrates Positive Energy Districts (PEDs) within 8 European cities with sustainability and carbon neutrality as guiding ambitions. Amsterdam and Bilbao are the Lighthouse cities that will generate an energy surplus of 1340 MWh of primary energy, prevent 1,7 kt of CO2- and 23 t of NOx-emissions, and invest 156 mln Euros to realise their PEDs. Together with district users, ATELIER will showcase innovative solutions that integrate buildings with smart mobility and energy technologies to create a surplus of energy and balance the local energy system. Bratislava, Budapest, Copenhagen, Krakow, Matosinhos, and Riga are the Fellow cities that will replicate and adapt successful solutions. All cities will establish a local PED Innovation Atelier to co-produce locally embedded, smart urban solutions. In the ateliers, the local innovation ecosystem (authorities, industries, knowledge institutes, citizens) is strengthened, enhancing embeddedness and removing any obstacles (legal, financial, social, etc.) for implementation of the smart solutions. The Innovation Ateliers are designed to be self-sustaining and to live on after the project has ended. The ateliers are engines for upscaling solutions within the ATELIER-cities and replication to other EU-cities. ATELIER integrates a high degree of citizen engagement throughout the project, by actively involving local residents (>9000), local initiatives, and energy communities in activities to align technical solutions with citizens’ objectives and behaviour. Each of the cities will develop a City Vision 2050 that creates the roadmap for upscaling the solutions in the long term. ATELIER has the ambition to pave the way for “energy positive cities” in Europe. All ATELIER activities will be monitored (socially and technically), and lessons learned are systematically drawn and disseminated to relevant SET-plan groups, city networks, and innovation forums.

With most of its population and capital goods concentrated in urban areas, cities are key to the European economy. One of the major challenges cities face are more frequent extreme weather events due to climate change.The current diversity of approaches and methods available for cities developing an adaptation strategy limits the comparability between cities of vulnerabilities, adaptation options, infrastructures, etc., and, as a result, the resilience capability. The lack of standardized information to prioritize and select appropriate adaptation options restricts the exchange of experiences between cities. The objective of RESIN is to provide standardised methodologies for vulnerability assessments, performance evaluations of adaptation measures, and for decision support tools supporting the development of robust adaptation strategies tailored to the city. To this end, RESIN aims to create a common unifying framework that allows comparing strategies, results and identification of best practices by • Creating an urban typology that characterises European cities based on different socio-economic and biophysical variables • Delivering standardised methods for assessing climate change impacts, vulnerabilities, and risks; providing an inventory of adaptation measures and developing standardised methods to assess the performance of such adaptation measures • Collaborating closely with 4 ‘case cities’ for practical applicability and reproducibility, and with European Standardisation organisations to ensure a systematic (standardised) implementation • Integrating findings in a coherent framework for the decision making process, with associated methods, tools and datasets The consortium consists of 17 partners from 8 different European countries, experienced in urban resilience and climate change, and combining theory (knowledge institutes/universities) with practice (cities, consultancies, network organisation, standardisation institute).

Climate urgency calls on all political levels to act more stringent and faster. This proposal is the first to unite cities across Europe to work out actionable, spatially differentiated transition roadmaps to decarbonise heating and cooling for buildings in 2050, taking up the challenge to phase out natural gas in heating. Transitioning the sector to energy-efficient, renewable and zero-carbon solutions is key to meet the EU climate and energy targets. Given the long life-cycles of the grid infrastructures involved, there is an urgency to start the planning of this transition today. But how? What first? Which systems? How to govern this process? Increasing complexity of the energy system together with technological uncertainties require a high level of knowledge and skills to act wisely. Cities are ill-equipped for this. They lack capacity and skills as well as legal empowerment to act. Decarb City Pipes 2050 showcases how local authorities can succeed in this challenge. Bilbao, Bratislava, Dublin, Munich, Rotterdam, Vienna and Winterthur, seven cities from frontrunners to beginners join forces to learn from each other and elaborate innovative responses together. They explore pathways suitable for their local challenges and build up skills in the use of data, planning tools and instruments, techno-economic as well as process and transition management knowhow. In a participatory process with stakeholders, they develop tangible transition roadmaps, building up trust and commitment for its implementation along the way. In deep peer-to-peer exchanges, cities and utilities share knowledge to benefit from other perspectives, stages of advancement and planning traditions. Together, they will advocate for the needed changes to framework conditions. Enriched by a distinguished advisory board, the project aims to empower >220 public officers and improve >50 policies. Ultimately, it strives to motivate and support >80 more cities to start the same roadmap process.