Research

In September 2024, heavy rainfall caused regional flooding in Lower Austria. These heavy rains caused considerable damage to infrastructure, residential areas and agricultural land. In addition to the directly related flooding of small and medium-sized water bodies, landslides were primarily responsible for the damage. The resulting landslide areas must be sustainably remediated and recultivated immediately afterwards. Recultivation is a challenge due to local site and climatic conditions. Sustainable recultivation through greening is not only of particular interest for erosion control, but also in terms of the landscape, agriculture and recreational value. In recent years, ecologically accompanied greening measures have been carried out with varying degrees of success. The aim of this research project is to develop guidelines for greening measures based on selected greening areas.

As cities worldwide grapple with urgent climate challenges, it becomes imperative to not only devise robust technical and processual solutions but also to accelerate their implementation. Despite the availability of such solutions, our urban areas continue to be vulnerable to the intensifying impacts of climate change, including increasing temperatures and heavy rainfall events. This project is about the pursuit of climate-resilient urban environments, by focusing on sustainable, integrative, and cross-sectoral planning and implementation at scale, including innovative impact-based financing instruments. Thus the project is focusing on two demoareas. The first area is the neighbourhood development project “climate-boulevard” Melk, including housing and traffic routes. While the structural transformation of a parking-place into a so-called inner-city climate forest will be implemented as a demo and the corresponding impact will be monitored during the project period, a holistic cross-siloed impact planning process, impact-based financing and co-creation structures will be implemented for the whole neighbourhood area by setting up a living lab for the entire neighbourhood development. The second neighbourhood transformation is in Berlin Charlottenburg - with the demo of a completely rainwater self-sufficient street, the Ilsenburgerstraße. Through co-creative Living Labs in each Demoarea, conflicting objectives will be identified and negotiated between all relevant stakeholders, including developers, property owners, citizens, enterprises and public hand. The aim is generating scalable and transferable solutions at the whole district. To ensure long-lasting and active engagement, the living lab will be further developed to a newly to be found privately managed local company in order to activate citizen engagement at the district level by fostering open innovation via a number of cross-sectoral (planning and management-) tools, disseminating knowledge on climate measures and enabling access to financing instruments.

The municipality of Mannersdorf am Leithagebirge is currently developing a comprehensive climate strategy to achieve climate neutrality, increase sustainability and pursue the goal of increasing climate resilience. This is being accelerated by improving the microclimate with the help of blue-green infrastructure in public spaces and shady green spaces and footpaths. The establishment of a new rain management system to mitigate heavy rainfall events and promote unsealing is also a declared goal of the municipality. The renaturalisation of municipal water bodies is recognised as a contribution to flood protection. Finally, the opening/reactivation of the currently piped and underground Mühlbach stream is discussed as a key measure in connection with the aforementioned points. The most important cornerstones of the exploratory project for the demonstration of a climate-neutral neighbourhood are Climate protection by avoiding greenhouse gas emissions through the use of local environmental energy to decarbonise the operation of municipal buildings Climate resilience through the development of additional alternative water sources and more efficient use of existing resources Climate change adaptation through the creation of climate-friendly public open spaces with the help of blue-green infrastructures