project Be Ready

The project Be Ready (UrBan hEat islands REsilience, prepAreDness and mitigation strategy) addresses the climate change capacities in the Danube Region taking into account ecosystem-based approaches. The common challenge to be tackled is urban heat islands (UHI). The recent unprecedented heat waves demonstrate the acute need to strengthen the preparedness and adaptive capacity of the society to cope with impacts of climate change and foster resilience at city level.

Be Ready aims to:

•           provide local and regional authorities with research, assessment and operational instruments to better understand UHI, its drivers, and effects;
• co-create, test and validate jointly developed solutions to mitigate the UHI effects in cities;
• support partner cities to develop and adopt action plans for increased resilience to UHI effects with specific actions to promote green, blue, or white measures.

The novel approach to be taken by the project – “green acupuncture” - will allow the partners, both cities and knowledge partners, to take targeted, small but powerful, context-based measures to deal with UHI in critical urban areas. City pilots will test solutions in three areas: “green acupuncture” (vegetation-based interventions); “white acupuncture” (based on innovative surfaces and materials); and “blue acupuncture” (novel uses of water resources).

The project main outputs include jointly developed and implemented methodologies and toolkits for UHI risk assessment, data analysis and modelling at city level; co-designed solutions for tackling UHI, tested and peer reviewed in urban environment by 12 pilot cities; a common strategy for improving the climate change preparedness and resilience aimed at local and regional authorities in the Danube region; action plans and transformative strategic outlooks for the participating partners; policy recommendations; a virtual training program with SPOCs; awareness campaigns in 12 countries over the 30-month period.

Key for Be Ready is the ClimateSandbox approach that will support participating cities to define and deploy climate-oriented innovations – both on the technological and service side (i.e. content) and on the policy, administrative and spatial planning side (i.e. enabling conditions), through the innovative digital Climate Sandbox Technological and Societal Readiness Tool. The project's ambition is to showcase to decision-makers and other stakeholders across Europe the benefits of adopting solutions in which the environment, simplicity, and aesthetics play a key role as value-generating agents as well as community engagement drivers, throughout the co-design process, acting both at levels of solution definition, development, and deployment.

Implementation period: January 1, 2024 – June 30, 2026

Partners:
          • Sofia Development Association, Bulgaria – Lead Partner
          • DEX Innovation center, Czech Republic
          • Association Tehnopol of Galati, Romania
          • Chișinău Town Hall, Moldova
          • Municipality of Galați, Romania
          • Science and Technology Park Nis, Serbia
          • City of Nis, Serbia
          • City of Zenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina
          • Urban Planning Institute of the Republic of Slovenia, Slovenia
          • Capital City Podgorica, Montenegro
          • University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, Austria
          • Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava, Slovakia
          • Municipality of Ratiboř, Czech Republic
          • South Moravian agency for public innovation JINAG, Czech Republic
          • City of Kranj, Slovenia
          • Association Bureau for Integration and Social Innovations, Bulgaria
          • Development agency North Ltd., Croatia
          • Municipality of Hévíz, Hungary
          • Small Business Development Foundation of Kisalföld, Hungary

Be Ready is an Interreg Danube Region Programme project co-funded by the European Union.

Project Updates

Since January 2024, BOKU ISIG has been involved in the beREADY project. A lot has happened since then! 

Below are some updates on the activities in which the BOKU ISIG has been particularly involved:

Review Meeting and International Climate Sandbox Workshop in Brno, April 2025

On April 1st and 2nd, the Be Ready Consortium finally met in Person again - this time, in Brno. The first day was Dedicated to our review meeting, the second day to conduct an International Sandbox Workshop. The Review Meeting was dedicated to discuss the status-quo of the different project components and reflecting on past activities, challenges and also Outputs. The Sandbox Workshop focused on preparing the UHI Roadmaps for the planning and implementation of the UHI pilot projects of the 10 partner cities. Also, we elaborated checklists for the planned peer visits, during which scientific and city partners will visit and evaluate pilot Projects later this year.

Particularly exciting for us at BOKU were the discussions on the UHI methodology and its trial run in the partner cities for the UHI assessment Reports - how well was the method applicable for the partners, where did challenges lie, and what do we - as scientific Partners - need to do in order to improve the method and/or push systematic UHI assessments in cities?

UHI Assessments in Partner cities

Among other tasks, late 2024 and early 2025 the partner cities busy testing the Vulnerability and Risk Assessments methodology developed during the first project year. Together with he other research partners, BOKU ISIG supported the reporting on the UHI assessments and application of the methodology in practice.

Local Methodology Workshops in Bulgaria and Hungary

Bernhard Pucher from BOKU SIG presented Tool 3 to local implementation partners and other relevant stakeholders in the fight against urban heat during two workshops in Sofia in October and in Hévíc in November 2024.

International Methodology Workshop in Vienna, July 2024

In July, a 2-day workshop was held at BOKU in Vienna, where the UHI Vulnerability and Risk Assessment tools were presented, discussed, and validated by the entire consortium. Ideas were also exchanged on preparing the application of the 4 tools for the respective UHI assessments in the 12 partner cities to facilitate their application and testing in the cities.

Development of an Urban Heat Island Vulnerability and Risk Assessment

In the first project months, the scientific project partners focused on developing a total of 4 assessment tools to evaluate four different dimensions of vulnerability and risks related to urban heat. Specifically, these are:

    Tool 1: Exposure of Buildings and Surroundings

    Tool 2: Sensitivity of Equipment and Material

    Tool 3: Vulnerable Groups

    Tool 4: Preparedness and adaptive capacity of cities and municipalities

BOKU SIG was responsible for developing Tool 3, focusing on the social groups in cities and municipalities that are particularly affected by heat.

Kick-off in Sofia, February 2024

We started with the Kick-Off Meeting in Sofia in February 2024, where 19 partners and 9 associated strategic partners from a total of 12 countries gathered. Here, the foundations for the procedures in the first project year were laid.

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