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.