UrBan hEat islands REsilience, prepAreDness and mitigation strategY

The project BE Ready responds to program objective 2.2, Promoting climate change capacities in the Danube Region and disaster management on transnational level in relation to environmental risks taking into account ecosystem-based approaches. The common challenge that the 21 partners from 12 countries will tackle is urban heat islands (UHI). The unprecedented heat waves in the summer 2022 demonstrated 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. Only few European cities have developed plans and strategies to counter UHI. The novel approach 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 modeling at city level; codesigned solutions for tackling UHI, tested and peer reviewed in urban environment by 9 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; awareness campaigns in 12 countries over the 30-month period. The approach of jointly developing, testing and evaluating solutions contributes to most effective use of shared expertise for better understanding the effects of UHI in and building institutional capacity at local/regional level, for policy development and practical interventions.