UNaLab

Cities around the world are undergoing significant transformations and are facing substantial challenges in the form of urban densification and extreme weather conditions, due to climate change and the ongoing urbanisation. Nature-based solutions (NBS) present an approach to address urban challenges through working with nature, in order to achieve ecological and resilience objectives, while creating opportunities for social and economic innovation concurrently.

UNaLab's three demonstration cities, Tampere, Eindhoven and Genova, will implement urban living lab demonstration areas within the cities. They will address identified urban climate and water related challenges by co-creating nature-based solutions with local stakeholders and end users, using an innovative systemic decision support tool. The project aims at using the feedback from the urban living lab demonstration areas to create a widely applicable toolbox consisting of user-friendly handbooks, models and instruments to guide cities across Europe in developing and implementing their own co-creative nature-based solutions.

The UNaLab project sets out to provide a framework for future upscaling of nature-based solutions in the demonstration cities, as well as replicate the solutions in seven replication cities. The European replication cities Cannes, Prague, Başakşehir, Castellón and Stavanger, as well as the non-European replication cities Buenos Aires and Hong Kong, will therefore work in collaboration with the demonstration cities to develop individual NBS roadmaps in a co-creation approach. The city Guangzhou and the Network of Brazilian Intelligent Cities will serve as observers and actively learn from the European NBS approach, which will enable the creation of a global NBS marketplace.

UNaLab will develop, via co-creation with stakeholders and implementation of "living lab" demonstration areas, a robust evidence base and European framework of innovative, replicable, and locally-attuned nature-based solutions to enhance the climate and water resilience of cities.

The Nature Based Solutions – Technical Handbook is a handbook providing accurate, detailed information on the full range of potentially applicable NBS to support urban climate and water resilience, their anticipated or demonstrated performance, and their limitations. This handbook will be a living document throughout the course of the project and the final version will be published towards the end of the UNaLab project.