Blue Green Infrastructures through Social Innovation (BEGIN)

Description:

Frequent and intense rainfall due to climate change is a widespread problem for many cities. To cope with it, cities need Blue and Green Infrastructure (BGI), such as green corridors or rainwater harvesting, in addition to conventional grey infrastructure. BGIs support existing grey infrastructure to cope with extreme weather events and improve disaster resilience.

The BEGIN project is an unique project where 10 cities and 6 research institutes combine forces to come towards BGI solutions and gather learning experiences. The 10 involved cities are developing 10 BGI pilot projects. 

The overall objective of BEGIN is to demonstrate at target sites how cities can improve climate resilience with Blue Green Infrastructure involving stakeholders in a value-based decision- making process to overcome its current implementation barriers. The cities will be also engaged in a transnational exchange and city learning networks to share experiences and best practices. Transnational cooperation among Local Authorities is facilitated by a novel approach used from the start to the end of the project: City-to-City learning.

Different from traditional processes which merely inform or consult stakeholders, BEGIN will co-create, co-finance or self-organise pilot projects. Practically, cities start from planned investment projects and invite stakeholders using the most appropriate method from the Social Innovation toolbox. Transnational experts help facilitate the process: e.g., design workshops where a landscape architect facilitates incorporating ideas from community stakeholders, or valorisation based on interviews and workshops where stakeholders score alternatives and benefits and indicate willingness to contribute. Interreg funding (approx. 100k per city) is used to facilitate social innovation by local and transnational professionals, rather than physical investments as proposed in the first application.

The output library of the project includes all the project reports for consultation.

Project information

Lead

City of Dordrecht, The Netherlands

Partners

The Netherlands: City of Dordrecht; IHE Delft; Erasmus University of Rotterdam

Belgium: City of Antwerp; City of Ghent

Germany: Agency for Roads Bridges and Waters, Hamburg; Hamburg University of Technology

United Kingdom: Construction Industry Research Information Association (CIRIA), City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council, Kent County Council, Aberdeen City Council, Enfield, Royal College of Arts, University of Sheffield

Sweden: City of Gothenburg

Norway: City of Bergen