SCORE EU Project: Smart control of the climate resilience in European coastal cities

10 pilot cities from European countries and Turkey

Duration: 2021-2025

Project coordinator: Atlantic Technological University, Sligo, Ireland

Classification

Risks

Solutions

Actors

Costs

Summary

SCORE is a four-year EU-funded project aiming to increase climate resilience in European coastal cities. The project will tackle specific challenges related to sea levels, coastal erosion and extreme weather events using an integrated solution of smart technologies and nature-based solutions. Most notably, it builds on Coastal City Living Labs (CCLLs) implemented across ten coastal cities of Europe and Turkey that gather public and private agents to co-design and co-develop solutions with scientists and engineers tailored to local specificities.

Actions

SCORE works through ten CCLLs located in seven different European countries and Turkey. End-users stakeholders are actively involved throughout four logical phases of ideation and exploration (needs identification), co-creation and co-design, real-life experimentation and testing, and evaluation and validation of the solution. 

In addition, SCORE encourages synergies among pilots with CCLLs acting as ‘frontrunners’ or ‘followers’ based on their experience, finance and technical capacities in each activity of the Work Packages.

By the end of the project, the SCORE project will be able to provide a replicable integrated framework for coastal cities pursuing the enhancement of their climate resilience (more details in ‘Outcomes’).

To tackle coastal challenges, SCORE outlines a comprehensive strategy through an Ecosystem-Based Approach (EBA), smart technologies and hybrid Nature Based Solutions (NBSs). The project explores ways to:

  • Integrate EbA with smart technologies (e.g. sensors, digital twin solutions) to enhance climate change adaptation and resilience 
  • Improve knowledge about EbA efficacy against extreme events, sea level rise and coastal erosion risks 
  • Improve the social acceptance of EbA
  • Enhance the market uptake of EbA

Outcomes

  • Co-Creation is one of the core concepts of the Coastal City Living Labs framework developed within the SCORE project. The SCORE co-creation toolkit is being used by the SCORE’s CCLLs to engage their stakeholders and support the development of sustainable living labs. It is now available in open-source and it gathers a collection of tools for facilitating stakeholder engagement throughout all phases of planification and for evaluation of living labs.
  • The Ecosystem-based Adaptation catalogue provides information about 6 categories of EbA solutions and an application to explore their suitability for coastal areas within combined urban and natural contexts.
  • The SCORE ICT Platform is the marketplace for data exchange among project partners and is being used to showcase the results to stakeholders, scientists and citizens. The scientific community, institutions, associations and private citizens can use the SIP to learn how to co-create and co-design EBA solutions to increase climate resilience in European coastal cities.
  • SCORE proposes the use of low-cost sensors to be used by local communities as citizen science solutions for climate change monitoring, to complement official monitoring structures. These sensors are included in the Low-cost sensors catalogue that functions similarly to an online shop where stakeholders can buy and then install, operate, and maintain sensors to address local needs. The project offers support during installation, custom instructions, and makes the data publicly accessible.
  • The SCORE Community Geosurveys is a participatory mapping platform facilitating the co-creation of data and local knowledge, engaging citizens in urban coastal sustainability efforts and discussions. The aim is to empower local communities and stakeholders of our Coastal City Living Labs to actively participate in urban environmental monitoring by collecting spatially distributed observations, ground-level data, and geotagged media focusing on local concerns, common interests, or identified data gaps crucial for their communities and local organizations.
  • With the completion of the project, the SCORE project will provide a replicable integrated framework for coastal cities pursuing the enhancement of their climate resilience. This framework will provide:
    • Baseline risk analysis and mapping of extreme climate impacts and SLR 
    • Coastal City Living Lab design, implementation and evaluation framework and lessons learned 
    • Climatic downscaling methods, data and uncertainties and models for coastal hazard predictions 
    • Citizen science solutions for climate change monitoring 
    • New database containing the processed data and principal outcomes of the project 
    • Software for the design and evaluation of financial resilience strategies 
    • Socio-economic assessment of EbA interventions and policy recommendations 
    • Early warning Support and Digital Twin Solution
  • High competence of partners working in the SCORE consortium who provide a holistic and comprehensive vision of CCLLs components and a broad perspective on EbA and smart technologies.
  • An iterative approach: all the CCLLs are both frontrunners and followers of different activities and mutually exchange their knowledge.
  • Innovative and integrated solutions: through the CCLLs, SCORE will prove the technical feasibility and demonstrate the socio-economic viability of solutions in real-life settings.
  • A coastal adaptation network composed of scientists, engineers, policymakers and the general public.
  • Awareness-raising activities on the potential of EbA through monitoring, replication in pilot cities, and the organisation of multiple large-scale dissemination events.
  • A Digital Twin as a ‘collaborative mentoring platform’.

Resources

Contacts

    • Salem Gharbia : Salem.Gharbia@atu.ie 
    • contact@score-eu-project.eu