Nature Based Solutions for Demonstrating Climate Resilient Critical Infrastructure (NATURE-DEMO)

Telespazio UK is pleased to announce its participation in a consortium of leading European research and industry partners for the project called Nature Based Solutions for Demonstrating Climate Resilient Critical Infrastructure (NATURE-DEMO). 

The NATURE-DEMO project is funded by the European Union under the Horizon Europe programme, through the call “HORIZON-MISS-2023-CLIMA-01“. The project is a collaborative effort involving a diverse consortium of leading research institutions, organisations and industry experts from across Europe.

This ground-breaking initiative integrates Nature-based Solutions (NbS) into the planning and development of climate-resilient infrastructures. The project will validate a general methodology for prioritising NbS and their integration into digital platforms, addressing climatic threats such as floods, landslides, and wildfires on civil engineering infrastructure. The project will support people in European regions vulnerable to climatic impacts and demonstrate the effectiveness of NbS in safeguarding local infrastructures.

NbS are innovative approaches that use natural processes and ecosystems to address societal challenges, such as climate change, water security, and disaster risk reduction. They include practices like ecosystem restoration, green infrastructure implementation, sustainable land management, and coastal protection, offering multiple co-benefits such as improving biodiversity, enhancing recreational spaces, and supporting local economies.

Telespazio UK contribution consists of refinement and adaptation of the infrastructure structural health in-house suite of products called MonARIS. The goal is to assess the current health of critical infrastructures and their future projections by time series analysis using Machine Learning techniques. This will be implemented in two demonstrator sites in Europe to inform an infrastructures disaster risk assessment tool providing measurements of the impact that NbS may have in the sites. Both sites are assessed at two scale levels: regional using Sentinel 1 interferometric synthetic-aperture radar (InSAR) inputs from the European Ground Motion Service (EGMS) EEA (European Economic Area) project; and at asset level using Cosmo-SKyMed InSAR inputs into the models.

The project website will be communicating on progress and results.