Project Goals

The project "Urban Transformations towards Blue-Green Infrastructures – UT-UBGI" is funded with 1.8 million € with a duration of three years (2024-2027).

The project aims to:

• Develop data-scalable UBGI scenarios and modeling approaches;
• Develop and apply techniques for the attribution of urban climate extremes to facilitate adaptation;
• Apply sustainable UBGI limits across Germany from medium-sized municipalities to data-rich cities;
• Integrate conflict analysis, negotiation strategies and narratives into UBGI scenarios and the broader context of UBGI transformation research.

The outcome will be modeling tools that support urban planning processes for German municipalities. Using scenario-based infrastructure planning, we will couple the consortia's expertise and specific modeling tools and methodological approaches. Climate mitigation and adaptation in urban spaces will remain a pressing issue in the coming years. The three Helmholtz Centers UFZ, KIT, and Hereon enable a strong and robust co-creation process towards a sustainable transformation of urban systems aiming to establish a joint Helmholtz research and innovation platform for urban systems.

Originality

As we move forward with the UT-UBGI project, we are focusing on several key areas of innovation and exploration to enhance urban resilience through green and blue infrastructure. These areas include:

• Scaling beyond suburbs (Leipziger BlauGrün, namares, Grüne Lunge, ProPolis) to whole cities and Germany.
• Moving towards data-reduced digital-twin solutions for smaller cities.
• Combining narratives with quantitative blue-green scenarios.
• How can we include conflicts and narratives in our quantitative infrastructure.
• Quantify the effect of cooling potential (PALM-4U) of specific blue green measures.
• Investigate trade-offs of city trees with specific focus on water demand and conflicting trade-off between biodiversity based on city trees as habitat and irrigation.