EuPOLIS NBS Preliminary Selection Tool

Urban planners and engineers are increasingly adopting the Nature-Based Solution (NBS) paradigm to address contemporary challenges faced within urban areas in a sustainable manner. The EU-funded euPOLIS project aims to showcase that the deployment of NBS has several multi-dimensional benefits (e.g. environmental, social, urban, economic) including the enhancement of Public Health and Well-Being. The overall scope of the project is to offer an urban planning methodology that integrates existing natural and engineered urban systems to enable the regeneration and rehabilitation of urban ecosystems in a more informed and structured manner. The project solutions and tools will be tested in a series of demonstration sites located in four European cities: Belgrade, Lodz, Piraeus, and Gladsaxe.

As part of the aforementioned framework, a methodology was developed for assisting urban planners in the preliminary selection/prioritisation of possible NBS, from those that were initially considered for a particular urban site. The methodology explicitly accounts for the ability/efficiency of each NBS to mitigate the most important concerns of the said site as those were identified following a first-order site screening process. This methodology is herein offered in the form of a tool for easier implementation. The development of the online tool is a joint effort of the National Technical University of Athens (Urban Water Management and Hydroinformatics (UWMH) group) and Resilience Guard GmbH.