A new CEN Workshop is being established to build upon the innovative outcomes of the VARCITIES European Project (VISIONARY NATURE BASED ACTIONS FOR HEALTH, WELLBEING & RESILIENCE IN CITIES). The project’s vision is to implement visionary solutions in cities, creating sustainable models aimed at improving the health and well-being of citizens facing diverse climatic conditions and urban challenges.
There is a growing acknowledgement of the role that nature plays in our society and many countries are already taking action to include Nature Based Solutions (NbS) and digital solutions in their national climate strategies at reaching EU climate neutrality.
However, there is still a lack of systemic integration between nature-based, social, cultural, and digital innovation and these actions are not always developed and implemented based on the best criteria and practices available. Moreover, good practices are often not sufficiently described, which means that their descriptions lack relevant information that complicates further use.
The aim of the visionary solutions is to provide innovative and comprehensive solutions at the intersection of social, cultural, digital, and nature-based innovation in order to improve the health and well-being of citizens. The need of defining guidelines for visionary solution development is to capture existing knowledge about successful methods, projects, and activities and to make this knowledge available for future reuse and replication. Building on existing experiences of cities that faced several challenges, standardization deliverables provide a systematic learning framework to improve and evolve the applications, leading to greater confidence in visionary solutions among decision makers.
The Workshop will focus on translating the VARCITIES framework into actionable guidelines to support the development and assessment of nature-based, socio-cultural, and digital visionary solutions in urban environments. These guidelines will provide practical tools for decision-makers in cities, including urban planners, policymakers, financial institutions, consultants, and other stakeholders, ensuring that innovative solutions address health-related priorities effectively.
The initiative aims to strengthen the efforts of standardization and ensure that the knowledge gained from VARCITIES can be widely adopted. The planned CEN Workshop Agreement (CWA) will offer structured guidance on describing, designing, implementing, and evaluating good practices, fostering collaboration across a wide range of sectors and communities.
The kick-off meeting for the Workshop is planned to take place remotely on 10 February 2025 from 10.00 a.m. to 12.30 p.m. (CEST).
All interested parties are invited to submit comments on the draft Project Plan using the commenting form below, to the Workshop secretary (UNI) Mario Gallo (mario.gallo@uni.com) by February 07th, 2025.
For more technical details, please refer to the draft Project Plan, which contains all relevant technical information. Additionally, comments or observations can be submitted via the dedicated commenting form below.
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