Evaluation of hazard-mitigating hybrid infrastructure under climate change scenarios

The proposed project will critically evaluate hybrid infrastructure that can be used for climate change adaptation as an alternative to the most frequently applied grey measures, especially in countries with post-socialist history such as Slovenia and Czechia. In the literature, such hybrid measures have been overshadowed by grey and green measures, which, however, have often showed to be ineffective, especially for extreme events as predicted by climate change scenarios. In addition, green infrastructure implementation in order to reduce the risk of natural disasters is often limited by space, which means that in areas such as densely populated cities, only green measures are not effective enough. Moreover, in some countries such measures are not suitable for spatial planning or encounter various types of disapproval. Floods, soil erosion, landslides and compound events will be taken into consideration, which will enable us to identify measures that can be used to cope with multiple hazards. These natural disasters will investigated by the interdisciplinary team of scientists with background in geography, water management, civil engineering, geology, hydrology, soil science, climate science, etc. Therefore the main project highlights are: · climate change adaptation measures will be evaluated · hybrid measures will be focus of the research conducted by the interdisciplinary team · two Central-Eastern EU countries with post-socialist history and with diverse geographical conditions will be involved in the project focused on the Disaster Risk Reduction · project can be regarded as a follow-up of the COST Land4Flood action · floods, soil erosion, landslides and compound events will be addressed. Consequently, the following objectives will be investigated in the scope of the proposed project: (i) enhancement of documentation and standardization related to hybrid measures, (ii) development and testing of applicability of specific hybrid infrastructure in different environments and (iii) evaluation of effectiveness of different measures from the perspective of the disaster risk reduction (DRR). Implementation of hybrid solutions addresses multiple sustainable development goals (SDGs) such as good health and well-being (SDG 3), clean water and sanitation (SDG 6), sustainable cities and communities (SDG 11), climate action (SDG 13) and life on land (SDG15) (UN, 2020). Project program will be taken in the following working packages (WPs) and tasks (WTs): WP 1. Project management and coordination WP 2. Documentation and standardization of hybrid infrastructure WT 2.1 Floods WT 2.2 Soil erosion WT 2.3 Landslides WT 2.4 Determination of criteria for the evaluation of suitability of measures WP 3. Modelling of hybrid infrastructure impact on the disaster risk reduction WT 3.1 Global change scenarios WT 3.2 Floods WT 3.3 Soil erosion WT 3.4 Landslides WT 3.5 Compound events WT 3.6 Evaluation of the social acceptability WP 4. Synthesis WT 4.1 Synthesis of the modelling results WP 5: Project dissemination Therefore, the main outputs of the proposed project are: -Preparation of standardized reports about hybrid infrastructure in Slovenian, Czech and English language. -Preparation of policy briefs with summarizing main conclusions made based on the modelling (WP3). -Preparation of multiple dissemination events where the reports and policy briefs will be presented with aim to improve the acceptance of hybrid measures by practioners and planners.