This third edition of the NBSINFRA newsletter puts the spotlight on the story maps of the five City Labs: visual narratives bringing together scientific data, local knowledge, and visual storytelling to show how Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) are being tested, adapted, and embedded across diverse European cities. These story maps provide an accessible and engaging way to understand how urban areas are tackling climate challenges while shaping more resilient and liveable environments.
From Ireland to Czechia, each City Lab tells a distinct story. In Swords, Fingal, the focus is on addressing flood risks and rapid urban growth through the integration of green infrastructure into planning processes. The vision of a “green necklace” encircling the town illustrates how nature can simultaneously contain urban sprawl, enhance biodiversity, and protect critical infrastructure, while local citizens actively contribute to shaping future solutions.
In Cologne, the story map shows a complex urban landscape where long-standing flood management systems meet emerging climate pressures. Here, NBS complement existing grey infrastructure to address river floods, flash floods, and urban heat, demonstrating how hybrid approaches can strengthen resilience while providing wider environmental and social benefits.
Along the Danube, Ruse highlights the intersection of nature, technology, and cultural heritage. The city lab focuses on the Rusenski Lom river basin, where flash floods and erosion threaten both communities and historically significant sites. By combining innovative monitoring systems with nature-based interventions and strong citizen involvement, Ruse is developing a model that protects its identity while enhancing climate resilience.
Aveiro, a city shaped by its canals and lagoon, faces increasing pressures from storms, tides, and river flows. Its story map shows how NBS can transform these challenges into opportunities, reconnecting urban spaces through blue and green infrastructure that supports mobility, recreation, and biodiversity. Inclusive co-creation ensures solutions are grounded in local needs and aspirations.
Finally, Prague demonstrates how NBS can inform future urban development. The transformation of the Bubny-Zátory brownfield into a new district becomes a testing ground for green roofs, urban greenery, and advanced water management systems. Through monitoring and stakeholder engagement, the city lab gathers valuable knowledge on how these solutions perform and can be scaled up for sustainable urban planning.
Explore the story maps, discover local stories, and see how NBSINFRA is turning ideas into action to create more resilient, inclusive, and sustainable cities across Europe.
NBSINFRA Project Coordinator
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Exploring the NBSINFRA City Lab Story maps
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The Fingal story map highlights Swords as a dynamic testbed for Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) in suburban contexts. The narrative emphasizes practical design: how green corridors, permeable surfaces, and water-sensitive urban design can mitigate flood risks and urban pressures while improving everyday liveability. Local stakeholders played a central role, helping identify priority areas and co-develop interventions tailored to the town’s expansion. The story map also illustrates the iterative planning process, showing how solutions are refined through mapping exercises, workshops, and visual representations of potential outcomes. |
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Cologne’s story map reveals a multi-layered approach to climate adaptation, focusing on the interplay between rivers, tributaries, and urban settlements. Beyond technical design, the map demonstrates how floodplains, retention basins, and urban greenery can produce multiple social and environmental benefits, from recreational spaces to biodiversity corridors. It also showcases stakeholder collaboration, highlighting workshops where city planners, engineers, and residents explore trade-offs and co-prioritize interventions. The story map emphasizes that resilient urban planning emerges from understanding the full complexity of overlapping hazards. |
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In Ruse, the story map frames the city as a living laboratory where natural ecosystems, cultural heritage, and climate risks converge. It details the integration of monitoring technologies such as early warning systems, hydrological modelling, and riverbank sensors into NBS interventions that stabilize landscapes and protect historic sites. Visual storytelling traces how community participation strengthens governance and informs local strategies, illustrating the ways citizens, policy makers, and technical experts jointly shape adaptive solutions. The map underscores the dual goal of preserving identity while enhancing resilience. |
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Aveiro’s story map emphasizes the city’s water-driven character and the transformative potential of NBS for urban connectivity. It illustrates interventions linking canals, lagoon margins, and green corridors to create multifunctional spaces that improve flood management, biodiversity, and recreation. Community involvement is highlighted through the co-creation of designs and iterative validation of technical models, showing how social insight and spatial analysis combine to refine strategies. The map conveys that successful adaptation depends on integrating scientific knowledge with local knowledge and shared priorities. |
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Prague’s story map explores the Bubny-Zátory brownfield as a real-world laboratory for climate-responsive urban development. The narrative highlights multiple pilot sites where NBS, including green roofs, urban greenery, and innovative water management, are tested under live conditions. Visual storytelling captures the link between monitoring results and design evolution, showing how lessons learned inform planning across different sites. Stakeholder engagement is also central, revealing the collaborative processes that guide co-design and ensure solutions are both effective and replicable, illustrating the scalability of urban NBS. |
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Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or REA. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them. |
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