Abstract
S.O.S. Climate Waterfront is a research project financed by Horizon 2020 - RISE Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions that gathers five universities and five stakeholders from Portugal, Poland, Greece, Sweden, Italy, Nederland and Turkey. The project aims at improving sustainable research structure that enables new solutions and strategies to be found and might reverse the vulnerability of urban waterfront. It benefits from local experts, municipal representatives, stakeholders and international scholars. The main goal is to expand the realm of possibilities so that urban waterfronts can adapt, transform and create opportunities to be meaningful areas for the community. S.O.S. Climate Waterfront goes beyond economic features, and into reflect cultural, political, environmental and social, characteristics that influence the quality of human life in the context of climate transformation. The participation in the events is open to researchers, PhD students and post-docs to improve and benefit the scientific excellence within the partnership. Municipality representatives collaborate by sharing technical and scientific information with the participants to enhance their knowledge of the local situation. The research team invites various experts from multiple fields of knowledge such as architects, urban planners, environmental engineers, meteorologists, hydraulic engineers, lawyers, economists, social and political scientists, landscape architects, journalists, writers and artists. The capacity to build SOS Climate waterfront consists of several strategies: • Designing policies and recommendations to meet the needs of urban waterfronts. • Expanding curricular programmes to introduce researchers in public design and participatory processes on the transformation of waterfronts. • Increasing skills to deal with the production of future scenarios that integrate environmental, social, economic parameters. • Developing new means of research based on historic records, geographic data, digital-methods and cocreation with local scholars. • Identifying the patterns of previous urban development on the waterfront. • Visualising future progression of waterfront by the new software. • Engaging municipality representatives and especially technical staff to play a noteworthy role and envision decision-making in the urban agenda. Three main milestones were achieved within the scope of the project. • Lisbon Workshop, conducted in March 2019, focused on the impact of climate change affecting the waterfront of the Great Metropolitan Area of Lisbon. The local experts have chosen three thematic corresponding to three sites to develop develop innovative solutions to mitigate the impact of climate change and investigate the future opportunities to adapt the built environment along the waterfront. • Gdansk Conference was held in 24-25 June 2019 following the second workshop in June 2019. The last week of the Gdansk event was in the spirit of the consequences of climate change and creative solutions presented through a conference attended by 15 experts who introduced innovations in coastal sustainability and urban development. Furthermore, the Open Public Discussion on S.O.S. Climate Waterfront concepts engaged general public and allowed debate with people who have a subjective view of the issue and are trying to learn more and enhance the adaptation. • Thessaloniki Workshops was organized between 15.10.2019 - 15.11.2019. The city hosts a significant population of refugees and characterized by a long-lasting history spanning more than 2300 years, and a unique geopolitical location at the intersection of water and land routes. For the event two sites were chosen: Ampelokipoi waterfront, which spans from the western end of the industrial port of Thessaloniki to the beginning of the city’s industrial zone, characterized by marshlands, and by the very polluted delta of river Dentropotamos; Kelarios bay in Kalamaria is located at the edge of the new redesigned and rehabilitated waterfront, one of the most frequented and high-quality public spaces of the city.
