Rationale
Urban areas are known to be among the main contributors to climate change worldwide. At the same time, Urban areas are especially at risk from the impacts of climate change. Climate change impacts present significant challenges in the long term. Beyond climate change mitigation measures, adaptation measures are necessary to address climate change impacts now and in the future.
Consequently, innovative responses intended to increase the resilience and adaptation of Mediterranean cities are needed. The ReMED Research project: Towards Climate Resilient Mediterranean Cities, is a new INTERREG EURO-MED Project, of which the University of Malta, Faculty for the Built Environment is the Lead Partner.
ReMED addresses Programme Priority Greener Med, with the specific objective of promoting climate change adaptation and disaster risk prevention, resilience, taking into account eco-system based approaches. The mission is the promotion of Green living areas. The Faculty of Information & Communication Technology also collaborates with the Faculty for the Built Environment on ReMED.
Background
The project capitalises on the results of previous projects including the CESBA MED Project: Sustainable MED Cities, (Common European Sustainable Building Assessment Method) of which the University of Malta Faculty for the built Environment was a partner. The objective of ReMED is to develop affordable tools, along with an overarching decision support framework, intended to support cities in:
- assessing and understanding the level of climate risk with respect to different spatial scales (from a single building to a neighbourhood)
- designing optimal climate adaptation measures in relation to local contexts
- implementing the climate adaptation measures through high impact policy instruments
- monitoring and evaluating the results of adaptation measures over time.
Scope & Execution
ReMED will support a Multi-Level Governance (MLG) in climate adaptation, as recommended by the COP26 (Paris Agreement), that recognised the potential role of cities in the contribution of the global commitment, through a MLG approach. The ReMED methods, tools and decision support framework will be organised in a friendly web-based application, the ReMED Platform.
ReMED will deliver capacity building measures towards public authorities in the use of the ReMED Platform to facilitate its practical use and uptake. The focus of the capacity building process will be the testing of the ReMED Platform to support the implementation of adaptation measures through a set of reference policy instruments.
The main output of the project will be a comprehensive capacity building of public authorities in deploying effective measures to improve the resilience of cities.
Consortium
ReMED brings together nine (9) partners from five (5) different countries. Apart from the Maltese partners, The Faculty for the Built Environment at the University of Malta as Lead Partner and Eco Gozo at the Ministry for Gozo, the six (6) International project partners. These are iiSBE Italia R&D (Italy), National Observatory of Athens (Greece), and CIEDES Foundation (Spain). Municipalities involved are those of Genova (Italy), Fylis (Greece), Crikvenicia (Croatia), and Malaga (Spain).
The project started on the 1st of January 2024 and is planned over a period of c. 3 years, concluding in 2026.
