Horizon Europe Med-IREN Project: Resilience engineering of critical Mediterranean infrastructure with nature-based solutions

The Med-IREN project aims to provide a practical demonstration of how to make critical Mediterranean infrastructure climate-resilient, across all critical sectors, by introducing NBS, both in terms of improving climate risk management and sustaining business continuity in the face of extreme climate change.

The project will be presented in five Mediterranean flagship regions, each of which corresponds to a current challenge, is aligned with regional policies, and can establish the EU as a global leader in this field. Med-IREN will cover different and diverse types of CI (energy, transport, water, ICT, social), priority climate hazards within the Mediterranean, a climate hotspot, and NBS interventions.

In parallel, the interventions and solutions will be replicated in four additional EU regions, covering the Mediterranean, Black Sea, and Boreal regions. Med-IREN will also provide evidence of how key enabling conditions, such as participatory governance and citizen engagement, new forms of financing, innovative urban and landscape planning, and capacity building, will support regional systemic transformation and provide the mechanism for scaling up and replication within the Mediterranean regions and beyond.

A high-level digital decision support toolkit will be developed, integrating data from multiple sources, both in situ and EO, applying state-of-the-art models, and providing unprecedented visualization and sensemaking capabilities to understand and quantify resilience throughout the infrastructure and NBS lifecycle. Med-IREN will build on the integration of research results from more than 15 European and national projects, which focused on infrastructure (climate) resilience, regional adaptation, and NBS implementation. Med-IREN is conceived as a powerful showcase for the EU's twin green and digital transitions and an immediate success story of the EU Green Deal.