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Research plan 2021-24

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PHUSICOS

PHUSICOS is an Innovation Action project funded by the EU Horizon 2020 program. It will demonstrate how nature-based solutions provide robust, sustainable and cost effective measures for reducing the risk of extreme weather events in rural mountain landscapes.

The IIASA PHUSICOS team from the Risk and Resilience program consisting of Joanne Bayer and Juliette Martin are leading Work Package 5 which explores policy framework financial instruments to enhance the effectiveness of the design and implementation of Nature Based Solutions (NBS) in the context of Governance Innovation. This includes an analysis of EU policy for enabling Nature Based Solutions NBS as implemented by national, regional and local governments, and also instruments and initiatives on the part of the business community and non-governmental organisations.

Focus

PHUSICOS’s underlying premise is that nature-based solutions are cost-effective and sustainable measures inspired by nature that attenuate, and in some cases prevent, the impacts of natural hazard events and thereby reduce human and financial costs due to better and more flexible disaster risk management. The research project aims to demonstrate the ability of nature-based solutions to increase the ecological, social and economic resilience of local communities at established case study sites with risks associated with different hydro-meteorological hazards (flooding, landslides, erosion and drought).

Consortium of partners

PHUSICOS’s excellence relies on a strong transdisciplinary consortium of partners with wide expertise and long experience from public authorities, research institutes and universities as well as private enterprises. The PHUSICOS expertise covers the fields of natural hazards and disaster risk reduction, climate scenarios modelling, GIS capabilities, geoinformatics and remote sensing, landscape architecture, landscape planning, nature conservation and ecosystem services, economics, governance and knowledge brokering to improve stakeholder involvement.

Partners and collaborating organisations