According to a European Commission statement, the five-year TURAS project, which ended in 2016, brought together 32 organisations – academic institutions, location authorities, and small and medium-sized companies (SMEs) – from 13 countries to address climate change and mitigation, explore how to build green infrastructure, and examine how cities grow.

“The project sought to devise mechanisms and toolkits for changing behaviour to build resilience,” said project co-ordinator Marcus Collier. “Many solutions were devised and tested – all of which would make urban living more tolerable, equitable and sustainable.”

One such example is a system for managing floods designed by TURAS partners in the Netherlands. The strategy, which is already in place in Rotterdam, is also now being used by project participants in Ljubjlana, Slovenia. Another project result is the Ecomimicry toolkit, a green infrastructure design toolkit that allows planners, designers and users to retain biodiversity when building new developments.

The project also produced unexpected results, such as the Green Living Room, which used plants and green wall gardening techniques to create a green comfort zone in a heavily built-up area of Ludwigsburg, Germany. According to the European Commission, it has attracted orders from cities across Europe and China, and the SME involved in the project has since doubled in size and scaled up its international programme.

SMEs were intentionally involved in the TURAS project because they are in the best position to exploit and scale up any solutions to emerge out of it. “We hoped that our SMEs would build European expertise and bring it to a global scale, making Europe a leader in devising resilience solutions,” said Collier.