As the climate crisis deepens, extreme natural events are becoming more frequent and more intense. Strengthening community resilience by investing in training, communication, and the enhancement of natural and cultural heritage is therefore essential. This is the goal of RESILIAGE, a project in which Deep Blue is a partner.
Natural disasters: increasingly intense and frequent
Last September, Storm Boris, caused by a low-pressure system, triggered heavy rainfall and flooding across several European countries. The floods claimed dozens of lives and caused severe damage to infrastructure, homes, and transport networks, resulting in economic losses amounting to billions of euros. According to the Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change, rising temperatures could further increase flood risks: by the end of the century, nearly half a million people per year may be exposed to river flooding, and more than 2.2 million to coastal flooding. Heatwaves, droughts, and wildfires are also becoming more frequent and severe. The record drought of 2022, compounded by fires that destroyed 900,000 hectares in southern Europe — an area comparable in size to Corsica — and the 2023 wildfires, which burned 500,000 hectares across Greece, Italy, Spain, and Portugal, are clear examples of this trend.
The RESILIAGE project: the importance of resilience
The European Union supports research and innovation projects aimed at mitigating the risks of extreme events such as floods through nature-based solutions — interventions grounded in natural processes, ecosystems, or their regeneration to address environmental and climate challenges. At the same time, it also invests in strengthening communities’ resilience to such events. “From a psychological perspective, resilience is an individual’s ability to recover from a traumatic experience,” explains Veronika Takacs, psychologist and Human Factors Lead Consultant at Deep Blue. “At the community level, however, it refers to the collective capacity of a community — as a shared force — to withstand and recover effectively from human-made or natural disasters.” RESILIAGE is a three-year European project (2023–2026) funded by the Horizon Programme, aiming to enhance communities’ capacity to respond to extreme natural events through the development of both digital and non-digital tools.
RESILIAGE Case Studies: the five CORE Labs
Researchers from the consortium — 18 partners including Deep Blue, coordinated by the Polytechnic University of Turin — have established five Community Resilience Laboratories (CORE Labs) across five European countries. These were selected based on their main local natural hazards: in the Karşıyaka district in Turkey, heatwaves and earthquakes; in the Famenne-Ardenne Geopark in Belgium, storms and floods; in Crete, earthquakes and wildfires; in the Naturtejo Geopark in Portugal, wildfires and heatwaves; and in Trondheim, Norway, landslides and urban fires. “The CORE Labs are the project’s case studies: real ‘laboratories’ to map risks, model behaviours, and design resilience strategies using a multi-stakeholder approach — involving local authorities, citizens, first responders, and experts in natural and cultural heritage,” Takacs explains.
Natural and cultural heritage as a tool for resilience
Using natural and cultural heritage as a resource to strengthen community resilience is an innovative approach that sets RESILIAGE apart from other risk-management projects. “Every community, society, or country possesses natural and cultural heritage, the latter consisting of both tangible and intangible elements,” Takacs explains. “Tangible aspects include buildings, architecture, monuments — everything that is visibly present. Intangible heritage, by contrast, is deeply embedded in people’s behaviour: how they interact and maintain social ties, the closeness of relationships, festivals, cultural practices, and collective events. The project focuses precisely on enhancing these elements of heritage as a ‘driver of resilience’ for communities.
”Mangrove forests, for example, are a form of natural heritage that also act as protection against storm surges and potential flooding — providing yet another reason, beyond their ecological and landscape value, to preserve them. Tsunami stones, on the other hand, are ancient stone markers erected along Japan’s coastlines to commemorate past disasters. They serve as warnings to future generations, marking the maximum height reached by tsunami waves and advising against building below that level.
RESILIAGE solutions
Together with the CORE Labs, the consortium is developing practical and educational materials (soft solutions) as well as digital tools to strengthen community resilience by combining individual preparedness, risk awareness, effective communication, and knowledge sharing. “Specifically, Deep Blue is responsible for developing soft solutions such as the Preparedness Toolkit — brochures or leaflets distributed to citizens to help them prepare for emergencies: what to do immediately and afterwards, which numbers to call, and so on,” Takacs explains.
There are also risk awareness campaigns aimed at increasing understanding among different target groups — citizens and local authorities alike — so they can grasp the urgency of the situation. “In Karşıyaka, heatwaves are a serious problem that cause many fatalities,” Takacs continues, “yet they are still not a priority for local authorities and decision-makers, and there are no precise statistics on victims. Heatwaves are perceived as ‘normal’ — ‘it’s always hot here, nothing unusual’. That is why we are developing a targeted awareness campaign to show that this issue must be addressed seriously.”
Risk communication is another crucial element in emergency management, as demonstrated by the Belgian geopark case. “In 2021, a major flood occurred for which the community was unprepared,” the Human Factors expert recalls. “First responders ordered residents to evacuate their homes to avoid risking their lives, but many ignored the evacuation order. As a result, rescuers later had to intervene to save people who had taken refuge on rooftops. This highlighted the importance of understanding why people do not trust — or follow — instructions given by emergency services.” To address this, the project is developing a Communication Guideline for first responders. “Effective communication requires first understanding who you are addressing: their needs, fears, and what motivates them — especially among more vulnerable groups such as children, older people, and migrants. The manual includes these principles and also provides an ‘accessibility checklist’ to ensure that communication effectively reaches the intended audience,” Takacs explains.
The fourth and final soft solution developed within RESILIAGE is the one most closely linked to heritage enhancement: a Training Package consisting of eight technical training modules aimed at first responders, local authorities, and citizens. One module, interactive knowledge sharing, includes a workshop in which community members share past experiences and best practices of natural events, discussing how they prepared for, managed, and recovered from them — and which individual solutions might also work for others. The goal is to promote knowledge exchange within the community. “In the Portuguese geopark, for example, wildfires are frequent, but younger people often do not know how to protect property or behave correctly,” Takacs explains. “Through the workshop, the older generation’s know-how is passed on to the younger one — a perfect example of how shared knowledge can enhance community resilience.”
As for digital tools, the consortium is developing solutions to help prepare citizens, increase risk awareness, and support decision-making by first responders and local authorities. These include: “RAISE”, a quiz-based tool that allows individuals to assess how prepared they are to face a crisis — with suggestions on how to improve — designed for personal use but with the option to share results with friends and neighbours; a “Decision Support System” to help first responders and authorities identify the most effective actions for a given event based on population needs; and “CoreDNet”, a platform similar to LinkedIn or Facebook that provides training modules, forums, and spaces for sharing ideas and knowledge. “Once developed, these tools will be freely available on the project website and in all five languages of the CORE Lab countries, enabling every community to benefit from them,” Takacs concludes.
