Projects

Project Profile: SERUS

Building Socio-Ecological Resilience through Urban Green, Blue and White Space

Who?

Principal Investigators: Igor Esau, Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Centre, Norway
Partners: Marlene Laruelle, George Washington University, USA
Andrei Soromotin, Tyumen State University, Russia
Sponsors: Research Council of Norway, Norway
Russian Foundation for Basic Research, Russia
National Science Foundation, United States

What?

Full Project Title: Building Socio-Ecological Resilience through Urban Green, Blue and White Space
Full Call Title: Arctic2019
Website:

Why?

Project Objective: This project is an initiative to integrate open urban space into urban planning and social fabric aiming to advance truly resilient and sustainable Arctic cities. More than 80% of the Arctic population is living in 110 cities. The cities have substantially warmer climate making them unique laboratory to observe "future" environmental changes. Open space converts a settlement to allocation with sense of-place and values. Green (vegetated)and blue (water) spaces, being the are as of public attraction, recreation and eco-services, make cities liveable. Novelty of the project is that it recognizes distinct role white space, which covers the Arctic for 8-9 months a year. We consider green, blue and white space along with built-up areas as components of an interconnected socio-environmental (urban) ecosystem. Knowledge on open space in urban resilience is extremely limited. The Arctic cities were and largely still are the outposts isolated from harsh climate and fragile northern nature. Such attitudes must be changed if resilience issues are seriously addressed. The project's objective is to collect new data and knowledge, to gain skills and expertise, to exchange this knowledge with local communities, integrate diverse data using innovative data fusion technology and to create holistic understanding of urban open space in the Arctic cities.
Call Objective: This joint Belmont Forum CRA calls for co-developed and co-implemented proposals from integrated teams of natural and social scientists, and stakeholders to address key areas of arctic resilience understanding and action. This collaboration of academic and non-academic knowledge systems constitutes a trans-disciplinary approach that will advance not only understanding of the fundamentals of arctic resilience but also spur action, inform decision-making, and translate into solutions for resilience.

Where?

Regions: Arctic, Europe, North America
Countries: Norway, Russian Federation, United States of America (USA)

When?

Duration: 36
Call Date: 20 February 2019
Project Award Date: 5 February 2020