Articles

HARMONIA H2020 launched to provide GEOSS and Advanced Modelling tools to improve resilience and sustainable urban areas to cope with Climate Change and Extreme Events based. The kick-off meeting of the HARMONIA Η2020 project concluded today with the Remote Sensing Lab of IACM being one of the key project partners.HARMONIA is a new H2020 project, funded under Grant Agreement n° 101003517 in the call H2020-LC-CLA-2018-2019-2020 / H2020-LC-CLA-2020-2. HARMONIA is actively engaged in the improvement of Urban Resilience towards Climate Change (CC). Indeed, cities concentrate people, infrastructure, activity, and many other resources into tight spaces, which means they are particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Moreover, the influence of cities on anthropogenic Climate Change and the effects of climate change on the wellbeing of citizens are substantial. However, currently there is a lack of a dedicated process for understanding and quantifying CC effects on urban areas and there exist very limited urban development strategies regarding CC. HARMONIA will deliver a holistic decision support system to quantitatively and qualitatively assess climatic parameters that directly affect European cities and citizens. Delivery of this data, information and knowledge will provide invaluable support to governmental bodies and municipality authorities to properly adapt their short- and long-term policies towards deploying sustainable and resilient master plans/programs and providing efficient damage prevention and mitigation.