Launch of FUTURESILIENCE Project

January 1, 2023, marked the start of a new EU-funded project, FUTURESILIENCE (Creating future societal resilience through innovative, science-based co-creation labs), which aims to strengthen European economic and social resilience through  enhanced ability to quickly respond to future crises. This will be achieved by facilitating the fast and effective use of policy relevant research and innovation (R&I) findings for actors at national, regional and local level. 

The 36-months project looks to contribute to two main European policy streams. On the one hand, it will anchor its conceptual design on the knowledge valorisation policy, aiming to add social and economic value to existing research and know-how. On the other hand, it looks to enhance the European resilience policy,  with a particular focus on building and strengthening capacities of different stakeholders to deal with diverse types of crises and thus, increase preparedness in the long term.

FUTURESILIENCE will set up 'Future Resilience Labs' to test policy relevant R&I findings through 10 pilot exercises: three pre-identified labs will be working on climate change, migration and the financial crisis, and urban planning; and seven additional labs that will be selected through a competitive open call, expected to be launch in the upcoming months. During the experimentation phase, multiple stakeholders will discuss and test evidence-based strategies tailored to their specific context and matching their local needs, aiming at reducing vulnerabilities and increasing capacities to  address a diversity of challenges emerging from crisis situations.

The conceptual approach is based on the role of R&I results and new scientific knowledge in informing policy making and addressing societal challenges through new technological and societal solutions. Existing proven research could create new pathways to tackle underlying conditions – or typically impacted areas of diverse crises – and prepare communities to deal with current and future uncertainties.

The project will be implemented by a robust consortium of 14 partners with know-how in the fields of resilience, R&I policy and crisis management as well as experience with various co-creation and participative methodologies and specifically hands-on experience with foresight, scenario planning, virtual simulation and agent-based modelling.

Press Release #1