RECONECT has organized a series of training and dissemination webinars dealing with NbS implementation and addressed to a targeted audience. The main purpose of these webinars was to educate and to create awareness on RECONECT concepts and results during live streamed events and after by publishing the videos and presentations in a dedicated section of the project website.
The three RECONECT webinars were held monthly, starting from May until July 2023. The webinars were organized as live events, but the registrations and the material were made also available on-line (www.reconect.eu/webinars) to increase the accessibility by an interested general audience.
The first RECONECT webinar “Introduction and opportunities for NbS: reflections from RECONECT” was held on the 8th of May and chaired by the Prof. Zoran Vojinovic. The webinar, participated by more than 100 people, introduced the context where NbS are co-created, implemented and upscaled with the aim to reduce hydro-meteorological risks. Participants in this webinar were expected to get knowledge on the EU and international policy framework supporting NbS, and on innovation, co-creation and upscaling concepts.
Registration and proceedings of this webinar are available here:
http://www.reconect.eu/webinars/introduction-and-opportunities-for-nbs/
The second RECONECT webinar “Sourcing the evidence base from RECONECT NbS demonstration cases” was held on the 6th of June and chaired by Dr. Natasa Manojlovic of the Technical University of Hamburg. It provided the attendees with knowledge and experiences from a NbS implementation process. Selected RECONECT demonstrators were showcased with the purpose to support the participants in understanding effectiveness, barriers and opportunities of a NbS approach.
This is the link to access registration and proceedings of webinar 2:
The third and last webinar “RECONECT experiences in co-monitoring and co-evaluation of NbS” was organized on the 4th of July and chaired by Dr. Jess Penn of the University of Exeter. The webinar dealt with tools and indicators to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of NbS for hydro-meteo risk reduction and to assess their co-benefits.
Registration and proceedings from this webinar are available at: http://www.reconect.eu/webinars/reconect-experiences-in-co-monitoring-and-co-evaluation-of-nbs/
RECONECT webinars, and in general the development of training initiatives within the project, contributed to the achievement of the general project outcomes and impact set for different categories of target audience. The main outcomes by RECONECT with the training are:
- NbS awareness raising, in particular among institutional stakeholders such as decision makers and governament agencies;
- training to the target audience in order to support the uptake and the exploitation of RECONECT outputs;
- giving the target audience the knowledge and the opportunity to train others on NbS implementation, with the aim to amplify and replicate the application of RECONECT outputs.
RECONECT project is expected to drive a change towards the uptake of NbS against extreme hydro-meteo events. This change is made possible also by the training to operators, that supports:
- the implementation of project activities and interventions;
- the upscaling of NbS;
- the market demand;
- the advocacy of NbS for risk reduction;
The three webinars gave rooms also to a discussion session, where the participants had the opportunity to ask for clarifications and to deep specific topics with the chairman and the speakers, giving hence hints to possible RECONECT follow-ups.
Main discussed topics were:
- Contribution of RECONECT in respect to NbS innovation that has to be seen in each single product but above all in the holisitc and comprehensive approach, not only focused on nature but also on social and technological aspects.
- Accounting for local and regional differences within EU, that can influence the implementation and the standardization of NbS on the social and environmental point of view.
- Cost-effectiveness of the NbS solutions, that in RECONECT it is calculated in particular in terms of risk reduction potential. Therefore it is needed to close the gap between monitoring and evaluation and better think on what we can do with data from monitoring and how they can be transferred into information useful to assess the NbS performance.
- Dealing with land owners: often the need for NbS falls in private areas, and it might a problem to deal with land owners and convince them for interventions in their areas. Good communication and a robust knowledge base on NbS effectiveness and on how to engage stakeholders in the NbS co-creation process is fundamental to address this barrier.
Training in RECONECT will be completed in the coming months with the development of a RECONECT MOOC (Massive Open Online Course), lasting 6 weeks and available for free in the project web site.
