Carolina Cantergiani

In recent years, nature-based solutions have been used in urban regeneration interventions to improve the adaptation and resilience of these places, contributing to improved environmental quality and cultural ecosystem functions, including people’s physiological, social, and mental health and wellbeing. However, when it comes to the assessment of psychological wellbeing and social benefits (psychosocial co-benefits), the existing evidence is still limited. To contribute to the advancement of knowledge on nature’s contribution to people in relation to this type of benefit, it is necessary for us to develop and test assessment tools to contribute to the development of a robust nature-based solutions monitoring framework. In this paper, the second phase of the validation of a psychosocial co-benefit assessment tool for nature-based urban interventions is presented. This tool is structured around two dimensions: the perceived health and wellbeing and social co-benefits. The first validation was carried out with experts using the Delphi method. The second validation presented in this paper was based on a sample of users, evaluating a set of eight urban spaces at different levels of naturalisation and openness. The results indicate that the tool is sensitive to the differences in naturalisation and openness in the public urban places analysed. The most relevant contextual variables to explain the psychosocial co-benefits are openness, the surfaces covered by tree branches, the water surface area, and naturalisation.

This article presents an assessment of territorial vulnerability to natural hazards in Europe at the regional level (NUTS3). The novelty of the study lies in assessing vulnerability to natural hazards through a composite indicator analysis over a large extension (1395 territories in 32 different countries), and in analysing the relation between vulnerability and economic impacts of past disasters. For responding to the first goal, a principal component analysis (PCA) was performed over 25 indicators, previously grouped into susceptibility and coping capacity, and subsequently combined to obtain the final vulnerability. The main result is the spatial distribution of vulnerability to natural hazards across Europe through a normalised and comparative approach, which indicates that 288 out of 1395 regions presented a high or a very high level of vulnerability. They are concentrated in Eastern and Southern Europe, and in the Baltic Region, and the sum of their population lives in territories with high or very high vulnerability level, representing 20% of the total sample, i.e. 116 out of 528 million inhabitants. Regarding the methodology for analysing the relation between vulnerability and economic impacts, a spatial regression model has been used to combine hazard, exposure and vulnerability. The outcomes indicate a high level of agreement between vulnerability and the distribution of past economic impacts, which confirm that the indicator-based approach is a good proxy for assessing vulnerability to natural hazards. Knowing the distribution of vulnerability is of high relevance for targeting disaster risk management and climate change adaptation actions to the highest priority regions.

The use of nature-based solutions (NbS) in urban regeneration processes has been demonstrated as a multifunctional solution to increase the resilience of the built environment, contributing to improved environmental quality and health and wellbeing, and providing empowerment to communities facing natural hazards. However, when it comes to the assessment of psychological wellbeing and social benefits, existing evidence is still limited. To contribute to the knowledge of NbS’ psychosocial benefits, it is necessary to develop and test assessment tools to contribute to a common NbS monitoring framework. In this paper, we describe the development of a psychosocial benefit assessment tool for nature-based interventions in the urban regeneration processes. This tool has been developed within the framework of the H2020 CLEVER-Cities project through a participatory and co-design process, considering advanced sustainability paradigms, such as Regenerative Sustainability and Sensory Sustainability Science. This tool is structured around two dimensions, (1) perceived health and wellbeing and (2) social benefits, which refer to 13 attributes, assessed through 24 items. The Delphi method was used to validate the assessment tool, in which a multidisciplinary panel of experts participated. The results indicate that it has good face and content validity, concluding with the potential applicability of this tool in different contexts.

La utilización de Modelos Basados en Agentes (MBA) abre nuevas posibilidades para simular, entender y analizar los resultados del proceso de crecimiento y ocupación urbana teniendo en cuenta diferentes actores implicados en el mismo. El prototipo AMEBA (Agent-based Model for the Evolution of urBan Areas) pretende simular este fenómeno, donde interactúan planificadores, promotores inmobiliarios y la población, a partir del desarrollo de tres submodelos independientes. En el presente trabajo se describe la estructura y funcionamiento del submodelo de ocupación residencial por parte de la población y su integración final con los otros dos submodelos que representan la acción de los demás agentes. Los resultados muestran que es posible desarrollar una arquitectura integrada que permita simular de manera más completa este tipo de sistemas complejos y con la suficiente flexibilidad para ser utilizado en distintas áreas de estudio y simular diferentes escenarios de dinámica urbana a futuro.

Agent-based models have recently been proposed as potential tools to support urban planning due to their capacity to simulate complex behaviors. The complexity of the urban development process arises from strong interactions between various components driven by different agents. AMEBA (agent-based model for the evolution of urban areas) is a prototype of an exploratory, spatial, agent-based model that considers the main agents involved in the urban development process (urban planners, developers, and the population). The prototype consists of three submodels (one for each agent) that have been developed independently and present the same structure. However, the first two are based on a land use allocation technique, and the last one, as well as their integration, on an agent-based model approach. This paper describes the conceptualization and performance of the submodels that represent urban planners and developers, who are the agents responsible for officially launching expansion and defining the spatial allocation of urban land. The prototype was tested in the Corredor del Henares (an urban–industrial area in the Region of Madrid, Spain), but is sufficiently flexible to be adapted to other study areas and generate different future urban growth contexts. The results demonstrate that this combination of agents can be used to explore various policy-relevant research questions, including urban system interactions in adverse political and socioeconomic scenarios.

Ante el impacto que la expansión urbana ejerce sobre el planeta y sobre su población,resulta esencial la utilización de técnicas de simulación que nos permitan elaborar escenariossobre la evolución de estos sistemas. En este sentido, los Modelos Basados en Agentes(MBA) se presentan como una alternativa prometedora. Los MBA son modelos celulares ydinámicos que se basan en reglas de decisión y que permiten incorporar el comportamientode los agentes involucrados en un determinado sistema. En esta investigación proponemosun diseño de un MBA para simular el crecimiento urbano en el Corredor del Henares (Comunidad de Madrid, España), teniendo en cuenta su dinámica urbana, los principales agentes involucrados en este proceso de expansión, su aspecto comportamental, así como la información espacial disponible. El principal objetivo es disponer de un diseño conceptual sólido, para posteriormente demostrar que los MBA pueden ser útiles como herramienta alternativa para simular el crecimiento urbano a escala subregional.