EU R&I Task Force for Climate Neutral and Resilient Historic Urban Districts

The mission of the EU R&I Task Force for Climate Neutral and Resilient Historic Urban Districts is to co-ordinate EU efforts to make historic and contemporary urban districts climate neutral and strengthen their resilience to the effects of climate change and natural hazards as well as the resilience of the communities depending on those areas. It has been established by the Horizon 2020 projects ARCH, HYPERION, and SHELTER in response to and support of the Horizon 2020 ‘Heritage Alive’ orientation to “[increase] resilience and sustainable reconstruction of historic areas to cope with climate change and hazard events,” following in the footsteps of earlier projects like STORM and HERACLES.


The goal of the task force to bring together actors from practice, research, and policy to foster the development and uptake of advanced solutions for resilient urban planning for historic urban districts, supporting their adaptation to climate change and making them climate neutral. In doing so, the task force aims to provide support to European authorities and decision makers for developing common evidence-based policies, strategies, and procedures. To achieve this goal, the task force focuses on three thematic areas:

  1.  Developing resilience strategies for historic urban districts
  2.  Developing harmonized approaches for assessing and monitoring risk and resilience
  3.  Developing equitable solutions for and with communities


The technical core of the task force is made up of partners from European research projects in the fields of heritage management, climate change mitigation/adaptation, disaster risk management/resilience as well as urban planning and regeneration. In addition, practitioners, decision makers and policy actors on European, national, and local level in those fields participate in the task force to discuss solutions offered by the technical partners and ensure their applicability.

Meetings of the Task Force:

Kick-off Meeting: June 23, 2021

Second Meeting: December 14, 15 2021

Third Meeting: June 2022 

If you are interested in being updated about and/or involved in this Task Force, please fill out this form.

Read the Joint Paper of the Task Force: Paving the Way for Climate Neutral and Resilient Historic Districts