The tools we need: innovative financing mechanisms, AI and digital tools to enable resilience to compound risks
Building resilience to compound and cascading climate risks requires new tools, new partnerships and new forms of investment. This thematic stream explores how innovative financing mechanisms, AI and advanced digital solutions can strengthen climate risk management, accelerate adaptation and unlock transformative action. By connecting technological innovation with governance, regulation and capital flows, session within this stream highlight how cities and communities cn better protect citizens, manage uncertainty and mobilise national and EU resources to respond effectively to complex and interlinked climate threats.
Guiding questions:
How can cities and regions mobilise innovative financing mechanisms and investment models to address compound and cascading climate risks at scale, while ensuring these mechanisms fit to local contexts, governance capacity, and community needs?
In what ways can AI and advanced digital solutions enhance climate risk assessment, early warning systems, and adaptive decision-making, while remaining accountable, inclusive and aligned with public governance frameworks at national and regional level?
What new partnerships between governments, financial institutions, technology providers and communities are needed to unlock transformative climate action and manage increasingly complex, interlinked climate threats?"
Explore the sessions in this stream
Financing climate resilience: Bridging pathways, projects, and investment
This workshop explores how cities and regions can move from climate risk assessments and adaptation pathways toward bankable resilience investments. Drawing on practical experiences from ongoing climate‑resilience initiatives, it will highlight key steps such as project identification, costing, investment structuring, stakeholder engagement, and capability development, as well as how co‑benefits can strengthen the financial case for adaptation. The session aims to identify solutions to bridge the gap between resilience planning and finance through interactive exchange among participating regions.
Financing for Nature‑Based Solutions on Private Land
The session explores practical pathways to secure long-term financing for implementing NBS on private land and supportive policy frameworks. Participants will examine how local governments can effectively engage and negotiate with private landowners, and how financing models can encourage more nature-positive economic activities while reducing harmful subsidies. The discussion will build around public–private co-investment models and other financial instruments that promote NBS.
The two sides of AI: AI for resilience or resilience from AI
Cities are at the forefront of both deploying and navigating with artificial intelligence (AI). This session explores the dual nature of AI in urban climate action: as a powerful enabler of resilience, helping cities address climate vulnerability, tackle energy poverty, and strengthen adaptive capacity, and as a source of new systemic risks that must be governed responsibly. The also session discusses governance approaches and partnerships that allow cities to harness AI's potential while embedding safeguards, including inclusive data practices, public oversight mechanisms, and alignment with national, regional and local regulatory frameworks.
Opening the Resilience Toolbox: Solutions for Safer Urban Spaces
European cities are increasingly exposed to compound and cascading climate hazards affecting buildings, infrastructure, and urban systems, with disproportionate impacts on vulnerable communities. This session showcases tools and approaches tested in pilot cities in four Horizon Europe projects (MULTICLIMACT, MULTICARE, MINORITY REPORT, RETIME) to assess risks, prioritise resilience actions and improve preparedness. It highlights lessons, challenges, and opportunities to integrate solutions into urban planning systems.
Empowering cities with digital tools: roadmaps for accelerating climate resilience and risk-informed planning
Digital tools such as digital twins are increasingly part of urban management and local decision-making processes, optimising climate resilience, adaptation and risk-informed planning. However, technical and institutional barriers can limit the integration such tools into existing planning processes. This hands-on workshop brings city representatives and participants together to discuss actionable roadmaps for the long-term integration of digital tools in city management processes.