Several are the results beyond the state of art such as a thorough analysis has been performed to examine the benefits of NBS in tackling hydro-meteorological hazards. The analysis also included the identification of barriers that hinder the wider uptake of NBS and presents approaches to overcome these social and political barriers. Key findings were published in a top-ranked journal (Debele et al., 2019). A systematic literature review leading to the to set up the methodology for describing the hydro-meteorological risks in OALs. Specifically, the risks considered were floods, drought, landslide, nutrient and sediment loading, coastal erosion and storm surge. Their impacts on the OALs were presented, and the NBS already implemented, or suitable for implementation within OPERANDUM, were discussed, focusing on possible barriers, knowledge gaps and critical issues that could prevent their implementation in OALs. The key findings of these activities have been published in Sahani et al. (2019). Here, an unprecedented and detailed syntheses of hydro-meteorological forcing of hazards in each OAL have been formulated. These results include extreme hydro-meteorological events for each OAL, being identified and classified using a variety of data and a 30-years climatic assessment that was developed using re-analysis (ERA-5) and hydro-meteorological satellite data products. Also, partners performed a systematic literature review to identify existing vulnerability and risk assessment approaches, methods and tools linked to NBS and hydro-meteorological hazards.
The project made crucial methodological advancements in multi-scale impact modelling (Gallotti et al. 2021, Kumar et al. 2020). Among other achievements, the methodological advancements fostered original assessments of NBS efficacy that account for a non-stationary climate consistently in all steps of the model chain (an example is provided by the work of Spyrou et al. 2021) and that may serve as proof-of-concept to generalise the approach.
The GeoIKP, as a major outcome of the project, was introduced in an abstract to the Global Assessment Report for Disaster Risk Reduction 2022, sharing several OPERANDUM results with a broad audience. OPERANDUM was presented as one of UNESCO’s NBS flagship projects during several virtual international events, including: the International Day for Disaster Reduction (Oct 13, 2020), the Global Mountain Sustainability Forum on October 5th, 2020, Thematic session on “Sustainable governance in mountain regions “, the 6th session of UNESCOs “Let’s talk DRR” series on Nature Based Solutions for Disaster Risk Reduction on December 18th, 2020 , the International Symposium on IoT and ML for Ecosystem Restoration and Multi-Hazard Resilience on June 5th, 2021. Knowledge transfer of OAL works is achieved through a series of public webinars organized by UNESCO.
