Project summary
REHUBS aims to address the issues of climate vulnerability in rural areas and in rural and small-to-medium communities, which face risks like droughts, heatwaves, wildfires, floods, and biodiversity loss. The project’s goal is to empower rural and small/medium local communities to enhance their climate resilience, promote their twin green and digital transition and contribute to the broader goals of climate adaptation in Europe.
The methodology and activities of REHUBS are structured around four key pillars:
Climate Risk Assessment – Mapping vulnerabilities across hotspot rural areas to support place-based decision-making and provide comprehensive climate risk assessments.
Adaptation Solutions – Designing and implementing multi-level adaptation solutions for water management, wildfire prevention, and agricultural climate challenges. The project develops a suite of tailored tools and technologies based on rural communities’ specific needs, mainstreaming Nature-based Solutions (NbS) and circular economy principles.
Stakeholder Engagement – Facilitating community engagement through participatory activities, training programs, and capacity building initiatives. The project co-creates user-friendly ICT tools to support small local authorities and communities in climate adaptation planning and implementation.
Practical Implementation and Demonstration – Testing and validating REHUBS solutions across four key regions, ensuring collaboration and knowledge transfer to enable scaling up and bringing solutions closer to market application.
Strategic Objectives
The project pursues six strategic objectives: identifying climate-related challenges in rural hotspots, designing multi-level adaptation solutions, co-creating accessible digital tools, facilitating community participation, testing and validating solutions in partnership with multiple regions, and accelerating the adoption of climate resilience measures to support the EU Green Deal and the long-term vision for rural areas.
Expected outcomes
- Climate risk and vulnerability assessments for rural hotspot areas
- Multi-level adaptation solutions for water management, wildfire prevention, and agricultural challenges using Nature-based-Solutions and circular economy principles
- User-friendly ICT tools to support small local authorities in climate adaptation planning
- Enhanced community capacity through participatory training and stakeholder engagement
- Validated solutions tested across four demonstration regions
- Knowledge transfer framework enabling replication and scaling in other regions
- Support for EU Green Deal and long-term rural development vision
- Strengthened green and digital transition in rural communities
The role of alchemia-nova
The role of alchemia-nova in the REHUBS project is to lead the development of NbS for rural climate resilience, with a primary focus on designing circular water recovery and valorisation systems that leverage nature-based approaches for sustainable water management in rural communities. Alchemia-nova will develop comprehensive frameworks integrating NbS to enhance climate adaptation capacity. With an extensive expertise in NbS and circular economy principles, the organization translates climate adaptation concepts into practical, implementable solutions, while supporting stakeholder engagement, system design, demonstration activities, and the creation of best-practice guidelines for increasing rural resilience.
Partners
Project Coordinator:
Partner Consortium:
LINKS Foundation (Italy)
UPC – Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (Spain)
AGA – Agroapps (Greece)
Reframe.food (Greece)
EBOS Technologies (Greece)
ITC Agrifood (Spain)
Aquatec – Veolia (Spain)
Agrifood Lithuania (Lithuania)
LearnWorlds (Cyprus)
ARX (Spain)
VOST Portugal (Portugal)
ICLEI Europe (Germany)
AEIDL (Belgium)
Betavia (Lithuania)
Agbar (Spain)
NOVA (Greece)
Ajuntament de Manlleu (Spain)
TOEB Tavropou (Greece)
Municipality of Sofades (Greece)
CIMBB (Portugal)
Šakiai District Municipality (Lithuania)
Idalion (Cyprus)
RCMS (Slovenia)
REDEA (Croatia)
Global Infrastructure Basel Foundation
Project status:
Start date: 1 October 2025 | End date: 30 September 2029, duration 48 months
Call: HORIZON-MISS-2024-CLIMA-01
Topic: HORIZON-MISS-2024-CLIMA-01-07 – Demonstration of solutions specifically suited to rural areas and small/medium size population local communities
Funding Scheme: HORIZON-IA (HORIZON Innovation Actions)
Grant Agreement Number: 101214051
Overall costs: € 7,132,906.25
EU contribution: € 6,370,833.13
