TURAS SECOND ANNUAL MEETING

Ms. Pilar Zapata Aranda attended the second annual general meeting of TURaS project (“transitioning towards urban resilience and sustainability”) that was held last November 4th – 5th, 2013 in Rome, Italy. It was hosted by the project partner BIC Lazio.

TURaS is a collaborative project that aims to bring together urban communities, researchers, local authorities and SMEs to research, develop, demonstrate and disseminate transition strategies and scenarios to enable European cities and their rural interfaces to build vitally-needed resilience in the face of significant sustainability challenges. The specific challenges addressed in TURaS include: climate change adaptation and mitigation, natural resource shortage and unprecedented urban growth. The feasibility of these new approaches will be tested in selected case studies, being their impact measured and their results compared between participating cities before the development of a final set of strategies and tools for demonstration, dissemination and exploitation in other European cities.

During the first day of the meeting, the partners met in small groups in which the state of development of each of the work packages were discussed, to finally get all together and check the general state of the project, as well as present all outcomes already achieved. The next steps were also discussed and agreed, including deadlines and distribution of responsibilities.

The second day the consortium visited Bracciano, where the local authorities together with the project partners of the region (Lazio region in Italy) are developing an I-Agri Incubator (“Agricultural Incubator – innovation in a traditional business”) within the frame of the TURaS project.

In parallel to the 2nd annual general meeting, the TURaS consortium organised a workshop in Rome called “TURaS European Policy – Urban sustainability: from local to European dimension”.  All project partners attended the workshop, being Bioazul represented there by Ms. Pilar Zapata Aranda, in which representatives from Rome City Hall and different researchers from inside and outside the consortium acted as speakers. Authorities like the Director of the environmental quality protection and promotion department of Rome capital city, the Rome capital city environmental assessor and the responsible of the sustainability and energies service in Rome capital city supported participated in the event and gave their presentations.

After the workshop, the Steering Committee of TURaS project met without the rest of the general assembly and the 2nd annual meeting was finally closed.