In the last five years, European research and innovation programmes have prioritised the development of online catalogues and tools (handbooks, models, etc.) to facilitate the implementation and monitoring of Nature-Based Solutions (NBS). However, only a few catalogues and toolkits within European programmes are directly related to mainstreaming of NBS for food production (i.e., edible NBS). Therefore, the main aim of this paper is to present existing NBS tools through the eyes of productive urban landscapes. We reviewed 32 projects related to NBS and 50 tools were identified and characterised. Then, the six tools already available and provided indicators were further analysed in terms of their format and knowledge domains. Our main conclusion demonstrates that there is a lack of tools capable of supporting users for planning and implementing edible NBS; calculating the food potential of a city and/or of individual edible NBS, including the needed resources for implementation and operation (water, nutrients, energy); and assessing their urban design value, environmental and socio-economic impacts. Moreover, when they do exist, there is a resistance to share the models and equations behind the tools to allow other projects to reuse or validate them, a fact which is contrary to the open science principles upheld by many public research agencies.

Stormwater control measures (SCMs) are decentralized technical elements, which can prevent the negative effects of uncontrolled stormwater flow while providing co-benefits. Optimal SCMs have to be selected and designed to achieve the desired hydrological response of an urban catchment. In this study, automated modeling and domain-specific knowledge in the fields of modeling rainfall-runoff (RR) and SCMs are applied to automate the process of optimal SCM design. A new knowledge library for modeling RR and SCMs, compliant with the equation discovery tool ProBMoT (Process-Based Modeling Tool), was developed. The proposed approach was used to (a) find the optimal RR model that best fits the available pipe flow measurements, and (b) to find the optimal SCMs design that best fits the target catchment outflow. The approach was applied to an urban catchment in the city of Ljubljana, Slovenia. First, nine RR models were created that generally had »very good« performance according to the Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency criteria. Second, six SCM scenarios (i.e., detention pond, storage tank, bio-retention cell, infiltration trench, rain garden, and green roof) were automatically designed and simulated, enabling the assessment of their ability to achieve the target outflow. The proposed approach enables the effective automation of two complex calibration tasks in the field of urban drainage.

In the last five years, European research and innovation programmes have prioritised the development of online catalogues and tools (handbooks, models, etc.) to facilitate the implementation and monitoring of Nature Based Solutions (NBS). However, only a few catalogues and toolkits within European programmes are directly related to mainstreaming of NBS for food production (i.e., edible NBS). Therefore, the main aim of this paper is to present existing NBS tools through the eyes of productive urban landscapes. We reviewed 32 projects related to NBS and 50 tools were identified and characterised. Then, the 6 tools already available, and providing indicators, were further analysed in terms of their format and knowledge domains. Our main conclusion demonstrates that there is a lack of tools capable of supporting users for planning and implementing edible NBS, calculating the food potential of the city and/or of individual edible NBS, including the needed resources for implementation and operation (water, nutrients, energy), and assessing their urban design value, environmental and socio-economic impacts. And when they do exist, there is a resistance to share the models and equations behind the tools to allow other projects to reuse or validate them, fact which is contrary to Open Science principles stood up by many research public agencies.

This study proposes to adopt the Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) approach and its seven principles to assist integrated flood management and transboundary cooperation in river basins, extending over more municipalities, regions, or states. Although HACCP was initially employed in the food production and processing industry to identify hazards and reduce risks throughout the production process, its principles have already been successfully applied to other sectors, such as water supply and wastewater treatment. The paper focuses (a) on the adaptation of the HACCP approach for integrated flood management, for example, for assessing the impact of planned upstream measures on downstream areas, and (b) on step 3 of the proposed Flood‐HACCP approach establishing critical limits for CCPs. For the demonstration purposes, the confluence of the Slovenian part of Drava River and its tributaries, Meža and Mislinja, is selected. Results indicate that keeping the Meža River discharge within the range of ±5% from its initial value would cause only minor local changes of flood situation within the selected case study area. On the other hand, variations to the Mislinja River discharge could change the flood situation to a greater extent and in a more diffuse way.

River discharges play an important role in understanding mercury fate in contaminated catchments. While hydrological and hydraulic models are commonly used to calculate discharges, their complexity and computational costs often pose challenges. This study evaluates the fit of the statistical curve and one of the machine learning methods, namely model trees, and explores their performance in predicting downstream river discharges based on upstream discharge measurements. The model trees method performs better, particularly with high discharges, which transport the vast majority of mercury downstream. The resulting relationships can be used as an input to various models assessing the impact of mercury pollution from the former mine in Idrija and the climate change on mercury transport in the river systems of the Idrijca and Soča/Isonzo rivers. The application of such models will improve our understanding of mercury cycling in the contaminated catchment and in the Gulf of Trieste’s coastal environment.

The RISKADAPT project addresses the growing challenges caused by extreme weather phenomena on critical infrastructure. This study contributes to the project by assessing the hydrodynamic loads on the piers and abutments of the Polyfytos Bridge, located at the Polyfytos Lake, Greece. Specifically, it evaluates the discharge rates, water flow velocities, and water levels under present and future climate projections to understand the potential risks to this critical asset from climate-induced flooding. Climate change, through its effects on temperature and precipitation patterns, disrupts the hydrological cycle, resulting in altered river runoff regimes. The study employs hydrological and hydraulic modeling techniques to assess these impacts on critical infrastructure. A hydrological model is used to convert different precipitation scenarios into river discharges, considering present and future climate projections. Next, the hydraulic model simulation provides water flow parameters, which are the basis for estimating the risk of scour formation around the Polyfytos Bridge piers. The modeling was conducted using the HEC-RAS software. For the first phase, the study utilized extreme precipitation data with three return periods (50, 100, and 1,000 years) for present and future climates. Historical data were drawn from global extreme precipitation (GPEX) datasets, and future projections were sourced from the EURO-CORDEX dataset, encompassing 48 combinations of global circulation and regional climate models. These data were used to predict the impact of future climate scenarios on extreme discharges, with some projections indicating a decrease in extreme discharges, while others predict an increase of 48%, 46%, and 30% for the events with return periods of 50, 100, and 1,000 years, respectively. In the second phase, hydrological results were used to generate hydrographs, which served as an input for the hydraulic simulations at the Polyfytos Lake inflow. The hydraulic modeling provided key parameters, such as water depth, surface elevation, flow velocity, and discharge, essential for further scour analysis. Results indicated that the hydrodynamic loads on the bridge piers were relatively low, even under extreme flood events. Water flow velocities remained below 0.5 m/s during the 100-year flood event, suggesting a low risk of scour formation that could compromise the bridge’s stability. The analysis of future climate scenarios showed varying impacts on discharge rates, with some indicating an increase in extreme discharges. However, the conclusion was that the Polyfytos Bridge is not significantly susceptible to scour, even under the most extreme projected climate conditions.