Fernando Miguel García Martín (p), Jesús Ochoa Rego , Matías Nieto Tolosa, Miguel Hurtado Hernández

Ioannis Chinis

The adaptation of urban environments to the effects of climate change represents a key challenge for the European Union. The urban laboratory developed in the city of Murcia (Spain) within the FUTURESILIENCE project has focused on neighbourhood-scale adaptation measures to address two of the main climate change effects in southern Spain: the increasing risk of flooding and the intensification of heat waves in urban heat islands. The objective was to strengthen resilience by highlighting the necessary changes in governance systems to tackle this challenge. To achieve this, key factors for the development of adaptation policies and future scenarios were identified using foresight techniques. This process took place in participatory sessions with key technical decision-makers at the local and regional levels in the fields of environmental management, urban planning, emergency response, and public health, as well as with social stakeholders. Finally, the effectiveness of various policies in different scenarios was assessed through another participatory session. These policies were drawn from experiences implemented in other European research projects as well as from regional and national policies. As a result, a logical framework was developed to categorize policies based on their scope of action: data collection to identify vulnerabilities, development of adaptation strategies and plans, design of adaptation projects based on Nature-Based Solutions, emergency management, and evaluation of adopted policies. Furthermore, the assessment of actions across different scenarios highlighted the need for a dynamic approach, where strategies and policies must be periodically reviewed as climate change adaptation measures are implemented.

Ioannis Chinis (p)

Martin Kruse

As we move through the third decade of the 21st century, we find ourselves facing a multifaceted crisis. Human-induced climate collapse, increasingly frequent economic crises, pandemics, intensifying social inequalities, and the erosion of trust in established institutions and narratives are shaping an environment of widespread uncertainty.
At the same time, the integration of new digital technologies is driving a profound restructuring of everyday life, as a vast array of digital information penetrates the most personal aspects of our social existence, creating a continuum of hyper-connected and ever-accelerating daily experiences.
In response, resilience has become a focal point in public discourse, emerging as a set of ideas and techniques to address these uncertainties. While local communities play a crucial role in resilience-building, those most affected are often excluded from shaping relevant policies. To understand their collective agency in this context, we must adopt qualitative methodologies that recognize individuals as part of open, complex systems—interwoven with bodies, objects, information, ideas, practices, and environments, as carriers and expressions of all possibilities and alternatives.
This study explores ethnographic methodologies that can support the investigation of emerging collective initiatives in times of crisis. By tracing the evolution of ethnography and engaging with state-of-the-art approaches, it conducts a comparative analysis of existing literature to experiment with novel research methods, in order to experiment with novel ways of approaching emerging collective initiatives in times of crisis.
In a world increasingly defined by computational ubiquity, the scope of research must inevitably expand online to encompass information flows that are controlled, disrupted, or instrumentalized, yet also resist codification, shaping social dynamics. Informative posts, comments on photographic documents, and short videos serve as instant bridges of information, accessible at any moment on our mobile screens.
This drastically shortens the time required to achieve the primary goal of ethnographic studies—the production of “thick descriptions”—while facilitating a deeper understanding of the processes and patterns that drive experimentation, knowledge creation, and the emergence of new ideas and realities.

Martin Kruse (p)

Chiara Lodi

The rising share of healthcare expenditure in GDP is a growing concern for many economies. If this trend continues, healthcare will consume an ever-larger portion of national income, crowding out other critical investments like education, infrastructure, and could jeopardize the European green transition. For countries such as Bulgaria rising health expenditure places a heavy burden on government budgets. Governments must either raise taxes or increase borrowing, reduce spending on healthcare or cut spending in other essential areas such as social services, defense, or education. Reducing spending on healthcare is critical, but if it is not done through efficiency gains it will only lead to the hollowing out of the quality of the healthcare system and create greater polarization as more affluent individuals move towards private healthcare services. A core issue in Bulgaria’s healthcare system is underfunding, which leads to resource shortages, disparities in service quality and high out-of-pocket expenses (OOP). Bulgaria has one of the highest out-of-pocket healthcare expenditures in the EU, more than double the EU average. As healthcare cost keep rising as a share of GDP it presents an ever-growing problem and a slow-moving crisis. For Bulgaria’s healthcare system to be resilient efficiency improvements and innovation must be prioritized.
The rise of digital health services and the increasing recognition of the unsustainability of current healthcare models are driving a global transition toward more personalized and integrated care. By emphasizing preventive services, early interventions, and tailored treatments Bulgarians can achieve better health outcomes, while healthcare systems enhance their efficiency and overall effectiveness. Smoking, unhealthy diets, alcohol consumption and low physical activity are responsible for nearly half of all deaths in Bulgaria. The smoking rates are the highest in the EU. Expanding preventive healthcare initiatives, such as lifestyle interventions, early disease screening, and vaccination programs can significantly reduce the prevalence of chronic diseases like diabetes, cardiovascular conditions, and cancer. Another critical efficiency driver is the integration of digital health solutions. Bulgaria is already well underway with integrating digital solutions, but much remains to be done. The Bulgarian healthcare systems still suffer from bureaucratic redundancies and fragmented data management, leading to unnecessary expenses.
Foresight tools were used to stress-test proposed policy solutions for Bulgaria’s healthcare sustainability across four scenarios, assessing their robustness.

Giovanni Marin, Chiara Lodi (p), Aung Tun Oo

Fernando Miguel García Martín

In an increasingly complex and uncertain world, developing resilience is crucial for individuals, organizations, and communities. Cross-learning activity fosters a supportive environment that encourages experimentation and risk-taking, which are fundamentally connected with the drivers and components of resilience. A challenge-driven approach is a problem-solving strategy that encourages different stakeholders to identify challenges, develop solutions, and understand how to effectively implement them. Given this scenario, the paper explores the challenge-driven approach to fostering resilience, emphasizing the importance of cross-learning and mutual-learning activities under the FUTURESILIENCE project. Cross-learning involves the exchange of knowledge, practices, and insights across different organizations, disciplines, or communities, while mutual learning emphasizes the co-creation of knowledge through equitable participation of diverse stakeholders in developing resilience or other devoted activities. The challenges addressed through this cross-learning and collaborative framework often reflect systemic issues, prompting a holistic understanding of problems and fostering more sustainable solutions. Under the FUTURESILIENCE project, three mutual-learning workshops have been conducted with the involvement of project partners, labs members as well as the project’s advisory and ethical boards. Through an analysis of various follow-up evaluation and contextual analysis of these workshops, we have identified key themes that underline successful resilience-building initiatives. These include the significance of “diverse perspectives”, the role of “active participation” in learning processes, and the benefits of “knowledge exchange” among stakeholders. By prioritizing collaborative efforts and mutual engagement, organizations and communities can be better prepared for and navigated the uncertainties of the future. The findings of this study emphasize the importance of “creating spaces” for shared learning and the collective knowledge that emerges from such interactions, ultimately enhancing resilience at various levels.