Field-Day 2026: Urban Resilience

Learn from the city of Bern on how to strengthen resilience in urban contexts

Practical and actual approaches to integrated flood protection and heat mitigation

At the Field-Day you will get answers to the following questions:

• What measures have been and are yet to be taken to avoid a similar event as the 2005 floods in the future?
• What are the challenges of and expectations from the current flood protection project?
• How green is the current flood protection project? How (much) are nature-based solutions considered? What are the limitations of this approach?
• What is the vision of the city of Bern of being a ‘sponge city’?
• What are the challenges of de-sealing and tree plantation in an urban environment?

Outline

Over the past decade, international cooperation has increasingly focused on strengthening resilience at the local level, by promoting prevention, risk governance, preparedness, and climate risk management as key elements of sustainable development and climate adaptation, at both urban and rural settings. The Swiss NGO DRR Platform has consistently prioritised local resilience as a core part of its work. As urbanisation, climate change, and disaster risks increasingly converge in cities and towns, urban resilience has become an increasingly important focus for both the Platform and its member organisations.

The field-day intends to enable practitioners to learn how the City of Bern implements integrated risk management for flood protection and applies sponge city principles, and to identify transferable approaches and lessons for their own contexts.

Audience

The field-day is aimed at the focal points and further interested employees of the Platform member organisations primarily based in Switzerland, but open to interested persons from non-member organisations as well as SDC.

Programme Elements

• The integrated risk management approach form the perspective of the city of Bern
• Introduction to integrated flood protection and ‘sponge city’ as applied in Bern
• Presentation of actual flood protection and sponge city projects incl. guided transect walks

Programme details will be sent a week before to the registered participants.

Resource Person

Andrew Hagen, Project manager: Planning and implementation, Tiefbau Stadt Bern

Contact

Further information:   Anton.Joehr@redcross.ch