About Scape

Shaping Climate Adaptive PlacEs (SCAPE) is project funded under the Interreg 2 Seas Programme that focuses on climate adaptation in coastal cities. It started in September 2016 and runs until the end of 2020. The total budget is 6.350.313,5 euro.

SCAPE is implemented by a broad partnership of eight partners from Belgium, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. The partners have together developed Landscape Led Design (LLD) solutions for water management to enhance climate resilience of the coastal landscape.

Project partners: City of Ostend, Farys/TMVW, Flemish Environment Agency, Municipality of Middelburg, Waterboard Scheldestromen, Brighton & Hove City Council, Kent County Council.

Problem

Coastal landscapes are sensitive to water-related effects of climate change, specifically: flooding, extreme rainfall and drought. To tackle these effects and enhance the resilience of these landscapes, a better and profound understanding of water management is needed. SCAPE will address this challenge by developing and testing innovative water management solutions for coastal sites in Belgium, The Netherlands and United Kingdom.

Method

Through the process, SCAPE will work with the key stakeholders to increase the cost effectiveness of water management applications in 6 pilots. In these pilot sites innovative tools and solutions that among other effects reduce flooding, will be tested. In this context, the project will bring together water managers, planners and architects from across the partnership to jointly develop an approach that uses the landscape to cope with water management problems in rural, urban and fringe coastal areas.

In the conventional water management approach measures do not take landscape specific characteristics into account. SCAPE however, wants to build upon the principles of the European Landscape Convention (ELC) to implement a new approach in water management, the so-called Landscape Led Design or LLD.

Output

The main outputs of SCAPE are

• 1 LLD strategy for incorporation of landscape led design solutions in water management
• 1 LLD method that provides landscape led design guidelines for partners/target groups
• 6 pilot sites to validate the use of LLD in different landscapes: urban, fringe and rural