FUTURESILIENCE: Boosting EU Resilience via Policy Research & Innovation

FUTURESILIENCE is an EU-funded project that enhances Europe's societal resilience by strengthening the capacity of policymakers and local actors to respond effectively to multiple types of crises, including climate change, migration, financial instability, and urban planning challenges. The project addresses a critical gap between research and innovation (R&I) findings and their practical application in policy design by facilitating the fast and effective use of policy-relevant R&I evidence at national, regional, and local levels. The core innovation involves establishing 'Future Resilience Labs'—multi-stakeholder experimentation spaces where evidence-based strategies are tested and refined to match specific local contexts and needs. The project conducts 10 pilot exercises: three pre-identified pilots focusing on climate change, migration, financial crisis and urban planning, and seven additional pilots selected through an open call process. During experimentation, multiple stakeholders including policymakers, practitioners, researchers, and community representatives discuss and test tailored strategies aimed at reducing vulnerabilities and increasing preparedness for multiple crisis types. FUTURESILIENCE produces two key deliverables: an openly accessible Knowledge Base documenting successfully tested research findings with high capacity to inform policy actors, and a Toolbox of methods for testing policy-relevant research findings. The consortium brings together expertise in resilience science, R&I policy, crisis management, and co-creation methodologies, enabling rigorous translation of academic insights into actionable policy instruments. By mapping existing European R&I findings and testing policy design through multi-stakeholder experiments, the project creates a replicable framework for evidence-based policymaking that can be adapted across different crisis domains and governance levels. The initiative recognizes that effective resilience requires not only scientific understanding but also institutional capacity to rapidly integrate new knowledge into decision-making processes.