A new project (SpongeWorks) worth 15 million euros, funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe programme, will launch in September 2024. The goal of the project is to keep safeguarding the health of the European landscapes, with a focus on water retention and storage, thereby preventing floods and drought. Researchers at the faculties of Engineering Technology (ET) and Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences (BMS) of the University of Twente (UT) will conduct research into stakeholder collaboration, amongst other things.

Europe is heating up twice as fast as the rest of the world. Extreme weather conditions are becoming increasingly acute. Since 1980, floods in Europe have caused over 4,300 casualties and over 170 billion euros in economic damage. An important factor determining whether these costs will be limited or aggravated in the future is the health of European landscapes and their capacity to retain and store water. Although natural solutions are increasingly accepted as a sustainable approach to improving the resilience and water retention capacity of landscapes, there are still major obstacles on the road to largescale application.

The UT researchers, led by Dr. Ir. Joanne Vinke-de Kruijf, focus on a number of concrete questions. Which tools and methods contribute to finding and implementing solutions that are effective, integral and fair? How can parties work together in creating sponge strategies at landscape scale? The DesignLab at UT coordinates the collaboration between the project partners and other stakeholders in the Dutch-German Vecht river basin.

SpongeWorks: Co-creating and Upscaling Sponge Landscapes by Working with Natural Water Retention and Sustainable Management
For the Dutch contribution, Vechtstromen Regional Water Authority, Deltares and UT are working together with international project partners on the question of how you can bring about major changes to improve the resilience of ground-water, soil, and surface water systems at the landscape scale in the interests of both humans and nature. The project implements a variety of ‘sponge’ measures, ranging from different types of agricultural and general management practices and the creation of hedges, buffer strips and infiltration ponds, to the restoration of rivers and peatlands and the rewetting of forests, floodplains and grasslands. These measures will be evaluated for their ability to improve soil health and natural water retention, prevent erosion and replenish aquifers. UT researches the extent to which current governance structures allow for the implementation of these measures, which new collaborations and actions may be required, and which tools and methods can best be used for this. In the research project, UT focuses on the German-Dutch Vecht river basin and on river basins in France and Greece.

SpongeWorks, which consists of a consortium of 28 partners, is coordinated by Leibniz University Hannover (Germany) and Deltares Nederland. Its activities include the implementation of scientific knowledge in three largescale demonstration projects. The river basins are located in France (Lèze), Greece (Pinios) and on both sides of the border between the Netherlands and Germany (Vecht).