Green infrastructure and in particular green roofs are crucial to meet the challenge of sustainable urbanisation fostered by the current European Research and Innovation agenda. Several documents were issued in the last decades in Europe for regulating the design, construction and up-keep of roof greening. In particular, the actual German guidelines have been widely adopted as a reference basis for green roof design and regulation worldwide, because of its exhaustiveness and proven building- and landscaping tradition.

Nature-based solutions provide a variety of benefits in growing cities, ranging from stormwater treatment to amenity provision such as aesthetics. However, the decision-making process involved in the installation of such green infrastructure is not straightforward, as much uncertainty around the location, size, costs and benefits impedes systematic decision-making. We developed a model to simulate decision rules used by local municipalities to install nature-based stormwater treatment systems, namely constructed wetlands, ponds/basins and raingardens.

Urban parks play a key role in the provision of ecosystem services, actively participating in improving the quality of life and welfare of local residents. This paper reports on the application of an index designed to quantify the allergenicity of urban parks in a number of Spanish cities. The index, which records biological and biometric parameters for the tree species growing there, classifies parks in terms of the risk they pose for allergy sufferers, graded as null, low, moderate or high.

Urban forests represent key elements of green infrastructure and provide essential ecosystem services in both the ecological and social spheres. Therefore, forestation planning plays a decisive role in the sustainable development strategies of metropolitan areas and addresses the challenge of maintaining biodiversity while improving human health and well-being. The aim of this work is to present a methodological approach that can be used to identify priorities in urban forest planning and can provide comprehensive responses to ecological and social needs in any metropolitan context.

In many European cities, urban gardens are seen as increasingly important components of urban green space networks. We adopt an ecosystem services framework to assess contributions of urban gardens to the quality of of their users. First, we identify and characterize ecosystem services provided by urban gardens. Secondly, we assess the demographic and socioeconomic profile of its beneficiaries and the relative importance they attribute to different ecosystem services.

Despite the efforts to control, protect and improve freshwater resources, eutrophication is still one of the main causes for reservoir water quality deterioration. Low-quality raw water reaching water supply treatment plants (WTP) implies an increment of chemical reagents to meet safety requirements, which may also increase the potential of disinfection by-products formation.

Increasing climate change impacts are a major threat to sustainable urban development, and challenge current governance structures, including actors' responsibilities for dealing with climate variability and extremes. The need for distributed risk governance and citizen engagement is increasingly recognised; however, few empirical studies systematically assess interactions between citizens and municipalities in climate risk management and adaptation.

Nature has provided humankind with food, fuel, and shelter throughout evolutionary history. However, in contemporary cities, many natural landscapes have become degraded and replaced with impermeable hard surfaces (e.g., roads, paving, car parks and buildings). The reversal of this trend is dynamic, complex and still in its infancy. There are many facets of urban greening initiatives involving multiple benefits, sensitivities and limitations.

Ecosystem-based approaches for climate change adaptation are promoted at international, national, and local levels by both scholars and practitioners. However, local planning practices that support these approaches are scattered, and measures are neither systematically implemented nor comprehensively reviewed. Against this background, this paper advances the operationalization of ecosystem-based adaptation by improving our knowledge of how ecosystem-based approaches can be considered in local planning (operational governance level).

Societal adaptation to climate change requires measures that simultaneously reduce poverty, protect or restore biodiversity and ecosystem services, and remove atmospheric greenhouse gases. Ecosystem-based adaptation to climate change is the type of adaptation that aims to combine these outcomes and is particularly relevant to developing nations that safeguard most of the planetary biodiversity and healthy ecosystems. Although conceptually new, ecosystem-based adaptation is fastly gaining traction both as a research arena and as an integrated policy instrument.