The Water Resilience Experiment (WRE) is a design-driven participatory initiative investigating water-related issues in Europe at the local and national levels.

The project, stemming from the collaboration between the Joint Research Centre and the Directorate-General for Environment of the European Commission, has been implemented by the EU Policy Lab starting 2024, with the support of five innovation labs, including the Design Policy Lab of the Department of Design.

The initiative’s overall goal has been to provide the next mandate of the European Commission with evidence at the local scale regarding water-related topics to address the priorities of the EU Green Deal. Starting from the assumption that water policies demand a cross-cutting and implementation-focused approach, the WRE intended to investigate the topic of water and its issues through the perspective of European local actors. The process followed an interdisciplinary, participatory and design-oriented process of research and public consultation.

The five innovation labs involved have used a design approach and their engagement capacity to tap into the local knowledge of their networks for each national context (Lithuania, Portugal, Denmark, Croatia, Italy). Each lab was free to co-define the water-related topic of inquiry with its own local network and the more apt research methodology.

The Design Policy Lab of the Politecnico di Milano, one of the five labs involved in the Water Resilience Experiment, decided to develop a policy case study about water management in times of climate change.

The Milanese case study has been based on stakeholders’ narratives in Milan’s urban/peri-urban context — particularly connected to the Municipality of Milan’s Food Policy Area, which supported this work. The work done together with the stakeholders shed light on an existing system of institutional and human capabilities already operating on the water in a “climate resilience” perspective in Milan. The insights deriving from WRE activities in Milan were self-published by the Design Policy Lab in a policy case study format, outlining action points for designing climate-resilient water management in European cities to guide future interventions by the European Commission and inspire other local authorities about how to tackle future water-related issues, likely to increase due to climate change.