Activities, Organisation and Co-operation

Our target group consists of future city managers, urban planners, civil engineers, climate and social workers, i.e., of stakeholders of the future sustainable and resilient Smart Cities. Although Smart Cities are already connected in an intricate network, their future stakeholders need better education; better understanding of socio-environmental indicators and more active promotion of sustainable nature-based solutions.

URSA MAJOR is organized in four activity work packages following the logic of Smart City nexus across different climate and social stratifications; the list includes: a review of urban sustainability barriers and challenges; the “Arctic Frontiers” conference; activities with the Pan-Eurasian Experiment (PEEX); the online MOOC (http://www.mooc.no) course development; innovative digital communication tools with extended reality; field work and training; super-computer modelling; innovative remote sensing analysis utilizing EU COPERNICUS climate services. It synchronizes education and research with the actual needs of stakeholders through co-production meetings. The project coordination and management will be predominantly web-based. URSA MAJOR involves 4 Norwegian and 4 other institutions abroad.

The cooperation includes not exclusively: the Bjerknes Center for Climate Research, the research school for Climate Dynamics (via NERSC/GFI); Arctic Frontiers conferences and the FRAM center in Tromsø; the Nansen Society (via NERCI/NERSC); the Russian profiled higher education programme 5-100 – the 5 Russia Universities into the top 100 in the world (via TyumGU); the EU project +CityxChange (Positive City ExChange) – a smart city project by NTNU; Future-oriented Digital Learning Tools cooperation (via SINTEF Digital). It involves 8 leading persons and 6 principal participants with 50% share of females. The project activity will extend the Belmont Forum international activity. The Table below summarizes our activities.