Today, municipalities face the challenge of having to manage multiple complex transformation processes simultaneously and across departments – ranging from climate adaptation to mobility transition to the provision of affordable housing. While the predecessor project, ProGiS, provided a framework for identifying socio-ecological situations, ProGiS 2.0 focuses on practical implementation: The ProGiS Index is upgraded from an analytical assessment tool to a practical decision-support system and integrated into routine municipal operations.
ProGiS 2.0 aims to enable local administrations not only to identify urban development and climate adaptation measures spatially, but also to prioritise, justify and systematically document them in a standardised manner. To achieve this, the project team validates the ProGiS methodology in additional municipalities in the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and adapts it technically so it can be easily integrated into existing administrative processes – for example, through the automated generation of area reports, traffic-light logic, or AI-supported data management.
In close collaboration with local municipal stakeholders, e.g. from the city of Oberhausen, the researchers develop and test specific use cases to ensure that the project results can be directly integrated into planning, funding, and decision-making processes. The aim is to produce a field-tested "ProGiS Product Portfolio NRW" that can serve as a transferable blueprint for municipalities of various sizes.
The project’s particular added value lies in closing the gap between data availability and the concrete implementation in municipalities: by providing a standardised, transparent decision-making framework for coordinating environmental, health, urban development, and social planning efforts, the project helps strengthen socially equitable and effective climate adaptation in municipalities – and make it scalable across the whole of North Rhine-Westphalia.