Project Summary

Recent extensive building infrastructure practice resulted in paving large soil surfaces with impervious materials, which caused uncontrolled flooding in many areas and valuable biodiversity rich areas lost their connections, migration paths, etc. Tourism risks are also common in the region due to significant changes in seasonal tourist concentration. Moreover, climate change increases the frequency of extreme natural events which leads to a loss in biodiversity and causes economic damage. Already existing initiatives and strategies in the Adriatic Ionian region and beyond, recognize green infrastructure needs and nature-based solutions as key components for generating green and blue paths in rural and urban areas, with the purpose to increase biodiversity, ensure sustainable water collection and management, provide migration paths for animals and create socially acceptable areas to assure well-being. Nevertheless, this kind of approaches often stay sketchy as there is a lack of mimicking natural processes (which are visible for example in Natura 2000 sites) , thus often missing the target goal as they do not offer sufficient balance between sustainability present in nature and its transferability to human (artificial) environment. Thus, biomimetic architecture or Biomimetics comes into play. Such practices emulate models, systems, and elements of nature for the purpose of solving complex human problems. It is a practice that learns from nature and natural habitats, thus emulating regenerative solutions of living organisms in order to solve human design challenges. It proposes that by infusing biological strategies in design, we can transform sustainable innovation by at the same time embodying (re)connect and ethos elements. Therefore, the BIOMIMICRY project envisions to fill these gaps between green infrastructure and emulation of functional strategies found in nature by bringing relevant knowledge, raising awareness among target groups, developing strategies and action plans and testing basic measures on sight through pilot activities to push forward biomimicry applicability in the Adriatic Ionian region and as such using it as a measure to prevent biodiversity loss. The project aims to connect participating countries in research of habitats in Adriatic-Ionian region to find effective and innovative biomimicry solutions for designing environments that contribute to biodiversity protection and restoration. The BIOMIMICRY partnership consists of 8 partners from 6 countries (2 from Italy, 1 from Slovenia, 2 from Croatia, 1 from Serbia, 1 from Montenegro and 1 from Bosnia and Herzegovina). The solutions and policy instruments developed will help public authorities on local, regional and national level to encourage the use of biomimicry-inspired principles in development processes and urban planning. The focus of the project enhances not only green infrastructure integration into rural and urban landscapes but the integration of biomimicry principles while doing so. The project is keen to stress the importance of mimicking natural processes in anthropogenic landscapes to ensure adaptation to climate change, revitalization of landscapes, long-term stability and sustainable development. To undertake feasible measures and accomplish viable results, during the BIOMIMICRY project, a strategic framework for the development of biomimicry-inspired habitat design solutions in rural and urban areas will be formed. Furthermore, the strategy will be utilised through site-specific biomimicry-inspired solutions for biodiversity protection and restoration in five pilot sites in Macerata, Čakovec, Rakičan, Žabljak and Campitelli, where each will be addressing their specific biodiversity protection and restoration measure, such as providing efficient green infrastructure for pollinating insects, creating temperature control and water collection system or developing biomimetic solutions to ensure recirculation of water and avoid loss of wetland habitats. As a result, an interpretation of biomimicry-inspired habitat design solutions in biodiversity conservation will be developed in a form of online biomimicry tool and a foundation of ‘biomimicry-inspired’ verification award.