The TOGETHER Project successfully held its first Living Lab workshop in Orihuela, Spain, bringing together local and regional stakeholders to explore practical solutions for improving flood resilience, emergency preparedness, and disaster risk governance.
As one of TOGETHER’s Disaster Risk Management Innovation Hubs (DRMIHs), Orihuela provides a unique environment for testing and co-creating solutions to address the growing challenges posed by floods and extreme rainfall events. The Living Lab forms part of the project’s broader effort to ensure that future disaster risk management tools and governance solutions are developed with direct input from those who will use them.
The workshop attracted approximately 30 participants representing a wide range of sectors, including public authorities, emergency management organisations, utility providers, universities, NGOs, healthcare institutions, the Red Cross, and local community representatives. Participants worked together to identify challenges, opportunities, and priority actions across the three key phases of disaster management: pre-emergency, emergency, and post-emergency.
Using a collaborative process based on discussion, SWOT-style analysis, and voting exercises, stakeholders identified several priorities for improving local resilience. In the preparedness phase, participants emphasised the need for stronger public awareness campaigns, improved outreach activities, and better identification and protection of vulnerable populations. During emergencies, the highest-ranked action focused on improving the integration of emergency calls and resource management systems to support faster and more effective response operations. In the recovery phase, participants highlighted the importance of coordinated volunteer management, continued stakeholder collaboration after disasters, and systematic learning from past events.
The discussions also explored opportunities to strengthen coordination between municipalities, improve communication channels, formalise the role of private-sector actors, and enhance the use of decision-support systems for flood forecasting and emergency management. Participants stressed that technological solutions should support decision-makers while remaining transparent, understandable, and integrated within existing governance processes.
The outcomes of the Living Lab are particularly important for the development of the TOGETHER Toolkit, which aims to combine governance solutions and technical capabilities into a flexible framework that can be adapted by different communities across Europe. The toolkit is designed to be context independent to ensure its iteration for different use cases. The workshop provided valuable insight into local needs, operational realities, and barriers to implementation, helping ensure that the project’s solutions remain practical, user-centred, and relevant for disaster risk management practitioners.
By bringing together stakeholders from different sectors and governance levels, the Orihuela Living Lab demonstrates the core philosophy of TOGETHER: building resilience through collaboration, co-creation, and shared learning. The findings will contribute directly to future project activities and support the development of more coordinated and effective approaches to disaster risk management across Europe.
