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A new Perspective from the MetaInfrastructure team, titled “Sustained resilience as a unifying property of cities and the built environment”, has been published in npj Urban Sustainability, part of Nature Portfolio.

Led by Professor Stergios-Aristoteles Mitoulis and developed with Nadiia Kopiika, Roberta Di Bari and Sotirios Argyroudis, the paper introduces Sustained Resilience (Σ) as a unifying lifecycle property connecting resilience and sustainability. It captures how cities and infrastructure age, adapt, recover and regenerate over time, moving beyond event-based recovery towards long-term and adaptive resilience assessment.

The work was developed through the Centre for Global Infrastructure Resilience at UCL, MetaInfrastructure.org and BridgeUkraine, with support from the Horizon Europe projects ZEBAI and CLIMABUILD.

STRONGER Horizon Europe success

We are delighted to announce that STRONGER – Strengthening Infrastructure Resilience through EU–Ukraine Research Collaboration has been selected for €1.5 million in funding under the Horizon Europe WIDERA Twinning Programme.

Starting in 2027, the three-year project will strengthen EU–Ukraine collaboration in infrastructure resilience, post-conflict reconstruction, AI-assisted damage assessment, digital technologies and research capacity building.

The project brings together Lviv Polytechnic National University as coordinator, UCL – The Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction, and TU Delft – Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences.

We look forward to collaborating with this outstanding consortium to support resilient reconstruction in Ukraine and strengthen Europe’s preparedness for future infrastructure crises.

We are delighted to announce that Stergios-Aristoteles Mitoulis has been named Professor of Sustainable and Resilient Infrastructure at The Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction, UCL.

Professor Stergios-Aristoteles Mitoulis completed an inspiring research visit across Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing, engaging with leading universities on infrastructure resilience, sustainability, artificial intelligence and future cities.

During the visit, he held discussions with academics at HKUST, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Tongji University and Tsinghua University, exploring new opportunities for research collaboration in sustainable and resilient infrastructure.

A major outcome is the ongoing work towards establishing a joint Centre for Future Cities between UCL and Tsinghua University. Sincere thanks to all colleagues who supported the meetings, discussions and organisation of the visit.

On Friday 3 July 2026 in Chania, Greece, the MetaInfrastructure group held its Away Day, bringing together colleagues, researchers and collaborators to reflect on a highly productive year of academic progress, research growth and international engagement.

The event provided an opportunity to celebrate recent achievements across the group, including major research income, high-impact publications, new academic appointments, successful collaborations, and the continued development of early-career researchers and doctoral students.

One of the highlights of the event was the contribution of three distinguished invited speakers: David Jenkins, ICE President for Australia; Prof William Hynes, Senior Climate Change Economist at the World Bank and Honorary Professor at the UCL Institute for Global Prosperity; and Prof Igor Linkov, Senior Science and Technology Manager at the US Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) and Adjunct Professor at Carnegie Mellon University.

The event also included contributions from Centre for Global Infrastructure Resilience (GIROS) members, who joined the meeting online to discuss ongoing and future research proposals. These discussions strengthened the collaborative links between MetaInfrastructure and GIROS and highlighted shared research interests in infrastructure resilience, climate adaptation, sustainability, artificial intelligence and systems thinking.

We thank all members, collaborators, invited speakers and partners for their valuable contributions and look forward to another year of impactful research and collaboration.

The MetaInfrastructure group had a strong presence at ICONHIC 2026, held in Chania, Greece, from 29 June to 2 July 2026, contributing to the conference through curated sessions, research presentations and an exhibition booth showcasing the group’s work on resilient and sustainable infrastructure systems.

Across the conference programme, MetaInfrastructure members and collaborators organised three curated sessions, focusing on:

• Resilience of ports, transport and interdependent urban ecosystems
• Rethinking wildfire resilience across the wildland–urban interface and critical infrastructure
• From data to decisions: the role of digitalisation in bridge integrity management

In addition, MetaInfrastructure researchers and collaborators presented nine technical papers, covering a wide range of topics including flood-resilient transport embankments, sustainable recovery of war-torn cities, passive ventilation in buildings, port ecosystem dependencies, bridge seismic vulnerability, sea-level rise risk to port infrastructure, wildfire exposure, power-grid recovery and steel reuse supply chains.

MetaInfrastructure also contributed to the Future Cities Forum: Co-Creating Resilient, Equitable, and Adaptive Urban Systems, a roundtable and forum focused on future urban resilience. The session created a space for discussion on how cities can become more adaptive, inclusive and resilient in response to climate, infrastructure and societal challenges.

Throughout the event, the MetaInfrastructure and Centre for Global Infrastructure Resilience (GIROS) booth provided a platform to present the group’s projects, posters, research expertise and team activities. It created a valuable opportunity to connect with researchers, practitioners and partners, and to exchange ideas on climate-adaptive, people-centred and systems-based approaches to infrastructure resilience.

We are delighted to announce that CLIMABUILD – Climate-Responsive, Low-Carbon Pathways for a Resilient European Building Stock has successfully secured €5 million in funding under the Horizon Europe programme, through the HORIZON-CL5-2026-02-D4-03 call.

CLIMABUILD received an almost perfect evaluation score and will run for 48 months. The project brings together an excellent multidisciplinary consortium of universities, research organisations and industry partners to develop climate-responsive, low-carbon and resilient pathways for the European building stock.

The consortium includes leading partners from across Europe, including UCL, The Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction UCL, UCL Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment, University of Cambridge, Brunel University of London, Delft University of Technology, Lviv Polytechnic National University, Forschungszentrum Jülich, Siemens, CORE Innovation Group, R2M Solutions, Penta Comunidad, E2ARC Architecture & Research for Cities, Metabuilding ASBL, insaat, and Fibrobeton.

We look forward to collaborating with this outstanding consortium to support the transition towards a more resilient, sustainable and low-carbon European building stock.

We are pleased to share that Prof Stergios Mitoulis has been featured in the list of 48 Influential Leaders Globally in Structural Engineering, under Category 7: Global Research Leadership and Advancing the Discipline.

The profile recognises his work in climate resilience, sustainability and digitalisation of critical transport infrastructure, alongside his leadership of the MetaInfrastructure and bridgeUkraine initiatives. It also highlights his research funding, publication record and contribution to bridge standards development.