BhENEFIT - Built Heritage, Energy and Environmental-Friendly Integrated Tools for the Sustainable Management of Historic Urban Areas
BhENEFIT is a project funded by the EU within the regional cooperation programme ‘Interreg-Central Europe’. The Municipality of Mantova is the leading partner of a consortium of 13 partners from 7 different European countries, which will work together for the next 30 months to develop a toolbox of integrated systems for the sustainable management of historical urban areas. The project has kicked off in Mantova, where all the active partners, plus 1 observer partner and the official representatives of the programme gathered in July 2017.
The project, whose total budget is of 1.850.795,95 Euros, has the objective of make work together all the actors that daily deal with urban areas with a specific historical, artistic and cultural relevance, involving them in the development of an integrated package of innovative softwares, that help to improve the management of these areas.
The program has 4 specific objectives:
- to promote a sustainable management of historical urban areas, monitoring the interaction between cultural richness preservation and eco-friendly development;
- to define a common approach amongst all the partners for the management of these areas, as a baseline to improve governance, technical tools and the ability to involve local communities in the decision-making process;
- to improve the decision-making and managing processes efficiency, through monitoring and assessing, risk prevention, environmental sustainability, conservation and re-use;
- to increase public stakeholders involvement (national, regional and local public bodies) and private (experts of sorts) and increasingly involve local communities through the creation of Local Support Groups.
Some numbers: the project unfolds in 30 months, during which it will develop 6 working tools, within 6 pilot actions in 6 different geographical areas. The project is divided into 4 areas of activity (improving governance, developing tools, capacity building, communication) and all in all it will produce 27 technical outputs. There are 14 training activities to which, in addition to all the project partners, also professionals and experts of the field will be invited to attend. Project works and outputs are regularly monitored and revised through 6 periodical reports.
Internal and external communication foresees some more activities and materials, to raise public and private stakeholders’ awareness and involvement in the project, as well as of the local communities.