© TiCCA4DANU – Burgas, Bulgaria – 27 January, 2026
With the Black Sea as backdrop, Burgas Municipality has officially launched its first workshop series on Transformative Innovation for Climate Change Adaptation (CCA) at the City-Region Level, jointly implemented by VDI/VDE-IT and Vienna University within the TiCCA4Danu framework.
Facing increasing climate pressures — including heat waves, heavy rainfall, river flooding, wildfires and coastal erosion — Burgas is taking a proactive and systemic approach to adaptation. The municipality aims to position itself as a regional pioneer by strengthening cross-departmental cooperation, enabling innovative framework conditions, and fostering the development of new cooling solutions, nature-based measures, and climate adaptation technologies and business models.
The inaugural workshop brought together 25 representatives from municipal and district administrations in a structured co-creation process. Through collaborative design sessions, participants developed three initial Local Green Deals tailored to Burgas’ climate challenges. These focus in particular on public-private cooling measures to address urban heat stress and targeted interventions to reduce river flooding risks. A key institutional outcome was the proposal to establish a District Mayors Forum on Climate Change Adaptation, creating a permanent coordination platform for the 13 neighbouring district municipalities. The Forum will support strategic alignment, knowledge exchange, and joint development of adaptation measures across the wider region.
The process will continue on 23 April, when TiCCA4Danu will convene 13 local municipalities, quadruple helix stakeholders (public authorities, academia, industry and civil society), as well as institutional partners from neighbouring Turkey in an “Open Discovery Workshop”. The objective is to co-design innovative and scalable CCA measures for the broader Burgas District and strengthen transnational cooperation in the Danube and Black Sea region.
With this initiative, Burgas demonstrates how city-regions can translate transformative innovation approaches into concrete climate adaptation action.
© TiCCA4DANU
