GRACeFUL · Project

Decision-Support Software That Helps Groups Agree on Climate-Resilient City Plans Faster

digitalPrototypeTRL 4Thin data (2/5)

Imagine you need 8 people to agree on how to redesign a neighborhood to handle flooding and heatwaves — each person has different priorities, budgets, and constraints. Normally you'd run simulations one by one, tweaking parameters for hours, hoping to stumble on a plan everyone accepts. GRACeFUL built software that flips this around: you feed in everyone's goals and constraints upfront, and the tool actively searches for solutions that work for the whole group at once. Think of it like a GPS for collective decisions — instead of wandering, it calculates the route.

By the numbers

EUR 2,404,943

EU contribution to the project

consortium partners

countries in the consortium

total project deliverables

demo deliverables including tool prototypes

industry partner ratio in consortium

The business problem

What needed solving

When cities, utilities, or large organizations need to make complex decisions that involve many parties with competing goals — like planning climate adaptation infrastructure — the process is painfully slow. Traditional tools require endless rounds of simulation, each testing one scenario at a time, while group sessions stall because there is no structured way to capture everyone's constraints and find solutions that work for all sides.

The solution

What was built

The project built a Rapid Assessment Tool prototype (CRUD RAT) that captures multiple parties' objectives and constraints simultaneously and uses constraint programming to search for feasible solutions. They also delivered a Visual Analytics and Exploratory Data Analysis tool prototype for interactive data exploration, plus a testing and verification system to validate the tools — 30 deliverables in total.

Audience

Who needs this

City planning departments managing climate adaptation strategiesWater management authorities balancing flood risk across districtsMulti-party infrastructure consultancies facilitating complex investment decisionsRegional development agencies coordinating cross-border environmental planningEnergy network operators optimizing grid expansion with multiple municipal constraints

Business applications

Who can put this to work

Urban Planning & Municipal Government

enterprise

Target: City planning departments and urban development agencies

If you are a city planning department dealing with the challenge of getting engineers, environmental officers, budget managers, and community groups to agree on climate adaptation plans — this project developed a rapid assessment tool prototype that lets all parties define their constraints simultaneously and finds feasible solutions in group sessions, rather than months of back-and-forth consultations. Built and validated with input from a multi-disciplinary advisory board across 6 countries.

Water & Flood Management

mid-size

Target: Water utilities and flood risk management consultancies

If you are a water management consultancy struggling to model complex trade-offs between flood protection, cost, and land use across multiple districts — this project developed constraint-based modeling tools specifically tested on climate-resilient urban design scenarios. The visual analytics prototype lets you explore data and constraints interactively, replacing tedious trial-and-error simulation with active problem-solving.

Management Consulting & Decision Analytics

mid-size

Target: Consulting firms specializing in multi-party decision processes

If you are a consulting firm that facilitates complex decisions involving multiple organizations with competing interests — this project adapted Group Model Building techniques into software tools that structure and speed up collective agreement. The 8-partner consortium across 6 countries produced 30 deliverables including a tested prototype and verification tools that could extend your facilitation toolkit beyond whiteboards and spreadsheets.

Frequently asked

Quick answers

What would it cost to license or use these tools?

The project was publicly funded under Horizon 2020 (EUR 2,404,943 EU contribution) as a Research and Innovation Action. Pricing is not established — the outputs are research prototypes. Any commercial licensing would need to be negotiated directly with the coordinating university (Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya) and consortium partners.

Can these tools handle industrial-scale, real-world decision problems?

The tools were validated on climate-resilient urban design as a case study, guided by an external advisory board. However, they remain at prototype stage. Scaling to large real-world systems with many parties would likely require further engineering and customization beyond what the project delivered.

Who owns the intellectual property?

IP is held by the 8-partner consortium led by Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya (Spain). Since this was a publicly funded RIA project with no industry partners, licensing terms would need to be discussed directly with the consortium. The underlying research is published openly.

How does this differ from existing simulation or decision-support software?

Traditional tools require trial-and-error: you set parameters, run a simulation, check results, and repeat. GRACeFUL's constraint-based approach lets users define their objectives and limits upfront, then the software actively searches for solutions that satisfy all parties simultaneously. This is a fundamentally different workflow designed for group settings.

What was actually delivered and demonstrated?

The project produced 30 deliverables including a CRUD Rapid Assessment Tool Prototype, a Visual Analytics and Exploratory Data Analysis Tool Prototype, and a Testing and Verification system. These were demonstrated to the external Advisory Board of multi-disciplinary experts who evaluated usability and needs.

Is this ready to deploy in my organization today?

No. The outputs are research prototypes built between 2015 and 2018. There is no evidence of commercial deployment or ongoing product development. Adoption would require significant further development, likely in collaboration with the academic consortium.

Consortium

Who built it

This is a purely academic consortium: 5 universities and 3 research organizations across 6 countries (Belgium, Germany, Spain, France, Netherlands, Sweden), with zero industry partners and zero SMEs. For a business considering adoption, this means the technology was built by researchers for research validation — not stress-tested by real-world users under commercial pressure. The coordinator, Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya in Spain, is a strong technical university, but there is no company in the consortium that could serve as a commercialization partner or provide industry-ready support. Any business wanting to use these tools would need to invest in bridging the gap from academic prototype to production software.

UNIVERSITAT POLITECNICA DE CATALUNYACoordinator · ES
STICHTING RADBOUD UNIVERSITEITparticipant · NL
ASSOCIATION POUR LA RECHERCHE ET LE DEVELOPPEMENT DES METHODES ET PROCESSUS INDUSTRIELSparticipant · FR
INSTITUT MINES-TELECOMthirdparty · FR
STICHTING DELTARESparticipant · NL
KATHOLIEKE UNIVERSITEIT LEUVENparticipant · BE
CHALMERS TEKNISKA HOGSKOLA ABparticipant · SE

How to reach the team

Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya (Barcelona, Spain) — contact through university's technology transfer office

Order a report on this consortium See UNIVERSITAT POLITECNICA DE CATALUNYA profile →

Next steps

Talk to the team behind this work.

Want to explore whether GRACeFUL's constraint-based decision tools could work for your multi-party planning challenges? SciTransfer can connect you directly with the research team and assess fit for your use case.

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