In Europe, climate change is projected to increase damage to infrastructure from extreme weather events ten-fold by the end of the century’ (Forzieri, et al., 2018). As aging infrastructure fails and extreme weather events increase in intensity and frequency, it is critical that future planning not only plan climate resilient but ‘Climate-First’. This means integrating nature (blue-green solutions) with man-made techniques (grey solutions) from the very beginning of the process.
But the lack of clear standards for rapidly assessing and evaluating the value brought by ‘nature-based solutions’ (NBS) when compared to conventional methods has left those responsible for development (municipalities, developers, water utility companies) overwhelmed and unable to clearly communicate and argue for investment in a climate resilient solution. We conducted a wide-scale interview that included stakeholders involved in the full planning process and identified three common trends that were barriers in implementing NBS. In response to the extreme weather events that ravaged Europe in 2011, three key events led to the establishment of a research-based and praxis-tested ‘formula’ for getting from concept to acceptance when planning the climate adapted city: the creation of the Copenhagen Cloudburst masterplan, participation in two Blue-Green Infrastructure research projects and the current involvement in the EU 2020 ‘RECONECT’ project for nature-based solutions.  In the subsequent real-world application of the formula’s methodology, we established a software collaboration platform Green Scenario to truly simplify the planning of climate resilient places. Based on a combination of data-driven, evidence-based solutions, software combined with human expertise provides the optimum medium for addressing the complexity of planning livable cities. Through a series of project examples, we will reveal how Green Scenario provides a basis for the digital evolution of planning based on the analogue experience of building and co-creating e climate resilient solutions.