Twelve work packages moving from stakeholder needs and evidence to assessment, decision support and uptake
The work packages are closely connected. Stakeholder engagement helps define research and decision needs; new evidence, data and models strengthen the assessment of restoration benefits and costs; impact assessments feed into an integrated decision-support tool; and communication, dissemination and exploitation help ensure that knowledge and results can be used beyond the project. Project management underpins the entire process, ensuring that the different strands of work remain coordinated and contribute to the project’s overall objectives.
WP1–3 Stakeholder engagement & policy exchange
WP4–5 Targets, indicators & data
WP6 Models & methods
WP7 Multi-scale impact assessment
WP8 Valuation & decision-support tool
WP9–11 Communication, dissemination & exploitation
Explore the work packages below to see what each contributes to this process, why it matters and what it will deliver.
Lead beneficiary: WWF-SK
Months: 1–18
WP1 establishes the foundation for NatuRISE’s stakeholder engagement and policy exchange. It identifies relevant stakeholders across EU, national and case-study levels and explores their roles, interests, knowledge and decision-making needs.
The work package creates structured opportunities for policymakers, restoration implementers, researchers and other stakeholders to contribute to the development of the project from the outset.
Nature restoration involves different actors, responsibilities and perspectives. Understanding these perspectives early helps ensure that NatuRISE research addresses real decision needs and that its tools and results are relevant to those expected to use them.
WP1 therefore provides the foundation for co-creation throughout the project.
Lead beneficiary: WWF-SK
Months: 19–36
WP2 builds on the stakeholder relationships and insights established in WP1. It works with users to identify the requirements for NatuRISE’s decision-support tool and to co-design its structure and functionality.
The work package also supports knowledge exchange and capacity development around the assessment of the benefits and costs of nature restoration.
A decision-support tool is useful only if it responds to the questions users actually face. WP2 ensures that the future NatuRISE tool is shaped by stakeholder needs and can support both policy-level and implementation-level decisions.
Lead beneficiary: WWF-SK
Months: 37–48
WP3 continues stakeholder engagement and policy exchange during the later stages of NatuRISE. It focuses on bringing emerging results back to stakeholders, gathering feedback and supporting the refinement, validation and uptake of project outputs.
Engagement does not end when research results become available. Feedback from intended users is essential for testing whether findings, tools and recommendations are understandable, relevant and usable in different decision contexts.
WP3 helps connect project results with their potential users and pathways to uptake.
Lead beneficiary: VUA
Months: 1–18
WP4 establishes important foundations for assessing nature restoration. It examines restoration targets and progress, identifies restoration measures with potential to contribute to these targets, and develops a plural valuation perspective for assessing restoration outcomes.
Assessing restoration requires more than measuring ecological change. Decision-makers also need to understand the wider benefits and costs associated with different measures.
WP4 helps establish what should be assessed, how progress can be understood, and which dimensions of value need to be considered.
Lead beneficiary: UL
Months: 1–18
WP5 strengthens the evidence and data available for assessing the socio-economic benefits and costs of nature restoration. It brings together existing knowledge while addressing gaps in areas that are often insufficiently represented in socio-economic assessments.
This includes regulating ecosystem services, cultural and non-monetary benefits, and restoration-related costs and benefits.
Nature restoration can generate benefits for people and ecosystems that are difficult to capture in conventional economic assessments. At the same time, restoration can involve costs, trade-offs and foregone opportunities.
Better data are therefore essential for a more complete and balanced assessment of restoration impacts.
Lead beneficiary: WR
Months: 10–32
WP6 develops and enhances interconnected models for assessing the socio-economic impacts of nature restoration at different scales.
It integrates new data and a wider range of ecosystem services into modelling approaches and strengthens the representation of feedbacks between local, sectoral and economy-wide processes.
Restoration decisions can have effects that extend beyond the location where an intervention takes place. Benefits and costs can emerge across sectors, territories and different points in time.
WP6 helps NatuRISE move towards more integrated and multi-scale assessments of restoration impacts.
Lead beneficiary: IIASA
Months: 18–44
WP7 applies the evidence and modelling approaches developed by NatuRISE to assess the impacts of nature restoration over different time horizons and spatial scales.
It examines impacts across EU and local contexts, including how benefits and costs may be distributed between territories, sectors and population groups.
Restoration choices can produce different outcomes depending on where, when and for whom they are implemented. Understanding these differences is essential for designing restoration measures that are effective and equitable.
WP7 provides the impact evidence that will feed into NatuRISE decision support and policy recommendations.
Lead beneficiary: VUA
Months: 30–45
WP8 brings together the evidence, models and impact assessments developed across NatuRISE and translates them into practical decision support.
It combines monetary and non-monetary information and develops approaches such as social cost-benefit analysis (SCBA) and multi-criteria analysis (MCA) to support comparisons between restoration options.
Decision-makers need to weigh multiple benefits, costs, trade-offs and distributional effects when considering restoration measures. WP8 turns NatuRISE’s analytical work into information that can support real-world decisions.
It is therefore a central link between research evidence and practical decision-making.
Lead beneficiary: POSS
Months: 1–18
WP9 establishes the foundations for communicating, disseminating and preparing the exploitation of NatuRISE results.
It develops the project’s communication, dissemination and exploitation strategy and begins building the channels and resources through which project knowledge can reach different audiences.
Research creates impact only when knowledge reaches the people and organisations who can use it. WP9 ensures that communication and exploitation are considered from the beginning rather than treated as activities that take place only after results are produced.
Lead beneficiary: POSS
Months: 19–36
WP10 implements and further develops the NatuRISE communication, dissemination and exploitation activities as the project moves from research development towards emerging results and tools.
As results become available, communication needs to shift from explaining the project to helping users understand, access and apply its knowledge and tools.
WP10 supports this transition and strengthens pathways towards uptake.
Lead beneficiary: POSS
Months: 37–48
WP11 focuses on communicating NatuRISE’s mature results and strengthening their potential for continued use beyond the project.
It supports the final dissemination, communication and exploitation activities and consolidates the project’s pathways towards longer-term uptake.
The end of the funded project should not be the end of the knowledge and tools it produces. WP11 helps establish the conditions for results to remain accessible, visible and useful after the project concludes.