The BGD project will develop a large community of stakeholders through the core partners and national clusters. The clusters are integrating a large number of “blue” and “green” stakeholders, which have not had much interaction before. The project includes multidisciplinary teams from academia, consultancy, municipality services, decision makers, local governments, museums, charities and NGOs. There have also been a significant number of interactions with existing projects (RainGain, Smart Urban Water, OASIS, OPAL, SMARTesT, and TVGEP). BGD has attracted a range of both existing KIC members and non-members. For example the UK national cluster is already partnering with the Royal Horticultural Society which has over 180,000 members. By involving highly reputable international companies consulting on environmental issues and SMEs with specific expertise in target areas from the 4 partner countries, business opportunities and job creation will be developed to tackle Climate-KIC priority areas.
To begin with, through the development of 4 full-scale demo sites and the involvement of local ecosystem service providers, as well as the relevant organizations such as Royal Horticultural Society, a huge dissemination mechanism is already generated and will be enhanced throughout the project. The French cluster alone involves 192 businesses related to green technologies and sustainable cities, including 13 world-leading companies, over 200 laboratories of the top schools and universities, and a significant number of highly specialised private research facilities. New core and affiliated KIC members being recruited through the BGD project activities. Initial activities have already started to create interest in several regional BGD clusters in Europe, Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, South East Asia and Australasia.
