Living Lab Wremen welcomes international visitors from 12 different countries at the North Sea coast
October 16th 2026 Wremen, Wurster Nordseeküste, Germany: A day of learning, exploring and exchanging across projects, disciplines and cultures.
It is the beginning of the storm surge season at the German North Sea coast, when an international group of coastal scientists and practitioners came to visit the Living Lab Wremen.
The Living Lab is part of the project METAscales within the current DAM research mission mareXtreme and also became a Beacon Site member of the Coastal Resilience Hub, an international community of established and locally-managed coastal resilience sites.
For the 30 international guests, who travelled to Wremen, the excursion marked the conclusion of a three-day kick-off meeting in Bremen for BEACONSplus, a new EU-funded research and innovation project coordinated by the Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Research (ZMT). The project aims to help coastal communities on both sides of the Atlantic to adapt to climate change and strengthen their coastal resilience. Bringing together 15 partner organisations from Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Ghana, Ireland, Italy, South Africa and the United Kingdom, the consortium includes research institutes, universities, civil society organisations, and local government networks. The project has received €6 million in funding and runs from 1 July 2026 to 31 December 2029.
In Wremen they were welcomed by scientists, practitioners and community members from the METAscales Living Lab. Wremen is one of two Living Labs within METAscales (the other one is Nordstrand), where local communities, academia, practitioners and administration come together to jointly tackle the challenge of dealing with place-specific marine natural hazards. The living labs generate actionable knowledge and test potential solutions in real-world environments, all with the aim of enhancing the resilience of coastal communities.
The day in Wremen started at the Visitors Centre with an introduction of the region, background information about the project METAscales and insights into processes and results of the Living Lab. Following this, the group was taken out into the field by regional practitioners to explore the coastline and learn about and experience two key subjects of the region - technical coastal protection through dikes and nature conservation/restoration in the foreshore area. This involved a stop at an exposed dike location and the operational head quarter of the dike association and was followed by a hike through an area of a planned large-scale salt marsh restoration in the Wadden Sea National Park.
The visit was a huge success and marks a milestone of international exchange and collaboration of transdisciplinary coastal resilience projects and coastal communities around the Atlantic and the North Sea.
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