Athens Cooling Havens: climate innovation in District 18

Climate change is felt most acutely in cities: built-up, concrete surfaces heat up, and the summer heat places an ever greater burden on residents. Within the European-scale Athens Cooling Havens project, the InnoK Knowledge Management Institute is working to create genuine cooling points in Budapest's District 18 through the combination of technology and nature.

1. What is Athens Cooling Havens?

Athens Cooling Havens is an initiative funded by the European Union under the European Urban Initiative (EUI), aimed at developing a hybrid, urban cooling system. The goal is to create "cooling oases" that adapt Mediterranean experience to the continental climate in order to ease the effects of urban heat.

The project's implementing organisation is InnoK Knowledge Management Institute Nonprofit Kft., and the location is Budapest's District 18, Pestszentlőrinc–Pestszentimre — which takes part in the project as a "Transfer City", that is, a city adopting and adapting the Athenian knowledge.

2. The two pillars of the cooling system

The solution is built not on a single device but on two complementary technological components:

• Circular water management — collecting and purifying rainwater and other alternative water sources, so that the system uses sustainable, locally available water.
• Smart Cooling — AI-controlled adiabatic cooling that produces a cool microclimate from the collected water in an energy-efficient way.

Together, the two elements form a closed-loop, circular system: the collected and purified water feeds the intelligently controlled cooling, so the cooling points operate with the least possible external resources.

3. International partnership, local implementation

The project is delivered by an international consortium in which each participant plays its own role:

• Athens (Greece) — the source of knowledge, where the proven practice of cooling oases originates.
• Roeselare (Belgium) — partner city.
• Sofia (Bulgaria) — partner city.

Implementation also takes place with the involvement of local residents and stakeholders, since the cooling points have to function in the real urban environment of District 18.

4. The role of InnoK

The Institute's task is research and development, together with adapting the Mediterranean technology to the domestic, continental climate. The concrete steps of the work are:

• on-site studies in Athens, learning about the proven solutions;
• preparing a feasibility study;
• carrying out the legal and technical groundwork;
• knowledge transfer and adaptation of good practices to District 18.

5. The end goal: an investment-ready plan by 2028

The project's concrete outcome is an investment-ready Replication Plan, which must be completed by May 2028. The plan is not a document for its own sake: it casts the local adaptation of the Athenian knowledge into a form that can become a real development — for a more liveable, greener District 18.