On April 23, 2026, the online workshop «FORWARD Stakeholder Workshop_1: OPEN SCIENCE AND URBAN RESILIENCE IN WAR-AFFECTED REGIONS: CHALLENGES AND PATHWAYS FOR SUSTAINABLE RECOVERY» was held on the Zoom platform. The event was implemented with the support of the European Union the . It brought together over 100 representatives of the academic community, experts, and stakeholders from various fields across Ukraine, Norway, Italy, Palestine, and other countries, including APP. The main topics discussed during the workshop included open science, water management, food security, energy resilience, housing and protection, and gender equality.
At the beginning of the workshop, the FORWARD project coordinators presented the overall concept and objectives of the project, as well as the results of an online sociological survey conducted in March 2026, in which 200 respondents participated (108 from Ukraine and 92 from Palestine). After that, participants split into two breakout rooms, where specialists from Ukraine and Palestine separately discussed issues relevant to their respective countries.
In the Ukrainian breakout room, the general discussion was moderated by representatives of V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University. The discussion began with the topic of «Water Management». This section was moderated by a representative of APP, namely the Head of the Department of Urban Planning and Design, Yuliya Idak. Within this thematic block, Associate Professor of the Department of Urban Planning and Design Yaryna Onufriv presented an analysis of the sociological survey results and, using the example of the city of Lviv, demonstrated the natural and urban planning features of the city’s water framework, outlining the main challenges related to water supply and wastewater management. The discussion then expanded to other Ukrainian cities. In particular, Liudmyla Shvets, Associate Professor at the Department of Urbanism and Urban Planning of O.M. Beketov National University of Urban Economy in Kharkiv, shared the experience of Kharkiv as a frontline city facing numerous challenges and threats due to military actions.
The discussion then moved to the topic of “Food Security,” where it was noted that under wartime conditions, Ukraine’s food system is shifting from efficient centralized supply chains to a fragmented, localized survival model. Another key topic was “Energy Resilience,” which is critically important for Ukraine’s security today. This section was moderated by representatives of Kyiv National Economic University named after Vadym Hetman, who invited external speakers, including Oleh Harnyk, an expert in public (municipal) services and infrastructure at the Analytical Center of the Association of Ukrainian Cities, and Hennadii Riabtsev, a leading Ukrainian energy expert, chief research fellow at the National Institute for Strategic Studies, and professor at NaUKMA and the European Humanities University. The invited experts emphasized the need to develop a network of distributed electricity generation across Ukrainian communities.
The discussion then addressed the topic of “Housing and Protection,” highlighting that under wartime conditions, Ukraine’s housing sector is experiencing not only physical destruction but also a systemic breakdown of the entire housing provision model. Invited external experts Vitalii Dmytriuk, head of the charitable organization «Way of Ukraine», and Valentyn Boyko, a monitoring and evaluation specialist of the Caritas charitable network in Kharkiv, shared their perspectives.
At the end of the general discussion, Olena Muradian, Dean of the Faculty of Sociology at V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University, summarized the main outcomes of the workshop and outlined general conclusions and further tasks related to implementing these results within the project in Ukraine.
