UMaNS—Urban Metabolism for Advanced Nature-Based Solutions—develops an integrated framework for assessing how urban ecosystems contribute to resource use, wellbeing and climate resilience. The project addresses a gap between urban-metabolism accounting, which often concentrates on material and energy flows, and ecosystem-service assessment, which focuses on the benefits generated by ecological systems.

The doctoral research extends economy-wide material-flow accounting by linking pressures and drivers to ecosystem-service supply and demand. It applies and tests this framework in Lima, London and Brussels, combining urban resource accounts with spatial and ecological indicators. Scenario modelling explores how urban growth, climate change and policy choices may alter the relationship between metabolic demand and ecosystem-service provision up to 2050.

UMaNS provides the methodological foundation for several later strands of the Lab’s nature-based-solutions research. By placing ecosystem services inside a dynamic metabolism framework, it makes it possible to assess both biophysical contributions and distributional gaps. The work therefore supports planning that considers where nature-based interventions are needed, which services they provide and whether their benefits reach populations facing the greatest resource and environmental pressures.