Climate change increasingly impacts the built environment through rising sea levels, intensifying heatwaves, and frequent extreme weather events, especially in low-lying, densely populated countries like the Netherlands. Despite growing urgency, current climate risk management strategies are rather individuated by firms, and siloed across sectors. A lack of shared, accessible knowledge on climate risks to real estate and infrastructure hinders coordinated, transparent, and integrated decision-making. This highlights the need for structured transdisciplinary approaches that foster collaboration between researchers and practitioners to co-produce knowledge and develop integrated adaptation solutions. This article introduces a novel framework to facilitate transdisciplinary knowledge production for integrated real estate and infrastructure climate risk management. Using a mixed-method approach, the framework is developed through a literature review on transdisciplinary research and further evolved by incorporating practice-based empirical insights and collective experiential learning gained during its application within the Red&Blue (Real Estate Development and Building in Low Urban Environments) case study. The framework comprises four interconnected phases: (1) knowledge elicitation through a three-layer stakeholder engagement and impact plan, (2) knowledge exploration by combining the institutionalized logics theory and AI-supported techniques, (3) knowledge integration, and (4) knowledge transformation. Applying the framework to the Red&Blue case study reveals that effective transdisciplinary knowledge production requires not only a structured process but also an adaptive, and iterative approach. Key enablers include sustained stakeholders engagement, safe-space dialogue, conscious knowledge integration, and integrative leadership. These elements foster trust, improve communication, and support the co-creation of actionable and transferable knowledge to address complex climate risk and sustainability challenges in urbanized built environments in the Netherlands and beyond.

Background: Real estate, infrastructure, and related urban systems are increasingly exposed to the physical impacts of climate change, threatening both their durability and societal stability. Today the understanding of urban climate risks and their management is emerging but incomplete, highlighting the need for collaborative, integrated, and transparent approaches. However, existing collaborative approaches do not often lead to practical and actionable solutions, exposing a gap in expertise on how to co-create truly integrative approaches in a landscape of fragmented knowledge. Method: This article introduces an integrated approach to transdisciplinary knowledge production on urban climate risk management, using the case of the Red&Blue programme (Real Estate Development and Building in Low Urban Environments). This research-intensive knowledge programme in the low-lying Dutch urban delta was co-created by diverse disciplinary researchers and cross-sectoral practitioners, including financial institutions. Here, the authors reflect on three key “how” questions concerning programme co-creation with stakeholders, the organization of the collaboration process, and capacity development for reflection on insights in transdisciplinary cooperation. Results: Preliminary findings over the last two-and-a-half years of the programme highlight key challenges in transdisciplinary cooperation. To address them, the authors stress the need for creating safe and open spaces for stakeholder dialogue, where diverse cooperation strategies help build shared vocabularies, enabling stakeholders to jointly define, identify, and analyze multidimensional climate risk issues and potential adaptation solutions. Conclusion: The integrated approach presented in this article offers a preliminary model and means to build integrated knowledge on climate risk management and related sustainability transitions in the built environment.

Klimaatverandering zorgt tal van nieuwe risico’s voor gebouwen en infrastructuur. Het in kaart brengen van deze klimaatrisico’s is in volle gang, maar de betrouwbaarheid van de beoordelingen die hieruit volgen laat te wensen over en dit maakt de handelingsbasis beperkt. Dat concludeerden de experts die deelnamen aan de eerste Focal Point Meeting van het Red&Blue-programma over klimaatadaptatie.