Project SHIELD: An Initiative Aimed At Strengthening Climate Resilience In Small Island Communities

Climate change is no longer a distant environmental concern. For island communities such as Malta and Gozo, it is already reshaping coastlines, infrastructure, tourism patterns, and long-term economic planning. Rising sea levels, coastal erosion, flash flooding, and increasing pressure on infrastructure are becoming interconnected challenges that require more multidisciplinary approaches to risk assessment and resilience planning.

Against this backdrop, Project SHIELD (which stands for Socio-economic and Hazard Intelligence for Exposure and Layered Data) has emerged under the leadership of Gabriella Borda, Charles Galdies and Charlene Darmanin as an ambitious research initiative rethinking how climate-related exposure is assessed locally. Focused on the coastal village of Marsalforn in Gozo, the project combines artificial intelligence, geospatial analytics, computer vision, and community participation to create an integrated climate exposure framework capable of supporting more