Transdisciplinary Knowledge Production for Integrated Climate Risk Management: Application of a Framework in the Dutch Urbanized Delta

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.