MED-GOLD Living Lab 2020: the story of an online training event

The H2020 MED-GOLD Living Lab ”Turning climate information into value for traditional Mediterranean agri-food systems” was implemented as a solution to deal with the coronavirus pandemic and the resulting travel restrictions. Originally planned as a summer school in Cagliari in Italy, this training event was held online over five weeks between May and June 2020. This work describes the main features of the MED-GOLD Living Lab 2020, including the necessary steps and the strategy adopted to turn the originally planned physical summer school into an online event. 

The MED-GOLD Living Lab 2020 was dedicated to early career scientists and professionals in the areas of climate science, agriculture, economy, social sciences and communication. The Living Lab has been conducted as an on-line event for five weeks, from May 25 to June 25, with weekly interactive webinars by speakers across different disciplines and on-line working groups with multidisciplinary teams, supported by scientists from the MED-GOLD experts as mentors.

Participants have been challenged by real users of climate information to develop prototype climate services for the agri-food sector, building on the knowledge and skills shared during the event.

Early career scientists and professionals with a wide range of individual profiles have been encouraged to apply and join the multidisciplinary teams: climate scientists, agronomists, software developers (R, Python), economists, social scientists, communication and visual communication experts.

The purpose of the Living Lab was to demonstrate to the participants the MED-GOLD concepts and methodologies to develop climate services as well as become familiar with climate data and tools made available through the Copernicus Climate Data Store (CDS).

An online feedback form was distributed to participants in the last day of the living lab. Overall the feedback received was very positive with all respondents stating that they would recommend this living lab to others. The majority of respondents were positive about the overall content, design and delivery of the living lab. 

However, the interactive aspects of the Living Lab could be further improved not only to ensure that the interactions between participants (e.g. to pursue their work group are effective but also in terms of ensuring that the time at which the living lab runs fits with participants’ own commitments. Potential ways of overcoming these could be to e.g. allocate a specific slot during the living lab programme for group work as well as to identify specific dates/time slots to run future living labs together with participants.

The majority enjoyed the opportunity to engage with real-problems and stakeholders, working in multidisciplinary teams and engaging with experts in climate services.

Taking into account the circumstances of the COVID-19 emergency and based on the feedback by the participants, the Living lab was a  successful experiment that could be replicated and further enhanced for the second training event, MED-GOLD Living Lab 2021 planned for late spring 2021.