Co-creating multi-scalar climate services tailored to the needs of multiple sectors in Crete, Greece

Climate and water related disasters impact multiple sectors across a wide range of spatial and temporal scales. There is a need to develop Climate Services (CS) that can meet the short and long-term needs of multiple sectors to build resilience against hydro-climatic disaster risks from droughts and water scarcity, floods, landslides, heatwaves, and windstorms. These risks are projected to increase in the future due to climate change and anthropogenic pressures.

This work presents a case study of co-creation of multi-scalar CS for the Island of Crete, Greece. A co-creation process was designed and executed under I-CISK, an EU funded project (work in progress), to generate climate services that support a multi-sectoral approach towards the tourism sector, by addressing the needs of multiple users and sectors (tourism; water allocation and reservoir management; transportation infrastructure) at the scales which serve both operational (seasonal forecasting) as well as long-term planning needs (decadal projections). Essential to the co-creation process was the bringing together of key players in the CS value chain (providers, purveyors and end users), and the active contribution of a Multi-Actor Platform (MAP), which was composed of members representing policy makers; business and industry; academia and research; and civil society organisations from the sectors addressed.

The co-creation experience revealed a varying nature of needs, perceptions and knowledges attributed to target end-users involved. A combination of joint meetings of the MAP members as well as individual meetings with single sector users was essential in understanding these differences alongside of reducing knowledge and capacity gap among key stakeholders. The role of purveyor (case study leader in this case) was found to be pivotal in holding meaningful exchanges between CS providers and end-users and successfully executing the steps of the co-creation process, such as outlining CS needs/desires and co-designing of the CS. The resulting multi-scalar CS seamlessly integrate global data (e.g., from ECMWF and EU’s Copernicus programme) and local knowledge (e.g., end-user decision-process approach, climate thresholds which trigger responses and historical data) to design CS that combine variables and indicators to cater for the needs of multiple sectors and users across the spatial and temporal scales relevant to them. Moreover, we showcase the salient features of the three co-created CS. Multi-sectoral approach both addresses the complexity of climate change impact on an economic sector as well as increases awareness over the aspects of interrelated impacts and the need of holistic approach towards adaptation planning, among key stakeholders from multiple sectors. The co-created CS demonstrate potential for further development and uptake underpinned by stakeholder’s feedback from application experience in Crete. The findings and experience presented in this work can be instructive for developing multi-scalar climate services in Greece and other countries.