Lessons learnt from triple-A climate services co-development and applications in 7 European cities

REACHOUT (Home - Reachout)  is a H2020 research and innovation project aimed at ‘bridging the last mile in climate service delivery’ by developing user-oriented climate services. It responds to a call, issued by the EC as part of the Green Deal to enhance climate-service uptake across Europe.

 

A suite of 18 existing and new tools has been compiled into a web-based toolkit (triple-a-toolkit.eu, Triple-A Toolkit - Reachout).  In addition to analysis tools for vulnerability and risks, it consists of tools that support adaptation action and as a new element also tools that support the setting of ambition for adaptation and urban resilience. Hence, a ‘Triple-A’ approach (Analysis; Ambition; and Action) was established, supported by climate service tools. The ambition setting step was added to shift the lens of from prevention of risks, often leading to incremental adaptation, to promotion of positive change, allowing better for transformational adaptation. It is defined as a policy process that entails developing visions coupled with identifying goals and actions working towards the visions.

 

The triple-A toolkit covers tools for heat and different flood hazards, social vulnerability, tools for identifying opportunities for adaptation, selecting appropriate options, designing pathways and several ‘soft tools’ to build capacity for adaptation.  Some of them build upon the EU-climate service infrastructure, such as Copernicus. For most of them additional local data are needed. To improve the uptake of the services municipalities, climate service providers and scientists were brought together in seven city hubs that served as living labs to co-develop and test a set of improved services in three consecutive development cycles.

 

The toolkit is accessible for resilience officers, urban planners, consultants  world-wide in a user friendly manner. The use of combinations of different tools, covering analysis, ambition setting and action planning for different adaptation policy questions has been presented  in 6 demonstrators: i) support dealing with floods in a fast growing city; ii) facing the heat in large cities; iii) Prioritizing locations to implement nature-based solutions; iv) approaches cities can use which are in their early stages of adaptation; v) How can just and resilient urban development be combined?; and vi) Climate risk assessments for institutional and real estate investors across Europe. Each demonstrator shows how tools and climate data can be applied to support these questions and presents lessons from the city hubs Amsterdam, Cork, Logrono, Gdynia, Lillestrom, Milan and Athens.

 

The presentation will introduce the project legacy and share main lessons from the project with respect to climate service development and deployment for further discussion. In brief we find that to effectively reach the "last mile" of climate services, we must work from both ends: a top-down approach driven by EU-level data infrastructure, and a bottom-up approach based on local and national data provision. The brokerage function (experts) is key in this process as well as the maturity of the cities capacity to utilize the outcomes of the climate services. Not only the services itself asks for co-development but also the triple-A process that they ought to support.