A Methodology for the Systematic Analysis of the European Climate Services Landscape

Society is experiencing the increasingly frequent and severe impacts of climate change and natural climate variability, and needs to prepare. In response to that, European (and non-European) research institutions, private companies, policymakers, funding bodies, and other stakeholders, are becoming more and more concerned about the importance of having quality climate information for supporting decision-making. In this sense, climate services are a key element for adaptation to and mitigation of anthropogenic climate change.

Information relevant in the climate services field includes both quantitative data (e.g. measurements of climate variables, uncertainty, etc.) and qualitative data (e.g. stakeholders’ contexts, topics of interest, etc.). Qualitative data refers to non-numerical, descriptive data that captures information, characteristics, or attributes of a phenomenon, allowing for a deeper understanding of certain topics. The increased volume of available qualitative data, together with the advances in computational social sciences in the latest years, have revolutionized the way society is studied. Computational methods can assist in uncovering, for example, themes, patterns, insights, and relationships.

This poster presents the application of a computational approach for the systematic identification, collection, storage, and analysis of social sciences data and information, in this case related to the field of climate services. The objective is to understand the current landscape of climate services in Europe, and the stakeholders involved, in order to build an equitable community encompassing providers and users of climate services.

Various sources of information related to the provision of climate information and services exist. In this use case, we have focused on examining the EU-funded projects (number of projects, funding programmes and topics, participating institutions, etc.) related to climate services and climate information that are listed in CORDIS (the European Commission's platform on the results of projects funded by the EU's Research and Innovation framework programs).

In addition to the methodology used, some preliminary results obtained from the analyses are shown, illustrating the evolution in the number of these projects, which has recently been growing, as well as the institutions involved by country and type of organization. We believe that these results can be a good indicator of the importance being given in Europe to climate services as tools to support communities, organizations, and institutions in adapting to climate change and variability.

This is valuable information for the Climateurope2 project (which aims to support the community of climate services and develop recommendations for standardizing them) as it allows the identification of potential already existing projects and institutions that Climateurope2 could engage with. It also indicates where more emphasis needs to be placed on communicating the importance of climate services for decision-making.