The making of policies coping with Global Systems is a process that necessarily involves stakeholders from diverse disciplines, each with their own interests, constraints and objectives. People play a central role in such collective decision making and the quest for solutions to a problem generally intertwines its very specification. Simulators can assist in this process provided they employ adequate high-level modelling to separate the political question from the underlying scientific details. Domain-specific Languages (DSL) embedded in Functional Programming (FP) languages offer a promising way to implement scalable and verifiable simulators. But the use of simulators is essentially a trial-and-error process too tedious for execution in a group session. A paradigm shift is needed towards active problem solving where stakeholders’ objectives can be taken along from the very beginning. Constraint Programming (CP) has demonstrated to enable such a shift for e.g. managed physical systems like water and power networks. This project lays the base for a DSL aimed at building scalable Rapid Assessment Tools for collective policy making in global systems. This can be achieved through foundational scientific work at different levels: from the high-level, political modelling, adapting the social discipline of Group Model Building (as used in business organizations), through visual forms of CP as well as gamification aspects, down to the needs for a host language, combining CP and FP. Special emphasis is put on domain-specific constraints, constraint composition, and composable solvers and heuristics. Results are applied and validated for the problem case of Climate-Resilient Urban Design, but the ambition is a general framework applicable to many other systems. The case study is assessed by an external multi-disciplinary Advisory Board of Stakeholders that guides the specification process and evaluates needs and usability of the tools.

Europe’s critical infrastructure (CI) is at risk of failure due to natural hazards and rapid climate change, which can lead to major physical and economic damages. Existing methods for climate risk analysis are not tailored to the complexities of CI: they do not properly account for systems interdependencies, while also still containing key data gaps. Public authorities urgently need tools to pinpoint the risk-prone areas and to develop affordable adaptation strategies to enhance CI resilience. The mission of the Multi-hazard Infrastructure Risk Assessment for Climate Adaptation (MIRACA) project is to catalyse and empower the implementation of adaptation measures for CI throughout Europe. The MIRACA Consortium will develop an evidence-based decision-support toolkit, consisting of (i) a guidance on technical and economic appraisal of adaptation strategies, (ii) a technical decision-support workbench and (iii) an online interactive viewer. These will be based on a multi-hazard climate risk assessment framework that employs advanced new methods of data acquisition, which will fill critical gaps in knowledge of the vulnerability and costs of CI. New model capabilities will be developed to fully appraise the benefits for people and businesses of climate-resilient infrastructure systems. We will demonstrate, validate, and promote the uptake of MIRACA’s research and innovation through five use cases. They cover a variety of locations, infrastructure types and natural hazards, and will allow public authorities and CI managers to test the effectiveness of adaptation solutions and to identify robust adaptation strategies. To propel transformative change, our methodologies will be made available through open-access datasets, model codes and online interactive visualisations. The toolkit will be implemented across Europe, most notably in regions and communities that are currently not well-prepared against future climate change and still confronted with data scarcity.

Climate change increases the frequency and severity of extreme weather events, such as storms, heatwaves and droughts. Such events can have devastating societal impacts, and it is becoming increasingly clear that the most impactful disasters are often the result of a complex interplay of multiple physical and societal drivers. Climate attribution, which examines the causal links between extreme events, natural variability, and anthropogenic climate change, can help to unravel this complexity and thereby promote societal preparedness and awareness for climate change impacts. The COMPASS project aims to develop a harmonised, yet flexible, methodological framework for climate and impact attribution of various hazard types. COMPASS will go beyond the current frameworks by bridging the gap from the attribution of single-driver extremes to the attribution of more complex extremes (that is compound, sequences and cascading hazard events) and enabling a shift from a hazard-centred analysis to an impact-centred perspective. Main novelties include event-based hazard and impact modelling using a multi-scale approach, the use of weather type analysis for better understanding the physical drivers that give rise compound extremes, and the use of contextualized storylines to communicate attribution results. The framework will be validated and applied to a set of use cases that cover historical extremes for various hazard types and impact context as well as extreme events happening during the project. COMPASS will lay the scientific foundation for the operational deployment as part of the Copernicus Climate Change Services. The project will create a modular and scalable framework for on-the fly analysis, and thus transferable to other extremes and regions. To promote uptake of the project’s results, data, methods and tools will be made openly available, a web-based demonstrator will showcase the results of the use cases, and clear guideline for attribution will be developed.