Forest fires are exacerbated by extreme weather conditions, which are increasing both in frequency and in magnitude due to climate change effects. This points to the need for improving the effectiveness of emergency management solutions aimed to help society in becoming more resilient to emergencies arising before, during and after forest fire events. Therefore, it is proposed to realize a comprehensive Emergency Management System (EMS) that we name SAFERS: Structured Approaches for Forest fire Emergencies in Resilient Societies. SAFERS will act along the key phases of the emergency management cycle, coupling information from EO data and services offered by Copernicus and GEOSS, crowdsourced data from social media and from specific applications that can be used by both citizens as well as from in-field professional agents, data generated by accurate sensors to detect smoke or fires. Advanced algorithm based on Artificial Intelligence will be used to generate risk maps and early warnings in the preparedness phase, estimate the forest fire extension and its propagation in function of the forecasted weather and soil conditions in the response phase, compute the impacts of an extinguished fire in terms of economic losses and monitor the soil recovery in the post-event phase.

The "Pilot Application in Urban Landscapes - Towards integrated city observatories for greenhouse gases" (PAUL) project supports the European Green Deal by creating capabilities to observe and verify greenhouse gas emissions from densely populated urban areas across Europe. Cities are recognized as important anthropogenic greenhouse gas emission hotspots and therefore play a significant role in any emission reduction efforts. The PAUL project aims to increase our understanding of specific needs of greenhouse gas emission assessment in urban environments; it compares available and novel observational approaches and implements an integrated concept for a city observatory, providing unique data sets that feed diverse modelling approaches, scientific studies and will be the base of services towards the city administrations. A specifically innovative approach is the co-design of services, models and observations between city administrators and scientists from multiple disciplines including social and governmental sciences.The PAUL co-design approach will explore the needs of the cities and combine these with the scientific outcomes. This allows to introduce smart services to the cities, supporting evidence-based decisions on climate action and strategic investments. Overarching goals of PAUL are to: 1) implement elements of a pilot city observatory in a large (Paris), a medium (Munich) and a small (Zurich) European city, 2) collaborate with city stakeholders and engage citizens in co-designing services that are required for GHG monitoring in order to validate the implementation of Paris Agreement, and 3) increase our understanding of specific needs of GHG assessment in urban environments and create a service portfolio for setting up an urban greenhouse gas observatory.

Planet Earth faces unprecedented environmental changes that will affect all members of society. Arctic climate warming is more than twice the global rate and unpredictable extreme events cause major impacts on ecosystems and people. However, the Arctic atmospheric circulation causes extreme events and societal damage beyond the Arctic which need international research and monitoring to understand and predict. Furthermore, attitudes need to be changed throughout the world through outreach while the next generation needs to be equipped to live in a different world. INTERACT III innovates a pan-arctic network of 86 research stations in 16 northern countries to provide a fully integrated, advanced infrastructure now able to meaningfully address major societal challenges and provide services for 155 global and regional networks. Furthermore, the global reputation of INTERACT has attracted world-leading partners and enterprises to participate in reducing the impacts of hazardous change while maximizing the opportunities arising from new technologies. Specifically, INTERACT III provides comprehensive coordination of 64 partners and 86 research stations. The station managers design best practices to ensure excellent research, monitoring, education and outreach. INTERACT III builds on an extremely successful transnational access program that has already populated the Arctic with 900 researchers to further provide excellent science while reducing the environmental footprints of researchers through improving remote and virtual access. The access transnationality ensures new collaborations, innovative science and science diplomacy at a time of heightened geopolitical tensions. Station managers, transnational access and joint research activities cooperate to address major societal challenges in a fully integrated infrastructure while their data and understanding are made globally available through exceptional outreach and education and policy briefings to decision makers.

The Global Stocktake, and the success of the Paris Agreement, hinges on the information nations provide about their emissions through National Greenhouse Gas Inventories (NGHGIs). Current methodologies laid-out by the IPCC for reporting emissions are generally built around the use of statistical data and emission factors. Although they are designed to be transparent, they can have significant uncertainties owing to incomplete or inaccurate information. The 2019 refinement of the IPCC Guidelines highlights the need for independent verification of NGHGIs especially using atmospheric observations. However, the technical complexity and the hitherto limited resolving power of atmospheric constraints makes it challenging for NGHGI compilers to adopt this type of verification. EYE-CLIMA will address this need for independent verification by developing observation-based methods (using both satellite remote sensing and ground-based observations) to a level of readiness where they can be used to determine emissions at national and sub-national scales and for verification of NGHGIs. The methodology involves using process-based and data-driven models to simulate GHG fluxes, first without atmospheric observations, then these fluxes are then combined with models of atmospheric transport and chemistry to assimilate atmospheric observations, which are used to correct the first flux estimates. Through engagement with stakeholders, i.e., NGHGI compilers, EYE-CLIMA, will develop flux data products for CO2 (LULUCF sector), CH4, N2O, and emissions data of F-gases (SF6, HFC-23, HFC-143a, HFC-125, HFC-134a, HFC-32) and black carbon (BC), which will be tailored to their needs. The fluxes will be attributed to natural versus anthropogenic sources, and for the latter, to source sectors that can be compared with groups of IPCC sectors in NGHGIs. The methodology for the atmospheric inversions and how to use these for verification of NGHGIs will be described in best practice guidelines.

ENBEL will support EU policy making by bringing together leaders in climate change and health research. We do so by coordinating a network of major international health and climate research projects under the Belmont Forum’s Collaborative Research Action (CRA), Societal Challenge 1 and 5 of EU’s Horizon 2020, and other national and international funding schemes. The network will develop evidence syntheses and co-produce with stakeholders a series of tailor-made knowledge products. The project will engage with EU policy advisors to translate science into policies that help shape low-carbon economies and build climate resilience in member countries while supporting EU diplomacy and development strategies. The overall concept of ENBEL is a bottom-up approach to networking and cooperation across the often separate worlds of climate and health research communities. This can have major impacts on knowledge production and policies. ENBEL brings together a consortium whose work generates actionable knowledge on how climate change-health risks will develop under global warming, what are the social costs and effective, cost-efficient and equitable mitigation and adaptation strategies. ENBEL focuses on three major climate change related health hazards: environmental and occupational heat, air pollution (particularly from wildfires) and climate-sensitive infectious diseases, with specific attention given to high risk groups and populations within Europe, and in Africa/Asia-Pacific region. ENBEL will support a knowledge management platform of EU funded research on climate change and health is two ways: A) build and manage a web-based knowledge platform of health impact of climate change by using innovative tools such as video, photos, maps and infographics; B) connect to existing and recognised knowledge platforms.Through our partners in low-and middle-income countries (LMIC), ENBEL will support, strengthen and establish channels for collaboration and capacity-building in LMIC.