ClearClimate is aimed to create an International, Interdisciplinary, and Intersectoral (“3-i”) for creative scholars with strong theoretical and practical skills, needed to tackle the major challenges of the Climate Information Services (CIS) development. The focus will be on developing staff and partner skills in the areas of user-centred design and behavioural science coupled with improved computational techniques which in turn will offer more appropriate and efficacious CIS solutions. The researchers will upgrade their “soft skills” that will enable them to transfer effectively their knowledge to the productive world, thus fostering the European market to create innovation. These will result from a close partnership between the academy, providing the researchers with up-to-date training and knowledge on cutting-edge research on targeted multidisciplinary topics, and a group of industries, who will complete the competencies of the ERs and ESRs by exposing them to practical and real-life challenges in CIS development. The main domains of interest of the ClearClimate project lie in the interconnected areas of climate change and climate extremes, data visualization, decision sciences, communication, accessibility, eye tracking research methodology and visual attention models, and XAI, which are the most relevant disciplines for the development of the frameworks for effective CIS. Secondments, soft skills training, exploitation of scientific results, dissemination, and public engagement, play also a central role in this network since they are designed to promote the dissemination of excellent research and diffusion of innovation in Europe. The creation of such an international, cross-sectoral, multidisciplinary, and life-long network of ERs and ESRs, trained across sectors in an innovative way, will direct Europe to strengthen its international R&I.

The EU Member States should step up their climate change adaptation efforts alongside their intensifying mitigation efforts. Next to and in conjunction with physical and organizational measures, that directly reduce climate change risks, insurance and related risk sharing solutions have an important role to play. Innovative insurance solutions and risk sharing are crucially needed to incentivize adaptation efforts, in terms of both volume and effectiveness, while also directly contributing to building more resilient societies. The PIISA project aims to develop and deploy a range of insurance innovations that incite households and firms to adapt proactively and sufficiently for their own sake and their neighborhood’s sake. PIISA also incites public authorities to set up adaptation and create adaptation promoting conditions. PIISA co-develops climate resilient insurance portfolios and develops solutions for sharing losses and climate risk data. The PIISA project matches scientifically underpinned new insurance concepts with hands-on demonstration of their operability, effectiveness, and acceptability. Extensive user involvement, contextual sensitization, affordability and viability are key features of the new products. The choice of new product developments and sectoral applications will be based on a careful analysis of the adaptation and insurances gaps and their interactions, as well as on deepening product-market feasibility analyses. PIISA focal sectors are agriculture, forest sector, and cities and citizens’ well-being, involving a host of climate enhanced hazards such as floods, droughts, forest fires, biotic risks, and various types of storms. The consortium counts 12 partners from 5 countries. PIISA involves 3 insurance companies who will actively participate in the insurance pilots conducted in 8 countries, also using their vast multi-million customer base.

Agriculture is the foundation of the livelihoods of billions of people worldwide, including African rural and urban households, farming communities, and cities. However, weather and climate risks have increased, creating a need for better access to climate and weather information, soil water management, insurance, and other climate-agricultural services. Although some services exist, they are often separated and follow a top-down information provision that operates on a national scale. SAFE4ALL aims to address the interconnected issues of climate change, food security, ecosystem and disaster management, and migration in Africa by providing user-centred climate services. It will innovate and bundle affordable, and scalable services that include location-specific information to meet the needs of end-users in Kenya, Ghana and Zimbabwe. Three co-creation case studies will be organized in these vulnerable African countries, engaging with small-scale farming communities, municipalities, and cities. SAFE4ALL will coordinate efforts from governments, civil society, academia, and international organizations to mobilize the capacity of end-users, build food security and resilience, promote sustainable agriculture, and provide social safety nets to affected localities. Specific objectives include establishing a collaborative, co-creation, and engagement platform for the prioritization and co-development of needs-based climate services, identifying adaptation challenges, requirements, and enabling factors and complementing policies in adapting to the wider socio-economic environment, and exploring and harnessing existing services to improve the uptake and effectiveness of climate services and develop sustainable business and implementation models for services. The outcomes aim to manage migration to cities by ensuring that communities are better equipped to adapt and cope with the impacts of climate change while enhancing food security in a rapidly changing world.

REACHOUT will advance Climate Services for urban environments in 7 City Hubs across Europe, developing adaptation strategies integrated in climate resilient urban development. Our climate services will be tailored, visualized and presented in attractive climate story maps. In a series of City Hub workshops, we build up the narratives through engagement with municipalities within the region, citizens and the private sector. Not reinventing the wheel we implement an approach based on proven success in many cities across the world. The underlying Triple-A approach has been successfully applied in the Dutch National Spatial Adaptation program reaching most municipalities in the Netherlands. We will enrich and improve the Triple-A approach unlocking the potential of EU datasets and tools established by earlier H2020, Copernicus, GEOSS & JRC activities. We will improve existing tools and services through an agile development process, enhancing relevance by including possibilities for crowd sourcing and engagement of citizens and private sector. City Hubs apply the toolkit and provide the platforms for co-creation. EU wide upscaling is achieved through a City Hub approach and through connection to national and EU service platforms. C40 and R-Cities networks strengthen outreach and upscaling towards hundreds of cities world-wide. Our private sector partner APG is one of the world?s largest pension investors, responsible for the management of 560 billion euros in pension funds for 4.7 million participants. APG manages assets in five of the seven City Hubs. REACHOUT brings together a highly experienced transdisciplinary team with comprehensive knowledge on climate change adaptation and climate services, experience in working in cities. Our consortium will bridge the last mile and engage citizens and the private sector through active participation, building capacity and fostering collective action towards ambitions, addressing climate-related vulnerability.