Climate change is one of the most pressing issues affecting our regions today. Yet many European regions are not well informed on the present and future risks climate change poses in their territories. The CLIMAAX project aims to tackle this by granting access to the right tools and materials to carry out accurate Climate Risk Assessments (CRA) in their regions. On 23 and 24 January project partners gathered in Delft, The Netherlands to meet project partners and outline the project’s priorities during its first phase.
Scope of the project
CLIMAAX (CLIMAte risk and vulnerability Assessment framework and toolboX) is a Horizon Europe-funded project that brings together a total of 19 project partners who will combine their efforts to ensure that European regions improve their resilience to the effects climate change poses by financially, practically and analytically supporting them in creating their Climate Risk Assessments over a period of 48 months.
Background
In times when the effects of climate change are increasingly apparent, experience shows the consequences of fragmented climate risk readiness in Europe. It affected early warning mechanisms during floods in Germany and Belgium and it exposed regions in South-Eastern Europe to limited evacuation opportunities and emergency response, for example.
Therefore, regions must have up-to-date and context-specific Climate Risk Assessments to formulate climate change adaptation and emergency response plans.
Project Activities
Therefore, CLIMAAX aims to help European regions, communities, and cities to better understand, plan for, and manage climate risks by granting regional and local authorities access to climate risk profiles, enhanced early warning systems and guidance on creating all-encompassing and context-specific risk management strategies.
CLIMAAX will do so by co-designing a methodological framework to assess the impact climate change poses and its effects in European regions by comparing existing frameworks together with the responsible authorities. CLIMAAX aims to launch this multi-risk assessment methodological framework and Toolbox to support regions’ increased awareness and preparedness for climate risks.
The methodological framework will be extensively tested by five participating pilot areas. These five Climate Risk Assessment pilots consist of two city regions Setubal, PT, Zilina, SK and the regions and communities of Latvia, Finland and Catalunya.
The Climate Risk Assessment methodological framework and toolbox will include algorithms that adapt the current multi-hazard early warning systems to the change of frequencies and intensities of climate and weather events. Furthermore, by using the methodological framework and toolbox, the participating regions get access to climate change impact data from the JRC Risk Data Hub and Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) among many other sources.
In total, 50 regions will be selected to test the CIMAAX framework and toolbox and become part of the community of practice. These regions will receive funding in the form of lump sum payment to conduct a Climate Risk Assessment based on the CLIMAAX framework and toolbox.
EURADA’s role
EURADA has a prominent role in the project and will naturally involve its members as many of them have close relations with their respective administrations. EURADA’s secretariat will be mostly involved in the open call for regions to participate in the creation of Climate Risk Assessments based on the developed CLIMAAX framework and toolbox and the consecutive development of the community of practice. Finally, EURADA will provide support to the participating regions by serving as a help desk and giving tailor-made assistance and organising informative webinars.
Future steps
The consortium consisting of 19 highly motivated partners dedicated to fulfilling the project’s aims will create a dedicated website and social media channels shortly. Stay tuned for more information available on the EURADA website on how to become a pilot region. In the meantime, please feel free to ask the questions that you might have the project officer responsible for this project jip.lenssen(at)eurada.org.
