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Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - CLARITY (Integrated Climate Adaptation Service Tools for Improving Resilience Measure Efficiency)

Teaser

Summary

CLARITY (www.clarity-h2020.eu) objective is to support the integration of Climate Change Adaptation measures within urban infrastructure planning and design processes. The project aims to provide an operational eco-system of climate services to calculate the expected effects of Climate Change-induced hazards on urban areas and transport networks, including what-if decision support functions to investigate the effects of adaptation measures and risk reduction options in the specific urban infrastructure project context. Four demonstration cases in Italy, Sweden, Austria and Spain will show the potential of CLARITY climate services in relation to different hazards and urban infrastructure project type.
CLARITY CSIS (Climate Services Information System) supports end-users in getting an overview of the climate-change related risks and relevant adaptation options for their projects. The results of this screening can be saved as PDF or printed and used as a part of the project documentation. Based on screening results, the CLARITY Marketplace (https://myclimateservices.eu/en/h2020/clarity-marketplace) informs the users about the relevant â€œExpert servicesâ€ they could/should consult for detailed planning and implementation of the adaptation options that are relevant to their project. Such expert services can be either online or offline and can be offered either by CLARITY experts or by the third parties. In this way, the CLARITY service users can minimize the cost and efforts required to perform an adequate adaptation planning, while also maximizing the visibility of the relevant expert offers and streamlining the communication.

Work performed

The stakeholders of the four CLARITY Demonstration Cases include public officials and national to local administrations representatives, practitioners in the field of urban planning and design, local communities covering the â€œClimate Service Customer perspectiveâ€ and the data/models purveyors and service providers that represent the â€œClimate Service Supplier perspectiveâ€ in the overall co-creation process. To engage with stakeholders, different participatory methods were used: (1) DCs User Stories and CSIS mockups; (2) meetings and workshops organized by the project, as well as dissemination activities; and (3) end-user workshops to develop a knowledge-sharing and co-design process about Clarity CSIS and expert services.
So far (M18), the data needed for the screening service has been identified and partially integrated in the CSIS resulting in an initial â€œproof of conceptâ€ of the tool. In parallel, Expert services for the four Demonstration Case (DC) areas in Austria, Italy, Spain and Sweden have been co-designed with local stakeholders in a series of end-users workshops, and first tests and simulations are underway. The main progress of the DCs include the full definition of modelling workflows and the completion of related data collection activities (including metadata), as well as the definition of relevant urban infrastructure projects to be tested in the 4 DCs.
Clarity methodology has been developed according to the IPCC-AR5 approach, which reconnects the climate risk/impact modelling to the more consolidated modelling framework from Disaster Risk Reduction domain. The AR5 report has explicitly recognized the relevance of a risk-based approach to determine climate change impacts, by adopting the well know relation R = H x E x V, where Hazard (H), Exposure (E), and Vulnerability (V) represent the key aleatory variables to take into account.
The microclimate (â€œlocal effectâ€) assessment at urban/district scale, represents a major challenge of the project, which aims to deliver this kind of information at a pan-European level, mainly using open data (e.g. Copernicus, Eurostat). Microclimate effects for Heat Wave and Flooding hazards in European urban areas are calculated through ad hoc simplified models which exploit the available datasets. Specific algorithms have been designed for extracting detailed information on the â€œBase layersâ€ used by such CLARITY Urban Microclimate Simplified Model. These represent key parameters related to the urban morphology (terrain, vegetation, building density, etc.) land use (residential, industry, transport network, open spaces, etc.) and surface type (e.g. albedo, emissivity, green fraction, runoff coefficient, etc.). The exposure of Elements at risk (e.g. population, buildings, infrastructure, etc.) and their classification in vulnerability classes is likewise derived at European level, from existing open data.
For each element at risk/vulnerability class, specific vulnerability functions are being defined. Adaptation options are connected to the impact model, thanks to their ability to reduce local effect intensity (e.g. reduced heat through green cover increase) and/or vulnerability of elements at risk (e.g. protection of groundfloors and basements of buildings from flood), as well as to modify the exposure (e.g. by modifying the spatial distribution of elements at risk).

Final results

The potential of identifying the expected impact on urban infrastructure of short-, to mid- to long-term climate change scenarios including the effects of urban microclimate variability represents a major innovation in the field of urban Climate Change Adaptation modelling. Extensive studies and IT developments have been conducted to adapt the models available in literature with the major public data sources at EU level, exploiting the most recent systematization efforts conducted in this sense by various EC Agencies, including Copernicus, Eurostat and the JRC-DRMKC. Hazard data from future climate models, with a typical resolution of 10-12 km in Europe (Euro-CORDEX) are refined by generate a local hazard layers mesh with a resolution of 500-500 m overlapped on the European urban areas covered by GEOSS and/or statistical information.
The typical CLARITY user workflow from the initial Screening to Expert Services and Marketplace, is designed to facilitate the identification, uptake and integration of adaptation measures within urban infrastructure projects, limiting the burden of data collection activities and simulations from the user side, going beyond generic urban adaptation guidelines, and providing a solution tailored to the specific settlement and project context.