Projects

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TRANSCEND – Transformational and Robust AdaptatioN to water Scarcity and ClimatE chaNge under Deep uncertainty

TRANSCEND is a project funded by HORIZON Innovation Actions whose main area of research is the identification of Transformational Adaptation Policies (TAP) to water scarcity. TAP will be implemented in 7 labs: Júcar River Basin (RB) (Spain); Reno RB (Italy); Tympaki RB (Greece); Nitra RB (Slovakia); Caplina-Mauri-Desaguadero RB (Peru, Chile & Bolivia); Orontes RB (Lebanon, Syria & Turkey); and Mahanadi RB (Indian states of Chhattisgarh & Odisha). TRANSCEND will leverage this diverse set of demonstrators to initiate adoption of the ecosystem of innovation in 8+ inspiration labs, train 160+ transformation agents, and mainstream uncertainty analysis in key national and European Green Deal strategies. This will provide the knowledge and tools to catalyze robust and systemic transformations to water scarcity and climate change globally, with a clear impact pathway towards TAP adoption in 100+ basins by 2030.


UNDERPIN: oUtcome iNDicators to mEasuRe Progress on climate resIlieNce

UNDERPIN is a project funded by HORIZON Europe Research and Innovation actions in support of the implementation of the Adaptation to Climate Change Mission (HORIZON-MISS-2022-CLIMA-01). UNDERPIN addresses critical gaps in monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL) for climate adaptation across Europe. UNDERPIN is going to review existing climate adaptation and disaster risk reduction (DRR) indicators and integrate novel data sources, including Earth observation and citizen science. As well as, involving stakeholders in three pilot regions to cocreate and refine the framework, ensuring practical relevance and adaptability. A user-friendly dashboard with AI and machine learning tools will provide real-time analysis at the EU and regional level, helping decision-makers track progress, identify gaps, and make data-driven decisions. A citizen science and just climate resilience lens is used throughout the different activities of UNDERPIN. By aligning with EU and global reporting standards, such as the EU Adaptation Strategy and the UNFCCC, UNDERPIN is going to harmonize climate adaptation monitoring across governance levels, fostering a coordinated approach to resilience-building in Europe.


UNITES: Uncertainty Integration for a Transition in Energy and Sustainability

Geopolitical and socio-economic uncertainties are putting the European and Global energy transitions at stake. These deep uncertainties affect the analytical assessments underpinning energy and climate policies. For example, the models used to inform energy planning rely on uncertain forecasts and assumptions for future energy demands, macroeconomic indicators, social acceptance, fuel prices, technology costs, and climate scenarios. Due to fundamental methodological, computational, and data challenges, this uncertainty is at best rarely considered in energy planning, which increases the risk of failing to meet our urgent climate targets. This makes accounting for uncertainty one of the major unsolved problems in energy planning. UNITES addresses these limitations to enable a new paradigm for long-term energy planning. In contrast to current approaches, which try to accurately predict the future, UNITES’ ambition is a systematic integration of uncertainty in energy-climate models.


UPTAKE: Bridging current knowledge gaps to enable the UPTAKE of carbon dioxide removal methods

UPTAKE aims to facilitate the sustainable upscaling of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) methods by developing a set of robust strategies through technical, theoretical, and practical analysis accompanied by interactive dialogue within a CDR stakeholder forum. As a result, UPTAKE will develop a harmonised, comprehensive, inclusive, integrated, and transparent CDR knowledge inventory to evaluate a wide range of CDR technologies and methods, quantifying their national, European, and global costs, effectiveness, and removal potential as well as risks, constraints, and side-effects at different scales, and their prospects of technological progress. The UPTAKE approach will allow the assessment of geographical, sectoral, socioeconomic, demographic, and temporal trade-offs, co-benefits, and opportunities emerging from portfolios of different CDR methods. The enhanced socio-technical understanding of CDR methods will feed into an ensemble of state-of-the-art integrated assessment models (IAMs), which will help improve the integration of CDR methods given the EU policy objectives set for 2030, 2050, and beyond climate neutrality. UPTAKE will assess CDR governance and policy frameworks considering social acceptance, accountability, monitoring, and regulations for sustainable CDR rollout at scale. As a result, UPTAKE will generate an open and interactive CDR roadmap explorer to investigate strategies that are resilient to risks of failure and disruption, and minimise adverse impacts on society, economy, and the environment, aiming for a just, inclusive, and sustainable transition.


WeatherGenerator

The project will build the WeatherGenerator – the world’s best generative Foundation Model of the Earth system – that will serve as a new Digital Twin for Destination Earth. The WeatherGenerator will be based on representation learning and create a general and versatile tool that models the dynamics of the Earth system based on a large variety of Earth system data. The WeatherGenerator will be task-independent and will improve results for a wide range of machine learning applications when compared to task specific machine learning tools. It will also be more resilient for climate applications when the underlying data distributions are changing, and it will lead to a significant reduction in computational costs and faster turnaround times. To achieve this, the project will: (1) Collect and use the most important datasets of Earth system science including data from Digital Twins of Destination Earth, selected observations, analysis and reanalysis datasets, and output of conventional Earth system models. (2) Build the WeatherGenerator as a novel representation learning- based machine learning tool that exploits the full potential of Europe’s largest supercomputers. (3) Engage with the wider community via services and apply the WeatherGenerator for 22 selected applications that can be integrated into the Destination Earth framework. The applications include global and local predictions, local downscaling, data assimilation, model post-processing, and impact applications in the domains of renewable energy, water, health and food. The project consortium that will build the WeatherGenerator consists of experts in machine learning, supercomputing and Earth system sciences, and includes

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