Project

Catalysing capacities in Climate risk reduction

OUTCOMES

OBJective 1

Introduce a standardised Decision Support Dissemination System (DSDS) for risk and vulnerability assessment that leverages and enhances existing capabilities, leading to a fully integrated multi-hazard platform.

OBJECTIVE 2

Create a suite of comprehensive AI-based products, building on operational EWS and insights from MedEWSa’s four paired twin pilot sites, that bridge areas with different climatic and geographic conditions but similar hazardous events, to deliver innovative forecasting and impact assessment services.

OBJECTIVE 3

Build on existing, patchy, and fragmented technologies to deliver a service covering vulnerable areas in Europe, the Mediterranean, and Africa allied continuous monitoring of multiple hazards. The service will be validated and operational at a TRL6-8 by the end of the project based on tools developed from the project’s four twin pilot sites.

OBJECTIVE 4

Use technological breakthroughs in Big Data including extreme values and model assimilation, combining advanced artificial intelligence (AI) and explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) with local and regional expertise, complemented by mapping methods and risk transfer solutions.

OBJECTIVE 5

Deliver critical and targeted information on climate-related hazards and risks to a wider audience, leveraging innovative societal support and outreach, enabling effective early warning and deployment of validated interventions and risk reduction strategies at regional, national and international levels, and at local levels in partnership with Red Cross and Red Crescent national teams.

The State of the ART

work packages

WP1 Project management

WP1 will

provide maximum visibility in coordinating relevant administrative, technical and innovation activities;
produce a quality assessment and monitoring plan for MedEWSa;
ensure compliance with the project contract, description of work, quality plan, and related ethical issues;
plan and facilitate communication and interactions within the consortium;
produce reports on project progress and ensure the effective use of resources for realizing project activities, and
ensure MedEWSa achieves full interaction with the Innovation Action (DRS-01-06) on funding & financing mechanisms related to disaster risks.

WP2 The MedEWSa DSDS: Enhancing the response capacity at multiple levels

WP2 aims to

set the basis of existing DS systems in a EuMeA level;
design and deliver decision support systems tailor-made for different types of users, addressing both FRs for real-time DS and policy makers for high-level best practices planning;
deliver co-designed and tailored mechanisms for swift and accurate reaching of different types of audiences before and during events;
implement and integrate dissemination services as essential functioning components, and
integrate all related services into a multi-hazard platform.

WP3 Innovative multi-hazard forecasts and impact assessment services

WP3 aims to

explore existing data and information from SoTA operational EWS, which are aimed to characterise, estimate and predict single- and multi-hazards, and integrate relevant exposure and vulnerability data;
use AI to handle the complexity in terms of quantitative and modality of data to generate explainable, effective, and applicable forecasts;
boost the understanding, supported by quantitative and qualitative analysis, of the interaction, complementarity and trade-offs between hazards helping to overcome the silo approach within and between them and leading to effective action-driven decisions of the FRs, and
design intelligent interfaces for the multi-hazard forecasts and impact assessment products to streamline development of downstream services and to boost the innovation in the DRM ecosystem services.

WP4 MedEWSa risk transfer solutions

WP4 aims to link the innovative forecasts and impact assessment services developed in WP3 with innovative forms of financing for emergency preparedness. It deals with the implementation of science-driven Alternative Risk Transfer solutions for extreme weather and/or geological events, such as insurance parametric products, helping fill funding gaps by leveraging resources from insurance and/or capital markets.

WP5 MedEWSa societal support and outreach

WP5 aims to

deliver thorough socioeconomic analyses to realise a human-centric approach against natural disasters;
design mechanisms to facilitate the translation of complex information to actionable knowledge for end users;
suggest best practices to address additional challenges of multi-hazard effects in the Covid and post-Covid era; and
facilitate general public engagement through participatory emergency planning.

WP6 Multi-hazard platform demonstrator: MedEWSa Twins

WP6 aims to

finalize an experimentation protocol and set-up the execution of the twins,
deploy the execution of all validation scenarios, and
ensure continuous impact monitoring and assessment.

WP7 MedEWSa Dissemination, Communication and Pathway towards Operationalisation

WP7 aims to develop and execute a dissemination and communication strategy to make all stakeholders, and service recipients fully aware of the four pillars of research and technology that form MedEWSa’s core activities.

WP7 oversees and guides four core tasks

building the MedEWSa ecosystem: Stakeholders’ engagement,
to establish, coordinate and implement the communication and dissemination strategy of MedEWSa to maximise the project visibility and the outreach of the activities and of the results;
pathway to the market: Optimising exploitation opportunities, and
training activities: engaging and training MedEWSa users towards full exploitation of the EuMeA multi-hazard platform.