How the DIRECTED and I-CISK projects support user-centered climate solutions in our ever-changing world

Authors: Julia Kraatz and Katharina Demmich

Introduction

Have you ever found yourself reading about climate change and wondered to what extent you or someone you know might be impacted? How your community might be impacted? And then, how you could find out this information?

As global emissions rise and the state of our climate becomes increasingly uncertain, questions like these are common, and you would not be alone in asking them. That’s why projects like DIRECTED¹ and I-CISK² aim to create open-source, interoperable, scalable, and user-friendly platforms to provide information on the risk of severe weather events and the effects of climate change to users, just like you.

In the following sections, we will take you through two use-cases within the DIRECTED and I-CISK projects that showcase how climate information can be accessible, and informative, within the respective projects’ labs.

Copenhagen – The DIRECTED Project

The DIRECTED project works collaboratively with four different Real World Labs (RWL), one of which is located in the Copenhagen Capital Region of Denmark. In this region, storm events producing heavy rainfall and coastal flooding have proven to be major challenges to municipalities surrounding the Roskilde Fjord in the preparatory, event, and after-math phases of these extreme weather events. Thus, the Copenhagen RWL developed a prototypical climate-service platform based on input from Emergency Management Service (EMS) personnel, citizen volunteer organizations, municipal authorities, and data providers within the region to combat and respond to extreme weather events when they occur.

In order to inform citizens and stakeholders about extreme weather events under different climate change scenarios, possible pluvial and coastal flooding events in municipalities bordering the Roskilde Fjord have been made available in the prototypical climate service platform. These climate change scenarios were calculated using various models and are in-line with IPCC projections for climate change. Within these climate change scenarios, damage-cost calculations can also be found. These point to various sectors and the economic impacts they may experience as a result of the flooding event. Some of these sectors are biodiversity, buildings, tourism, road traffic, human life, and road traffic, among others.

Additionally, real-time data is available in the platform to inform EMS and volunteer organizations in times of potential extreme weather events. Data from the Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI) has been utilized and displayed to show precipitation rate forecasts, total precipitation, and mean sea level deviation forecasts. These forecasts span 3-5 days, and are updated daily.

 

Tutorial for the DIRECTED Copenhagen RWL

Rijnland – The I-CISK project

While the objective of the DIRECTED project is to develop web services that help to estimate the impact of severe weather events, the I-CISK project focusses on services that are related to the consequences of climate change, such as severe drought periods. Similar to the DIRECTED project, the active exchange and co-development with stakeholders in seven so-called Living Labs (LLs) aims to create products that are truly tailored to the stakeholders needs. One of these LLs is the area of Rijnland in the Netherlands, which is popular for recreational boating and relies heavily on the touristic sector. Seasonal forecasts on potential drought situations are of great importance for stakeholders in this area as low water levels can heavily influence the accessibility of certain waterways.

Have you ever searched for tools that can make long-term predictions about the effects of climate change? They are usually quite inaccessible, aren’t they? They are often designed so that experts in the field can precisely tune the models to their needs, but for someone with average knowledge and skills, using them involves a lot of overhead. In the case of the web application for the Rijnland area, the focus was set on providing services that use sophisticated scientific methods to process the results of climate modelling and presenting them in such a way that they are easy to understand and navigate. Various discussion sessions with stakeholder representatives resulted in sketches of possible layouts which software developers then turned into app functionalities – climate services.

As a result of this co-design approach, the Rijnland LL application uses an intuitive traffic light scheme to show the severity of the drought for the upcoming weeks. Select a specific time period and choose to look at predictions of the Rhine discharge for the model region of Lobith or at a map that shows the precipitation deficit in all of the Netherlands. Historical data from the past two months, provided by Rijkswaterstaat (Dutch Water Management Authority), are available as well as forecasts for the upcoming months as provided by the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (SMHI). The applications are interactive. You can hover over the graphs for more details about individual models or points of time and you can choose between different views. This way, the app supports different groups of stakeholders in evaluating the effects of upcoming weather events.

 

Tutorial for the Rijnland LL

Conclusion

Through our experiences with both the DIRECTED and I-CISK projects, we found that using co-design to guide developments proved to be very valuable and gave each project’s platforms a meaningful goal. For example, the Copenhagen RWL did not have real-time data available in a user-friendly way for pluvial and coastal flooding events. This was challenging for citizens and governmental bodies within the Roskilde Fjord. While this data is available within an API from the DMI, it is not currently hosted in a climate service platform that is openly accessible. Thus, having this information for real-time planning efforts is a valuable addition to disaster risk management in the Copenhagen Capital Region, as emergency management and municipal employees are able to view these climate data forecasts to plan for potential extreme weather events.

 

¹ DIRECTED is funded by the European Union through Horizon 2.3.1 – Disaster-Resilient Societies, Grant agreement ID: 101073978.
² I-CISK is funded by the Horizon 2020 European Green Deal H2020-EU.3.5., Grant agreement ID: 101037293.