Periodic Reporting for period 1 - ARSINOE (CLIMATE RESILIENT-REGIONS THROUGH SYSTEMIC SOLUTIONS AND INNOVATIONS)
Berichtszeitraum: 2021-10-01 bis 2023-03-31
As climate change is complex and interconnected with other global challenges, such as food security, water scarcity, biodiversity loss and environmental degradation, it is insufficient to use traditional approaches that focus on one aspect of the problem at a time, in a fragmented and non-systemic manner. ARSINOE applies a systems-thinking approach to address the growing complexity, interdependencies and interconnectedness of modern societies and economies and propose climate change adaptation solutions.
Impacts of climate change must be holistically approached to lower risks to society at large. A broader understanding is reached by including and engaging local actors affected by these impacts to opt for optimal and sustainable measures and solutions that i) lower risks and increase resilience in society at large. In collaboration with local stakeholders and Academia, respectively, objectives are to "deal" with water-related hazards and risks from sea level rise and storm surges, runoff, precipitation, and groundwater head and to improve and integrate our scientific knowledge about these matters in order to assess potential future extremes and corresponding measures.
The ARSINOE project will shape the pathways towards resilience by bringing together all relevant actors and stakeholders and setting up Living Labs in nine diverse case studies around Europe to build visions for our regions of tomorrow. The Climate Innovation Window (CIW), a marketplace and hub for innovation, is strengthened in ARSINOE and builds an ecosystem for climate change adaptation solutions. Within the ARSINOE ecosystem, pathways to solutions are co-created and co-designed by stakeholders, who can then select either existing CIW technologies, or technologies by new providers (or a combination) to form an innovation package that will render regions resilient in the years to come.
Impacts of climate change must be holistically approached to lower risks to society at large. A broader understanding is reached by including and engaging local actors affected by these impacts to opt for optimal and sustainable measures and solutions that i) lower risks and increase resilience in society at large. In collaboration with local stakeholders and Academia, respectively, objectives are to "deal" with water-related hazards and risks from sea level rise and storm surges, runoff, precipitation, and groundwater head and to improve and integrate our scientific knowledge about these matters in order to assess potential future extremes and corresponding measures.
The ARSINOE project will shape the pathways towards resilience by bringing together all relevant actors and stakeholders and setting up Living Labs in nine diverse case studies around Europe to build visions for our regions of tomorrow. The Climate Innovation Window (CIW), a marketplace and hub for innovation, is strengthened in ARSINOE and builds an ecosystem for climate change adaptation solutions. Within the ARSINOE ecosystem, pathways to solutions are co-created and co-designed by stakeholders, who can then select either existing CIW technologies, or technologies by new providers (or a combination) to form an innovation package that will render regions resilient in the years to come.
For the nine ARSINOE case studies, the partners have identified all the stakeholders, developed a context mapping to understand their interlinkages and formed nine Living Labs, three of which are transboundary and multinational. Two rounds of Living lab workshops have been organized with local stakeholders which resulted notably in the design of a mental map of their needs and their vision of our regions of tomorrow. A participatory modeling approach supervises iterations between the living labs and the scientific teams to address all involved themes, trade-offs, synergies, hidden causalities, and systemic solutions. Cutting edge scientific tools and approaches are exploited to achieve digitization of systems, harmonization, replicability, scalability, and citizen engagement.
Moreover, several innovations have already been developed. Notably:
- Development and application of a Resilience Framework that integrate all critical steps and iterations for addressing climate change implications, assessing risks on social integrity, lives, health, well-being, economy, infrastructure, and operations. Arsinoe’s resilience Framework supervises iterations among the socio-economic and biophysical systems, such as the Risk Assessment, the Data, stakeholders, policy making and planning. The resilience framework will be linked and reflected to a long-term and short-term operations Dashboard, co-designed to address user requirements through innovative visualisation techniques.
- Development of a Knowledge Graph, the “SustainGraph”, which is targeted towards tackling environmental problems in a holistic way, considering representation and fusion of information made available for scientists of distant disciplines. The SustainGraph aims to develop and apply semantics and ontologies across resilience building approaches, facilitating interoperability and harmonization among tools, established frameworks and protocols.
- The design of the participatory socio-environmental systems modelling framework, and documentation of the main modelling techniques that can be applied over the SustainGraph.
- Development of a Citizen Observatory to monitor biodiversity (Beta phase). In less than a year MINKA has 442 users, 108452 views and 92 projects. Additionally, Arsinoe’s Citizen Science tool and activities are leveraging social participation and engagement at a more extended public outreach, beyond the Living Labs.
- Development and implementation of an urban biodiversity assessment framework that identifies important hotspots and drivers of biodiversity in the city.
- Risk assessment framework in the case studies that takes into account hazard, exposure, and vulnerability to be used for resilience analysis in the case studies.
- The first version of the data catalogue, the Data Management Service, the Data Transformation Service for tabular data.
- Design of complexity science tools, such as System Dynamics and Agent Based modeling, are used to integrate systems and address their intense inherent dynamics. These tools are facilitating a high-level participation of the Living Labs in the modeling approaches. Stakeholders indicate and co-shape all the relevant systems that need to be investigated and simulated, that play a conclusive role in reaching resilience.
- Arsinoe is also developing Digital Twins for two Case Studies, contributing to the digitization of Socio-Ecological Systems and providing for real-time insight in critical causalities that are linked to sensitive systems for resilience, such as critical infrastructure.
- Moreover, the ARSINOE partners have performed all the preparation for the ARSINOE Open Tenders for Innovations and for the upgrade of the Climate Innovation Window and its exploitation.
Moreover, several innovations have already been developed. Notably:
- Development and application of a Resilience Framework that integrate all critical steps and iterations for addressing climate change implications, assessing risks on social integrity, lives, health, well-being, economy, infrastructure, and operations. Arsinoe’s resilience Framework supervises iterations among the socio-economic and biophysical systems, such as the Risk Assessment, the Data, stakeholders, policy making and planning. The resilience framework will be linked and reflected to a long-term and short-term operations Dashboard, co-designed to address user requirements through innovative visualisation techniques.
- Development of a Knowledge Graph, the “SustainGraph”, which is targeted towards tackling environmental problems in a holistic way, considering representation and fusion of information made available for scientists of distant disciplines. The SustainGraph aims to develop and apply semantics and ontologies across resilience building approaches, facilitating interoperability and harmonization among tools, established frameworks and protocols.
- The design of the participatory socio-environmental systems modelling framework, and documentation of the main modelling techniques that can be applied over the SustainGraph.
- Development of a Citizen Observatory to monitor biodiversity (Beta phase). In less than a year MINKA has 442 users, 108452 views and 92 projects. Additionally, Arsinoe’s Citizen Science tool and activities are leveraging social participation and engagement at a more extended public outreach, beyond the Living Labs.
- Development and implementation of an urban biodiversity assessment framework that identifies important hotspots and drivers of biodiversity in the city.
- Risk assessment framework in the case studies that takes into account hazard, exposure, and vulnerability to be used for resilience analysis in the case studies.
- The first version of the data catalogue, the Data Management Service, the Data Transformation Service for tabular data.
- Design of complexity science tools, such as System Dynamics and Agent Based modeling, are used to integrate systems and address their intense inherent dynamics. These tools are facilitating a high-level participation of the Living Labs in the modeling approaches. Stakeholders indicate and co-shape all the relevant systems that need to be investigated and simulated, that play a conclusive role in reaching resilience.
- Arsinoe is also developing Digital Twins for two Case Studies, contributing to the digitization of Socio-Ecological Systems and providing for real-time insight in critical causalities that are linked to sensitive systems for resilience, such as critical infrastructure.
- Moreover, the ARSINOE partners have performed all the preparation for the ARSINOE Open Tenders for Innovations and for the upgrade of the Climate Innovation Window and its exploitation.
By the end of the project ARSINOE aims to achieve the following results:
- To provide a novel paradigm for modelling socio-environmental systems in a participatory way, considering the close collaboration among scientists from distant disciplines.
- To further research in hybrid simulation and hybrid modelling by developing a multi-system dynamic modelling framework (MSDMF) for resilience management, the components of which not only include modelling of man-based systems (as is the current state-of-the-art) but also extend to natural systems.
- To apply the SIA as a tool for engagement and inclusion of various stakeholders to address the growing complexity, interdependencies and interconnectedness of modern societies and economies.
- To integrate the Governance Assessment tool to the SIA to provide important information of the governance context and its vulnerabilities to face environmental challenges through indices that quantify risks resulting from interactions of climatic hazards as well as vulnerabilities and exposures of humans, ecosystems, economic, social or cultural assets.
- To deliver regional resilience innovation packages through the Climate Innovation Window.
- To develop Virtual Reality experiences to elicit citizens’ preferences on interventions towards a resilient adaptation to climate change.
ARSINOE's overarching scope is to have a more operational and integrated setup to work with climate risk in a local to national context and potentially international context which, scientifically, includes more elaborate methods and understanding on potential current and future extremes.
- To provide a novel paradigm for modelling socio-environmental systems in a participatory way, considering the close collaboration among scientists from distant disciplines.
- To further research in hybrid simulation and hybrid modelling by developing a multi-system dynamic modelling framework (MSDMF) for resilience management, the components of which not only include modelling of man-based systems (as is the current state-of-the-art) but also extend to natural systems.
- To apply the SIA as a tool for engagement and inclusion of various stakeholders to address the growing complexity, interdependencies and interconnectedness of modern societies and economies.
- To integrate the Governance Assessment tool to the SIA to provide important information of the governance context and its vulnerabilities to face environmental challenges through indices that quantify risks resulting from interactions of climatic hazards as well as vulnerabilities and exposures of humans, ecosystems, economic, social or cultural assets.
- To deliver regional resilience innovation packages through the Climate Innovation Window.
- To develop Virtual Reality experiences to elicit citizens’ preferences on interventions towards a resilient adaptation to climate change.
ARSINOE's overarching scope is to have a more operational and integrated setup to work with climate risk in a local to national context and potentially international context which, scientifically, includes more elaborate methods and understanding on potential current and future extremes.