Periodic Reporting for period 1 - Climateurope2 (Supporting and standardizing climate services in Europe and beyond)
Reporting period: 2022-09-01 to 2024-02-29
Climateurope2 tries to identify the support and standardisation needs of climate services, including criteria for certification and labelling, as well as the user-driven criteria needed to increase the uptake of climate information and support climate action. Using approaches from social sciences and humanities and extensive technical expertise, a community of practice is being built for this standardisation through the development of the Climateurope2 platform. Early versions of project documents will be shared on the platform to encourage collaboration and co-production of knowledge, following open science practices. The co-production and stakeholder engagement in climate services is addressed through the creation of a network of different European climate services actors. Various interactive and innovative activities have been organised to support this community, such as the first festival, webstivals, art installations and, soon, roadshows. Apart from encompassing a wide range of technical expertise and experience in climate services, such a consortium integrates approaches from the social sciences and humanities. Their perspectives are essential in the standardisation of climate services, particularly in the links between climate science, market and policy. Social sciences and humanities disciplines also contribute in the project with the analysis of the value proposition made by climate services in a fragmented market. Climateurope2 aims at delivering a set of recommendations for the standardisation of climate services to the European normalisation bodies. The path is drawn by the first ensemble of key messages to guide the standardisation, which emerge from the work performed so far in the project, and the initial contacts with CEN/CENELEC to support the standardisation request made by DG CLIMA.
Climateurope2 worked to identify the key criteria and requirements to guide the standardisation, quality assurance, and eventual certification of climate services. Climateurope2 has created a framework for jointly harvesting experiences and know-how from the climate services community at large. Laborious interactions among the project partners have led to a decision tree that enables identification of gaps. The consortium has conducted in-depth literature reviews and the assessment of a number of case studies to identify criteria for an initial definition of guiding principles for high-quality climate services. The project has also undertaken an initial assessment of the state of the market, focusing on actors, sectors, and terminologies using a range of sources, including a systematic exploration of the CORDIS database, information from the Copernicus Programme, guidance and technical documents from the World Meteorological Organisation, and many other sources. A set of training modules for market-stimulating and knowledge brokerage services have already been identified and will be produced and delivered later in the project. Exploration of local and regional factors that drive policy support for climate services have been used to frame a EU wide survey, a set of case studies, a review of governance mechanisms and organisational structures common in standardisation processes, a mapping of the institutional landscape of standardisation and certification agencies, and a first mapping of encounters between climate services providers and users. A fundamental contribution is to identify, unite, support, and harvest experiences from the European climate services community. It has organised two webstivals and one in-person festival as well as several external events presenting the project activities, objectives and emerging results. Close ties with sister projects and with larger EU initiatives such as with projects working on the implementation of Horizon Europe’s Mission for Adaptation to Climate Change expands the impact of Climateurope2 to non-academic communities. Also, a targeted initiative with the art world provides insights on better communication strategies to convey complex scientific information to society. A roadshow in Eastern Europe aims to capture the spirit of Climateurope2 to ensure that criteria, requirements, and recommendations on the standardisation of climate services is not limited to technical requirements. External communication and dissemination of Climateurope2 has been guided by a project visual identity, a social media strategy, a dynamic website with ongoing news items, blog posts, newsletters, announcements of events, and attractive pointers to interested parties to join the community. The project has matured a structured and GDPR-compliant (through the creation of a repository of qualitative data that follows domain standards for curation and full data protection) internal communication system through the use of a project wiki and the construction of a moderated platform. The Climateurope2 platform beta prototype is a web application that ensures that good practices, guidelines, and capacity-building materials are widely available and easy to find during and after the project’s lifetime.
It is important the interaction and ongoing collaboration for exploitation of Climateurope2 results by policy makers enhancing the interactions with standardisation organisations like the European Committee for Standardization (CEN) and the European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization (CENELEC).
It is important the interaction and ongoing collaboration for exploitation of Climateurope2 results by policy makers enhancing the interactions with standardisation organisations like the European Committee for Standardization (CEN) and the European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization (CENELEC).
The project aims to produce a set of recommendations for the standardisation of climate services and identify, for those aspects that are not suitable for standardisation, guidance and best practices as an alternative way of governance.. DG CLIMA has issued a request to CEN-CENELEC, to trigger the process to standardise climate services. The request was based on input provided by Climateurope2 partners. Climateurope2 has established a solid relationship with DG CLIMA and with the European and national standardisation institutions as they all recognise the key role of the project in underpinning the standardisation process from the scientific and technical point of view.