The Human-Tech Nexus - Building a Safe Haven to cope with Climate Extremes

Project Information

The HuT

Grant agreement ID: 101073957

DOI

10.3030/101073957

EC signature date 20 July 2022

Start date 1 October 2022

End date 30 September 2026

Funded under

• Civil Security for Society

Total cost

€ 4 928 531,25

EU contribution

€ 4 793 643,50

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI SALERNO
Italy

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - The HuT (The Human-Tech Nexus - Building a Safe Haven to cope with Climate Extremes)

Reporting period: 2024-02-01 to 2025-05-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The HuT’s main ambition beyond the state of the art is to promote trans-disciplinary risk management tools and approaches that could be adopted and used extensively across Europe. The HuT focuses on the prevention and preparedness phases of the disaster risk management cycle, explicitly considering climate change scenarios and integrating the proposed set of solutions, for the various events considered, over short- (from days to several months) and long-term (from years to decades) time horizons.

The events associated to climate extremes considered in this project are forest fires, droughts, heatwaves, landslides, floods and storms.

Ten demonstrators constitute a multi-hazard arena wherein possible disastrous events associated with climate extremes are dealt with jointly by representatives of the scientific and technical communities, practitioners, policy-makers and local communities. The demonstrators’ arena serves to establish interlinked proofs of concept of the effectiveness of innovative DRR solutions that exploit the human-technology nexus, with potential applications in other areas, inside and outside Europe.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The work in The HuT is carried out within 7 WPs. Submitted deliverables (Ds) can be accessed from The HuT web portal (https://thehut-nexus.eu/) and in a ZENODO repository (https://zenodo.org/communities/thehutnexus).

WP1: Demonstrators’ arena. 7 Ds reporting on the ongoing activities in the demonstrators, on the composition of the local DRR nexus forums, on the architecture of the demonstrator’s data portals, on the initiative called ‘The Hut for Me and You’ and its associated narratives, and on the development of a protocol for evaluating warning systems.
WP2: Human behaviours. 2 Ds reporting on the evolution and the state-of-the-art of weather and climate warnings, and on role of warning systems as a significant tool used in Disaster Risk Reduction.
WP3: Governance and policy. 2 Ds reporting on innovative policy and governance enablers for multi-risk DRR, on quantitative and multi-criteria analyses for multi-risk DRR, and on prototypes of innovative insurance product.
WP4: Science and Technology. 5 Ds reporting on Internet of Things (IoT) and citizen science joint initiatives for developing warning systems to cope with weather-induced risks, and on monitoring and modelling activities to be developed in the demonstrators.
WP5: Transferability and scalability. 4 Ds reporting on approaches to transfer DRR innovations, on strategies for documenting DRR solutions and the transfer processes, and on the activities of the International Disaster Risk Reduction nexus Forum (I-DRRnF).
WP6: Communication, dissemination and exploitation. 3 Ds a detailed plan on the strategies that The HuT will adopt in the communication, the dissemination and the exploitation of results, and reports on outreach, engagement and networking activities.
WP7: Coordination and Management. 8 Ds reporting on plans for project, data and risk management, ethical requirements, and on the 3 annual consortium meetings held: Sorrento (Italy) in 2022, Valencia (Spain) in 2023, and Gerzensee (Switzerland) in 2024.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Activities for which The HuT can already highlight significant progress towards results beyond the state of the art are presented below.

Science-art fusion activities exploring the potential of art to engage with local communities about their experiences of extreme weather. Science-art interventions undertaken: i) "Staging EWS Stories", playback theatre at the ECCA Conference in Dublin (Ireland) in June 2023; and ii) “Welcome to 2050”, a walk-in greenhouse exhibition in the Valencian Botanical Garden (Spain) in October 2023; iii) a set of 3 playback theatre performances in Italy, on precautionary behaviour associated to early warning for fluvial flooding, co-designed to elicit risk perceptions of people that had a “life-changing” experience on extreme weather disasters.

End-to-end evaluation of operational warning systems. Evaluation based on a warning chain framework defined to build greater resilience to weather-induced hazards in the design and implementation of warning systems. Protocol structured as a three-part evaluation process: i) description of the system; ii) assessment of criticalities during high impact events; and iii) routine assessment of daily operations.

Decision support systems for municipalities. Umbrella activity that relates to multiple project tasks: knowledge transfer for better risk awareness, innovative monitoring and modelling activities, local data portals to share information across stakeholders. Significant attention focused on how the synergic adoption of IoT technologies and citizen science initiatives can support the implementation of impact-based forecasting frameworks.

Insurance instruments for DRR. Activities focused on risk quantification needed for developing prototypes insurance products. Target pursued with the development of peril-specific Natural Catastrophe models in two demonstrators to be used as tools for the analysis of hazards, vulnerability and mitigation actions, and portfolio/exposure characteristics.

Role of early warning systems (EWS) in DRR. Deliverable D2.2 “Communicating warnings” reporting: i) overview of European warning and risk management systems; ii) DEM sections with historical background of the risk/hazard management, governance structure and outlines of the operated EWS systems, strengths and good practices including challenges and gaps, a summary of where practices could be shared to help enhance warnings across the DEMs; iii) summative reflections on communicating multi-hazard warnings and risk.

Governance and policy enablers for the adoption and implementation of Nature-based Solutions (NbS). Enablers for the adoption and implementation of NbS contained within D3.1 “Innovative policy/governance enablers for multi-risk DRR”. Findings and suggestions presented are informed by relevant literature and analyses conducted at 3 DEM sites, each characterized by different hazards, risk profiles and institutional settings. All three case studies, investigated the barriers and enablers associated with the implementation of NbS to address specific environmental challenges.

Board (serious) game for enhancing risk awareness. Board game called “Safe Haven” being developed, with the same set of rules, in relation to different hazards. In the game, each player (or team of players) represents the municipal decision makers helping the mayor manage risks related to natural disasters caused by climate and weather. Year after year, players want to avoid a disaster happening in their city. The aim is to try to keep the risk below an acceptable threshold, with the financial resources available. First game of the series completed: “Safe Haven – Landslides”.

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