Periodic Reporting for period 1 - The HuT (The Human-Tech Nexus - Building a Safe Haven to cope with Climate Extremes)
Período documentado: 2022-10-01 hasta 2024-01-31
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, including wildland urban interface fires;
- meteorological, hydrological, agricultural droughts, including associated water shortage;
- heatwaves;
- weather-induced landslides, including debris flows;
- fluvial and pluvial floods;
- storms, including heavy rain, hail, thunderstorms, and storm surges.
A set of ten demonstrators constitutes 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 intended ultimate impact of the HuT is to increase resilience towards extreme climate events by integrating human and technological expertise and innovations through modeling, forecasting, early warning, citizen science, knowledge co-production, and socio-economic benefit analysis, across knowledge domains, stakeholder groups, sectors, disciplines, and borders. The selection of the ten test sites serves to establish a series of interlinked proofs of concept of the effectiveness of innovative DRR solutions that exploit the human-technology nexus, with potential applications in many other areas, inside and outside Europe.
The events associated to climate extremes considered in this project are:
- forest fires, including wildland urban interface fires;
- meteorological, hydrological, agricultural droughts, including associated water shortage;
- heatwaves;
- weather-induced landslides, including debris flows;
- fluvial and pluvial floods;
- storms, including heavy rain, hail, thunderstorms, and storm surges.
A set of ten demonstrators constitutes 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 intended ultimate impact of the HuT is to increase resilience towards extreme climate events by integrating human and technological expertise and innovations through modeling, forecasting, early warning, citizen science, knowledge co-production, and socio-economic benefit analysis, across knowledge domains, stakeholder groups, sectors, disciplines, and borders. The selection of the ten test sites serves to establish a series of interlinked proofs of concept of the effectiveness of innovative DRR solutions that exploit the human-technology nexus, with potential applications in many other areas, inside and outside Europe.
The work in The HuT is carried out within seven work packages (WP), which have been set up to coincide with the main components of the project. Many deliverables have already been submitted and can be accessed freely from the web portal of the project (https://thehut-nexus.eu/resource_category/deliverable/) as well as in repository created in ZENODO to ensure long-term data availability (https://zenodo.org/communities/thehutnexus).
WP1: Demonstrators’ arena. Six deliverables have already been produced, addressing and 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. One deliverable has already been produced, addressing and reporting on the evolution and the state-of-the-art of weather and climate warnings.
WP3: Governance and policy. No deliverables were planned to be produced by this WP in the first reporting period. However, significant activities have already been conducted in relation to: enablers and barriers to multi-hazard systemic risk reduction, decision support tools for risk policy, and insurance instruments for increasing local resilience to specific extreme weather events.
WP4: Science and Technology. Three deliverables have already been produced, addressing and 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. Three deliverables have already been produced, addressing and 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. One deliverable has already been produced, a detailed plan on the strategies that The HuT will adopt in the communication, the dissemination and the exploitation of results.
WP7: Coordination and Management. Six deliverables have already been produced, addressing and reporting on the plans for project management, data management, risk management and ethical requirements, as well as on the two annual consortium meetings held within this reporting period: the kick-off meeting in Sorrento (Italy) in October 2022, and the annual meeting held in Valencia (Spain) in October 2023.
WP1: Demonstrators’ arena. Six deliverables have already been produced, addressing and 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. One deliverable has already been produced, addressing and reporting on the evolution and the state-of-the-art of weather and climate warnings.
WP3: Governance and policy. No deliverables were planned to be produced by this WP in the first reporting period. However, significant activities have already been conducted in relation to: enablers and barriers to multi-hazard systemic risk reduction, decision support tools for risk policy, and insurance instruments for increasing local resilience to specific extreme weather events.
WP4: Science and Technology. Three deliverables have already been produced, addressing and 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. Three deliverables have already been produced, addressing and 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. One deliverable has already been produced, a detailed plan on the strategies that The HuT will adopt in the communication, the dissemination and the exploitation of results.
WP7: Coordination and Management. Six deliverables have already been produced, addressing and reporting on the plans for project management, data management, risk management and ethical requirements, as well as on the two annual consortium meetings held within this reporting period: the kick-off meeting in Sorrento (Italy) in October 2022, and the annual meeting held in Valencia (Spain) in October 2023.
Activities for which The HuT can highlight, already at the end of this first reporting term, significant progress towards results beyond the state of the art are presented below.
Science-art fusion activities. In the HuT, we are using the potential of art to engage with local communities about their experiences of extreme weather. Two science-art interventions have been undertaken in this term: i) "Staging EWS Stories", a cooperation with Playback Theatre artists to design and conduct a performance at the European Climate Change Adaptation Conference in Dublin (Ireland) in June 2023; and ii) “Welcome to 2050”, a walk-in greenhouse created by a local artist and installed in the Valencian Botanical Garden (Spain) as an exhibition in October 2023.
End-to-end evaluation of operational warning systems. The evaluation of is based on a framework proposed to address the different components of a warning chain, defined with the aim of building greater resilience to weather-induced hazards in the design and implementation of warning systems. The protocol is structured as a three-part evaluation process, as follows: 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. This is an umbrella activity that relates to multiple project tasks and includes: knowledge transfer for better risk awareness, innovative monitoring and modelling activities, local data portals to share information across stakeholders. In this term, significant attention has been 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 have focused on the risk quantification needed for the development of prototypes insurance products and risk transfer and financing. Such a target has been 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.
Science-art fusion activities. In the HuT, we are using the potential of art to engage with local communities about their experiences of extreme weather. Two science-art interventions have been undertaken in this term: i) "Staging EWS Stories", a cooperation with Playback Theatre artists to design and conduct a performance at the European Climate Change Adaptation Conference in Dublin (Ireland) in June 2023; and ii) “Welcome to 2050”, a walk-in greenhouse created by a local artist and installed in the Valencian Botanical Garden (Spain) as an exhibition in October 2023.
End-to-end evaluation of operational warning systems. The evaluation of is based on a framework proposed to address the different components of a warning chain, defined with the aim of building greater resilience to weather-induced hazards in the design and implementation of warning systems. The protocol is structured as a three-part evaluation process, as follows: 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. This is an umbrella activity that relates to multiple project tasks and includes: knowledge transfer for better risk awareness, innovative monitoring and modelling activities, local data portals to share information across stakeholders. In this term, significant attention has been 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 have focused on the risk quantification needed for the development of prototypes insurance products and risk transfer and financing. Such a target has been 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.