Climate change poses a growing threat to the interconnected health of ecosystems, animals, and people across Europe’s Boreal region, as rising temperatures, extreme weather events, and emerging infectious diseases increasingly disrupt natural and societal balance. In order to address this issue, AURORA aims to develop a comprehensive climate-health toolset including predictive models, early warning systems, and an AI-powered Decision Support platform to enable proactive climate adaptation and health protection.
AURORA has 5 main objectives:
Obj. 1 – Enhance short- and long-term insights pertaining to the health consequences of climate-induced stressors by conducting a comprehensive multi-scope analysis, which includes the examination of the influence of climate change on the One Health concept.
Obj. 2 – Strengthen current epidemiological surveillance, modelling and forecasting capacity induced by climate change through the co-design and -development of 1) a climatic and epidemiological observatory, 2) appropriate models encompassing all socio-economic aspects and adaptation scenarios, and 3) user-friendly forecasting tools.
Obj. 3 – Improve preventive policy-making and health system’s preparedness ahead of climate change by 1) co-implementing a holistic Decision Support system that entails early-warning and -response, and 2) assessing and predicting the effectiveness and health impact of mitigation solutions, including nature-based ones.
Obj. 4 – Demonstrate and validate the effectiveness of the AURORA toolset in 5 major Baltic cities (Riga, Vilnius, Tallinn, Tampere, Pori) and replicate its results in 3 participating municipalities (Klaipeda, Jurmala, Joniskis).
Obj. 5 – Accelerate the adoption of AURORA solutions and maximise their impact through an efficient dissemination, communication, liaison, training and exploitation activities.
The pathway to impact combines co-design, technical development, validation and consolidation steps that progressively move from problem framing to sustained use and exploitation.
The project’s results (observatory, models, simulation engine, risk assessment and early warning, decision support, and city-specific risk and vulnerability plans) are designed to close the gap between EU-level data and local preventive action, especially for the issues faced in Boreal cities.
