EU-CIRCLE managed to effectively involve the CI community for the different case studies. The case studies were implemented in a participatory approach, where CI operators, national / regional and local authorities and emergency responders were engaged into designing the specific scenarios, providing accurate data, contribute to assessing the potential impacts and generating damage assessments due to climate change, proposing and contributing to adaptation options customised to their needs, and then discussing results and participating in project events. The involvement made CI stakeholders more conscious about the potential impacts of climate change on CI and thus many of them were willing to use the project’s results and methodology to manage their exposure to hazards. Furthermore, the project generated guidelines on how to introduce climate change in the business continuity model of a CI, expanding related ISO standards.
There was considerable interaction with CI stakeholders throughout the 2nd reporting period of the project. Interaction with the CI and climatology stakeholders was an important element in producing meaningful and usable results that could be further exploited by the consortium. There was exchange of opinion on numerous events on climate change impacts to CIs, the methodological framework of the project and to familiarize end users with the approach adopted by the consortium for assessing climate change related risks to essential services as well as for considering resilience concepts and indicators within the operators planning process.
Additionally, EU-CIRCLE identified the following 4 point summary of how climate change may impact the interconnected critical infrastructures.
1. Climate change will have significant effects on the nature and characteristics of the hazards. The change of the hazards’ frequency of appearance, magnitude, intensity, speed of event should be exhaustively studied when studying the impact of climate change. Faster hazards will require new capabilities to anticipate, such as early warning systems and different concept of preparedness and also faster coping. More intense hazards could lead to higher vulnerabilities and potential total damages to the operating capacity of CI.
2. Think “out of the box” when considering which hazards could be of relevance to climate change risk assessment. The use of synthetic hazards to stress-test CI capacities is highly recommended, as global / regional climate models are not yet capable of capture several high-end phenomena (e.g. tornadoes, waterspouts, lightning) which are subscale to existing Global and Regional Climate Models
3. Climate change may require considerable re-design or enhancement of the CI assets. It is recommended to perform assessment of CI based on micro-scale climate characteristics rather than relying on large scale simulation. Work on identifying new indicators related to the specific characteristics of CI, even on a local scale, should be actively pursued in the context of climate services.
4. CI based vulnerability should be made accounting for 1) physical/structural damages due to extreme events, 2) how affected humans will be impacted CI, 3) how the operations of CI could be impacted, including changes to supply and demand profiles.
5. It is worth remembering that climate change is not only about negative impacts, but rather one of the many challenges that CI must address when preparing for their future lifespan.
EU-CIRCLE project’s key recommendation is that Resilience based Adaptation could provide a sustainable modus operandi linking CCA and DRR and also sustainable development goals.
