BRIdges the GAp for Innovations in Disaster resilience

Project Information

BRIGAID

Grant agreement ID: 700699

DOI

10.3030/700699

Project closed

EC signature date 20 April 2016

Start date 1 May 2016

End date 30 September 2020

Funded under

• SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Climate action, Environment, Resource Efficiency and Raw Materials

Total cost

€ 8 817 445,10

EU contribution

€ 7 739 805,79

Coordinated by

TECHNISCHE UNIVERSITEIT DELFT
Netherlands

Periodic Reporting for period 3 - BRIGAID (BRIdges the GAp for Innovations in Disaster resilience)

Reporting period: 2019-05-01 to 2020-09-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Europe is increasingly prone to risks of river and coastal floods, droughts resulting in water restrictions and damages from extreme weather events such as heat events and wildfires. Evaluations also show a huge potential to reduce these risks through adaptation strategies. ClimateCost results predict that annual expected flood damages can be reduced from 20 to 8 billion euro in the 2020s and from 46 to 19 billion euro in the 2050s. Moreover, damage reduction is expected to outweigh adaption costs by far (expected costs are 1.7 and 3.4 billion euro in 2020s and 2050s, respectively). There are a number of important innovations at different stages of development that could substantially help to reduce these costs. Unfortunately, many of these climate adaptation innovations fail to reach the market.
BRIGAID’s objective is to provide a structured, ongoing support for innovations to climate adaptation by developing an innovative mix of methods and tools, that offer the right support and know how to climate adaptation innovators and innovations. To achieve this, BRIGAID followed a 2-layered approach. First, BRIGAID’s unique mix of methods and tools consists of three elements; 1) a framework that evaluates the effectiveness of innovations and the organizational and governance requirements, 2) a business development and financing model for climate adaptation innovations and 3) an online interactive platform as a virtual shop window that presents innovations and connects innovators to end users, qualified investors, grants and fiscal incentives advisors throughout Europe. Second, these methods and tools were validated in the project by reviewing 120 promising innovations to minimize the impacts from floods, droughts and extreme weather events, targeting for specific tailor-made approach the 45 most promising ones, succeeding in bringing the top innovations with the highest socio-technical and investment readiness to the market.
Conclusions on the action: the objectives have been achieved. Further development and sustainable implementation of these tools and resources, as well as plans to build on the strong innovation communities fostered by the Europe wide consortium is being taken up under the framework of BRIGAID CONNECT, a spin-off entity of the BRIGAID consortium.

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

BRIGAID's has achieved the following results:
•Setting-up and providing structural support in testing and validating innovations, by performing tests and demonstrations for innovations that reduce impacts from floods, droughts and extreme weather.
•Establishing a network of test facilities and implementation sites across Europe that can be utilized in the future for testing and accelerating innovations;
•Creating a Test and Implementation Framework (TIF), which delivers a standardised methodology for an independent and scientifically robust judgment of the socio-technological effectiveness of innovations that can be applied throughout Europe, across economic sectors, that takes into account the local cultural and institutional context and inherent uncertainties in climate change scenarios, helping to identify the potential organizational needs and policy implementation requirements.
•Delivery of a comprehensive support programme for business development and dissemination of innovations, the Market Analysis Framework (MAF+). This MAF+ helps to identify market opportunities, select business models.
•Creating an online Climate Innovation Window platform that can be accessed by all stakeholders (innovators, risk managers, policy and decision makers, industry, investors) to view innovations, learn about test results and performance of our innovators according to the TIF, and user experiences. The CIW platform has been designed as an interactive platform that helps to build an online Community of innovation that gathers innovators, users and potential funders. Beyond BRIGAID and through BRIGAID Connect as successor of BRIGAID, it will be linked with other important climate platforms such as the Climate ADAPT and EIP-Water.
Dissemination and exploitation of the results has been implemented through organisation and participation in international conferences and publications, through the Communities of Innovations established in 8 countries, and through the website www.brigaid.eu
On the website www.brigaid.eu all results have been published. The Key results have been profiled prominently. The Final public activity report presents a clear overview of the full project achievements.
Apart from this, BRIGAID results have been presented in a number of journals and at a large number of conferences, including the life-streamed Final BRIGAID Conference on 24 June 2020.

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)

BRIGAID aimed to strengthen the connections among innovators, researchers, and end users to foster the innovation capacities of SME’s and start-ups. By enabling innovations to be assessed based on their socio-technological effectiveness, while creating a bridge to the market, innovators’ capacities will be maximised. In order to contribute to the long-term innovation capacity in Europe, BRIGAID CONNECT has been established as legal entity under Spanish law. Through this vehicle, BRIGAID’s European network of test facilities, the TIF, the MAF+ and the climate innovation window of communities of innovation will all continue to support and connect innovators with end users.
The open source on-line application ‘ TIF Self-assessment tool’ enables innovators assessing the impact of their innovations on the environment; negative impacts will be minimized. The social impact of innovations is an integral part of the TIF. Based on an assessment of the acceptance of innovations by institutions and societies, a qualification of the ‘social readiness’ of innovations is established.
Socio-economic impact of the action and the wider societal implications of the project so far
Financial support for these end-users of climate change mitigation measures is increasing, and thus financing institutions have had a keen interest in the progress of BRIGAID. Delegates from the European Investment Bank (EIB) and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) attended conferences in Portugal, Albania and Romania, and gave presentations on the Banks’ support for disaster risk management. In the case of the EIB, this support included €64 Billion of loans in 2018, a figure which is likely to increase as the effects of climate change become more sever. Projects supported by these institutions (e.g. as a flood prevention programme in Ireland, and the development of disaster emergency response tools in Romania) must comply with public policy goals of the bank. These goals are related to innovation, climate action, and SMEs, and for this reason these institutions have had a vested interest in the project

BRIGAID's bridge to cross the valley of death