The Horizon Europe project CLIMAAX is close to finalizing its third year. It is a pleasure to experience the huge interest from regions, communities, scientists and practitioners in the European playing field. With a little more than one year to go this is a great moment to reflect on the work achieved and look ahead on what is yet to come.
We received 382 applications of regions interested to participate in the CLIMAAX project through the cascading fund and carefully selected 68 European regions/communities. Jointly with them we are contributing to the goal of the Mission on Adaptation to support European regions in becoming climate resilient. Last June we all met during the regions event organized by UPC and INTC in Barcelona. End of September all regions finalized their 1st CRA report and work for the 2nd report focussing on the integration of the local context and data is now well on its way. We see strong and successful efforts for stakeholder engagement and the first steps towards climate adaptation are established.
The CLIMAAX Handbook was launched after 1.5 years. It combines the Climate Risk Assessment (CRA) Framework and the CRA workflows for a variety of hazards, accompanied by extensive documentation to support regional CRA applications. It has been actively used by the regions to conduct the first version of their CRAs based on European-scale data. After feedback and requests from users, several improvements and extensions have been made. A multi-risk workflow is close to being finalized. The Handbook has also been extended with additional wildfire and river flood workflows.
User-oriented guidance materials for the CRA framework have been improved, and the Framework has been extended with the key risk assessment. We are addressing the challenges of bridging European-wide applicability and local relevance, allowing for standardized flexibility. The Handbook and its CRA workflows are open source and freely accessible to anyone interested. We recommend non-funded regions to also have a look and request support where needed.
The CLIMAAX Community of Practice is growing, and we have established links with sister projects and with MIP4Adapt to benefit from and strengthen each other. There are regular CLIMAAX CoP events open to anyone interested, such as sessions on new Handbook developments and topical webinars providing guidance on, for example, stakeholder engagement and climate adaptation.
The 3rd CLIMAAX Webstival will be hosted on the 18th and 19th of November and will feature a variety of interesting contributions. Check out the CLIMAAX website for regular updates on upcoming events.
We are looking forward to the last 14 months, continuing to provide support to the regions and others interested in their regional CRAs. We will further optimize the Handbook and explore options for its future exploitation. The project will conclude with another regions’ meeting in November 2026 in Brussels, when we hope that all CLIMAAX regions will have successfully reported their CRAs. (by Frederiek Sperna Weiland, Deltares, project coordinator)