Climate-ADAPT: The European Climate Adaptation Platform

Platform summary

The European Climate Adaptation Platform Climate-ADAPT is a partnership between the European Commission and the European Environment Agency (EEA).

Climate-ADAPT aims to support Europe in adapting to climate change helping users to access and share data and information on: expected climate change in Europe, current and future vulnerability of regions and sectors EU, national and transnational adaptation strategies and actions, adaptation case studies and potential adaptation options, tools that support adaptation planning.

Host Organisation: Climate-ADAPT is maintained by the EEA with the support of the European Topic Centre on Climate Change Impacts, Vulnerability and Adaptation (ETC/CCA).

Launch date: 2012.

Update status: The update of the Climate-ADAPT database is carried out whenever (almost on a daily basis) knowledge is found by the experts integrating the ETC/CCA. Content of the Climate-ADAPT webpages is updated regularly according to an “updating mechanism” (described under topic 6).

Funding: Climate-ADAPT is funded by the European Commission (EC) and the EEA.

Team: The group of involved people is composed of 1 full time EEA expert (main responsible) plus further 4-5 EEA experts devoting just some minor time and a fully devoted Task of the ETC/CCA which covers currently (about 2000 person-hours per year distributed among) about 20 experts in the ETC/CCA Consortium. Roles: 3 management and coordination, 1 IT, 2 communication, about 15 scientific thematic content providers (5 of them with special responsibilities for some parts of the contents, e.g. case studies, Adaptation Support Tool, etc.)

Main functions:

• Providing guidance on how to undertake adaptation
• Providing decision-support tools for adaptation decision-making
• Sharing adaptation solutions and case studies
• Sharing scientific literature and research on adaptation

Intended audiences:

• National-level decision makers / national government
• City and regional-level decision-makers / local government
• Research community
• Organisations supporting public authorities
• Practitioners (implementation)

Focus sectors for the platform:

• Health
• Agriculture
• Oceans / fisheries
• Forests and other ecosystems
• Transport
• Infrastructure / built environment
• Finance / insurance
• Disaster risk
• Biodiversity
• Coastal areas
• Ecosystem-based approaches
• Energy
• Urban
• Water management

Why the platform was established

Climate-ADAPT was launched in 2012 as a partnership between the European Commission (in particular DG CLIMA) and the EEA to overcome the lack of a consistent knowledge base on adaptation in Europe. The EU Adaptation Strategy recognised it as a key element for better-informed decision-making and emphasised its potential to act as the ‘one-stop shop’ for adaptation information in Europe (Action 5).

Knowledge brokering on Climate-ADAPT

This presentation by Kati Mattern, EEA with support of Valentina Giannini, ETC CCA, explains how knowledge brokering is undertaken on the European climate change adaptation platform Climate-ADAPT, including how the platform works with information providers to need the needs of diverse stakeholders at various stages of the adaptation cycle.

Supporting Monitoring, Reporting and Evaluation

This presentation by Kati Mattern (EEA) with support of José Ramón Picatoste Ruggeroni (now Oficina Española de Cambio Climático), Valentina Giannini, Katie Johnson (ETC/CCA) and Wouter Vanneuville (EEA) explores how the European climate adaptation platform, Climate-ADAPT, is supporting monitoring, reporting and evaluation of adaptation progress.

New features

The European Climate and Health Observatory

The European Climate and Health Observatory is a joint initiative of the European Commission, the European Environment Agency and many other organisations.

The pilot version of the observatory focusses on existing resources from the various partners. Over time, the Observatory will develop new products and add further resources.

The main topics and tools of the Observatory include dedicated areas on indicators, partners, country profiles, and a resource catalogue.

The European Climate Data Explorer

The European Climate Data Explorer provides interactive access to selected climate variables and climate impact indicators from the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S). Focus areas in the Explorer include Health, Agriculture, Forestry, Energy, Tourism and Coastal regions.

Its use is supported by a Tutorial video and aUser guide, which provide information on the content of the European Climate Data Explorer and on all features available to its users. These are further complemented by:

• an Overview of further training resources providing access to video resources from the C3S User Learning Service and other reliable information providers that can help better understand the climate data presented in the European Climate Data Explorer, and
• a Glossary explaining key technical terms used on the pages of the European Climate Data Explorer.

The Explorer also provides a comprehensive list of the indices provided in Climate-ADAPT from the Copernicus Climate Change Service.

Climate ADAPT webinars

Climate-ADAPT Webinars aim at informing about the EU Adaptation policy context in which Climate-ADAPT operates, presenting ongoing and planned development on Climate-ADAPT, improving knowledge of specific section of Climate-ADAPT, and to promote the uptake of information, e.g. for: strategic policy process, awareness raising, planning, development of guidelines, design and implementation of plans and projects, stimulating participants to use Climate-ADAPT as a “first-stop shop” to showcase their innovative initiatives on climate change adaptation, thus boosting their contribution to enrich the current knowledge provided.

Recordings and presentations from selected past webinars are available here:https://climate-adapt.eea.europa.eu/help/Webinars