Innovating Climate services through Integrating Scientific and local Knowledge

ended

Climate Services (CS) are crucial in empowering citizens, stakeholders and decision-makers in defining resilient pathways to adapt to climate change and extreme events. Despite advances in scientific data and knowledge (e.g. Copernicus, GEOSS), current CS fail to achieve their full value-proposition to end-users. Challenges include incorporation of social and behavioural factors, local needs, knowledge and the customs of end-users. I-CISK will develop a next generation of end-user CS, which follow a social and behaviourally informed approach to co-producing services that meet climate information needs at a relevant spatial and temporal scale. I-CISK takes a trans-disciplinary approach to developing CS by working with stakeholders in 7 Living Labs established in climate hotspots in Europe, it's neighbours, and Africa, to address climate change and extremes (droughts, floods and heatwaves) faced by agriculture, forestry, tourism, energy, health, and the humanitarian sectors. With end-users, I-CISK will co-design, co-create, co-implement, and co-evaluate pre-operational CS that provide a step-change in integrating local knowledge, perceptions and preferences with scientific knowledge. This co-production framework is unique as it (i) links climate impact and adaptation at different temporal scales from (sub)-seasonal forecasts through to climate scale projections, and (ii) explicitly considers the human-climate feedbacks of adaptation and options in a multi-timescale, multi-sector, and multi-hazard setting. The novel CS will be built on a highly customisable cloud-based web platform that I-CISK develops; freely available, and easily replicable. The I-CISK co-production framework, supported by online open courses, guidelines, business stories and strategic dissemination, will catalyse the production and adoption of CS that integrate end-user local knowledge with scientific knowledge, contribute to improved decisions and policies, and a flourishing market for end-user CS