Efficient exploration of climate data locally

General Information

Despite the wealth of climate data and services currently available, access is often limited to scientists and modeling experts. FOCAL will develop a platform (FOCAL Platform) that combines intelligent workflow management with high-performance computing (HPC) infrastructures, featuring data and metadata management linked to artificial intelligence (AI) development routines. This environment will enable the fast and efficient training and validation of innovative AI and statistical methods, enhancing the understanding of climate change impacts at a local scale.
The project focuses on two pilots: urban planning and forestry, intending to develop a platform that enables efficient climate impact assessments on the local level while leveraging AI and HPC for analysing earth observation (EO) and earth system modeling data. Furthermore, FOCAL will generate new insights into key processes of the Earth system by integrating advanced EO data with existing and new data assimilation or modeling approaches. By harnessing a diverse range of EO datasets, FOCAL will improve climate predictions and provide a more comprehensive understanding of the interactions within the Earth system. This integration will allow for the identification of previously unrecognized patterns and feedback mechanisms, ultimately refining local climate models and enhancing their predictive capabilities. The platform will also facilitate Web/Cloud app development through a co-design process with urban planners and foresters, ensuring the resulting applications address their specific impact assessment challenges. Additionally, the FOCAL ecosystem will support developers, particularly small and medium size enterprises (SMEs), by providing services, modules, tools, and workflows that can be integrated into their own solutions.
The project promotes a highly interdisciplinary approach, with a defined clustering and dissemination strategy to effectively apply its innovations across various fields. An Open Geospatial Consortium Domain Working Group (OGC-DWG) will be established to manage and maintain these clustering efforts. Ultimately, FOCAL aspires to enhance climate science and policy, improve societal resilience to climate change, and promote sustainable practices, all while ensuring transparency and openness in data management and model development.

The Hereon team will use regional climate modeling up to convection permitting scale in combination with local-scale urban data and apply new statistical methods and AI to derive local climate change information. We focus on co-creating the FOCAL Urban Pilot with project partners and cities to bring regional climate model simulations to the urban scale and integrate climate with environmental and socio-economic data to assess the vulnerability of a city to climate change. Urban pilot workflows will be co-designed and co-evaluated with city agencies to develop FOCAL Web-Apps that can effectively leverage the information from models and observations, and provide more personalized, usable, and reliable climate change information to end-users, with a particular focus on addressing assessment challenges that are specific to local and regional contexts.

EU-Programme Acronym and Subprogramme Area	HORIZON-CL5-2023-D1-01-01
Project Type	Research & Innovation Action (RIA)
Contract Number	Grant Agreement 101137787
Co-ordinator	FRAUNHOFER GESELLSCHAFT ZUR FOERDERUNG DER ANGEWANDTEN FORSCHUNG E.V. (DE)

Funding for the Project (€)	Funding for Hereon (€)
7,820,523	841,230

Contact Person at Hereon

Dr. Diana Rechid, Climate Service Center Germany (GERICS, KGK) Phone: +49 40 226 338 452 E-mail contact

Participants

Asociacion Para El Impulso De La Ciencia Frontera Y Disruptiva (ES), Ústav pro hospodářskou úpravu lesů Brandýs nad Labem (CZ), Ceske Vysoke Uceni Technicke V Praze (CZ), Cesnet Zajmove Sdruzeni Pravnickych Osob (CZ), European Innovation Marketplace Asbl (BE), Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der angewandten Forschung e.V. (DE), LESPROJEKT SLUZBY SRO (CZ), Max-Planck-Institut für Meteorologie (DE), MNLT Innovations IKE (GR), Open Geospatial Consortium Europe (BE), PLAN4ALL (CZ), Stadt Konstanz (DE), YMS, a.s. (SK), Zapadoceska Univerzita V Plzni (CZ)

Last Update: 08. November 2024