MAIA applies to the subtopic a) of the HORIZON-CL5-2021-D1-01-03 Topic. MAIA will act as an impact multiplier by providing social structures, technological and outreach activities to accompany, potentiate and help maximise the impact of climate research projects funded under Horizon Europe. MAIA constitute the response from a group of coordinators and core partners from seven H2020 precursor projects in climate change research (BINGO, BRIGAID, CLARITY, Connecting Nature, DRIVER+, PLACARD and RESCCUE). In these projects, driven by the EC’s advice to identify synergies and spark collaboration, we liaised and detected a clear need for increased connectivity and a more robust approach to synergies management as means to unlock more meaningful and impact-oriented interactions. MAIA pivots around connectivity as a key enabling factor for an effective outreach. Therefore, we are envisioning specific actions for enhancing i) the connectivity of existing communities (consolidation and activation of a Pan-European community of problem owners, solution providers, and enablers); ii) the connectivity of knowledge and technological infrastructure (creation of the MAIA Portal); and iii) the connectivity of the EU climate research (coordinating an EU climate change research Cluster). Communication and Dissemination activities of the EU climate change research projects will be reinforced and amplified by our active outreach campaign, aiming towards the democratisation of climate knowledge. Moreover, MAIA develops a comprehensive cross-project exploitation-support programme. MAIA also addresses awareness raising, the strengthening of the science-policy and science-civil society interfaces, and the support for climate action and sustainable behaviours through several actions dealing with active dialogue supported through community engagement activities and the use of SSH.

At ThinkingEarth, we view the Earth as a complex unified and interconnected system. To harness the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI), we use cutting-edge techniques, including deep learning, causality, eXplainable AI, and physics-aware Machine Learning. We leverage the predictive abilities of Self-Supervised Learning and Graph Neural Networks to develop task-agnostic Copernicus Foundation Models and a Graph representation model of the Earth. We demonstrate the potential of these assets through small-scale downstream Spotlight Applications, as well as large-scale use cases that integrate distributed industrial and user non-EO datasets. These use cases address ambitious problems with high socio-environmental impact and new business growth opportunities, such as accelerating Europe's clean energy transition and independence from volatile fossil fuels, understanding Earth's processes by modeling causal Earth system teleconnections, and assessing and modeling the impact of current and future Climate emergency in biodiversity and food security.

The number of climate-related disasters has been progressively increasing in the last two decades and this trend could be drastically exacerbated in the medium- and long-term horizons according to climate change projections. In this framework, through a multi-disciplinary team and a strong background acquired in relevant recent projects, ICARIA aims to promote the use of asset level modelling to achieve a better understanding on climate related tangible direct and indirect impacts produced by complex, cascading and compound disasters and the related risk reduction provided by suitable, sustainable and cost-effective adaptation solutions. ICARIA focuses on both critical assets and infrastructures that were not designed to consider potential climate changes that can increase the unplanned outages and failures, and also on housing, natural and land areas. Cutting edge methods regarding climate scenario building, assets level coupled models and multi-risk assessment approaches will be implemented and replicated in three EU regions to understand how future climates might affect life-cycle costs of these investments in the coming decades and to help risk owners managing public and private infrastructures to assess costs and benefits of various adaptation solutions. Two of the three case studies, Barcelona Metropolitan Area and the archipelago of South Aegean region, are located in the coastal area of the Mediterranean and are facing increasingly extreme weather events (storm surges, pluvial floods, heatwaves, drought and forest fire) with critical socio-economic and environmental impacts. The third region is situated in Austria, representing an area that is highly affected by climate change with effects (glacier melt and heatwaves) that directly impact the prevailing energy production assets (extremely critical infrastructures) and other important sectors. Moreover, other seven follower regions (third parties) will be the first candidates for replication beyond the project. In this context, ICARIA also fosters several actions to maximize replication and outreaching of the main project outcomes. ICARIA consortium is composed of 16 partners located in 6 EU countries. AQUATEC and UPC share the coordination of the project covering, respectively, administrative/legal and scientific responsibilities with the support of several technical and cross cutting partners formed by technology centres, universities and private companies and the involvement of regional authorities as risk owners of the local critical infrastructures.

ClimEmpower will empower five south-European regions with high Climate Change (CC) risk and exceptionally low adaptive capacity to enhance their CC-resilience, establish the regional Communities of Practice (CoP) and co-create the resilient development strategies adapted to the regional needs and potentials. We will achieve this through combination of user-driven climate applications, capacity building and "best practices" transfer from other European projects and regions. Throughout the project the ClimEmpower team will aid the regional administration in organizing the regional CoPs where representatives of "quadruple helix" stakeholders will discuss their Climate Adaptation needs and capabilities, assess potential pathways towards CC-resilient, societally just, and sustainable future and elect sustainable and CC-resilient regional development pathways that are best suited to their needs and capabilities. This activity will be supported by provision of the data driven Decision Support service(s) for strategic CC-adaptation planning, as well as through provision of easy to understand educational materials illustrating the CC risks and possible technological, natural and societal adaptation options and strategies, explaining the use of the project tools, as well as knowledge transfer on existing data, tools and best practices in climate adaptation from successful EU projects and regions with higher adaptive capacity. ClimEmpower will develop new generic interface to C3S Climate Data Store, data driven CC-hazard and -risk assessment services, and semi-semi-quantitative (“screening”) services allowing the users to compare different adaptation strategies. These services will primarily rely on open data and open service infrastructure and on cross-linking of such data with data that can be sampled locally during the project - to complement the pan-European data, improve granularity or to validate the predictions.

The SOTERIA project aims to advance innovative insurance solutions for climate change adaptation in different European regions and communities. To do so, SOTERIA will work through three main tracks forming the core of our approach: i) documenting best practice in relation to data, new insurance and robust enabling frameworks; ii) testing of some of these solutions; and iii) the creation of communities of practice for regions and insurance as legacy. We aim to help reducing the protection gap by documenting best practice and the testing of insurance products and services that reward proactive prevention measures while seeking to increase coverage through co-designed solutions. We will also consider the enabling framework that analyses the role of public sector modernisation and how to develop affordable insurance schemes that leave no one behind, through our Communities of Practice engaged in Climate Resilience society-insurance dialogues. SOTERIA will take these solutions from the levels of research to demonstration and testing with some at the level of pre-commercial procurement in at least three cases thanks to a network of three pilots and 5 satellites that span different geographical areas (and needs). The project legacy a set of best practice materials as well as a Community of Practice to support other regions interested to design and/or adopt innovative insurance solutions. SOTERIA will contribute to the wider goal of the Mission Adaptation to increase Europe’s resilience and preparedness to face unavoidable consequences of climate change by filling the gaps on insurance coverage for climate adaptation.