Integrated approach for the development across Europe of user oriented climate indicators for GFCS high-priority sectors: agriculture, disaster risk reduction, energy, health, water and tourism.
Project Indecis is part of ERA4CS , an ERA-NET initiated by JPI Climate, and funded by FORMAS (SE), DLR (DE), BMWFW (AT), IFD (DK), MINECO (ES), ANR (FR) with co-funding by the European Union (Grant 690462).
Open Knowledge: INDECIS will follow the JPI Guidelines on Open Knwoledge (Sancho Reinoso and Helgenberger, 2015), which emphasize the need to make (climate) knowledge creation, transfer and exchange more transparent and interactive in order to contribute to narrow the gap between climate research communities and societal actors. Open licensing, will be enforced by using the Creative Commons public domain license (CCO) in all communications and software products, except for those which require confidentiality by law. INDECIS will make sure that all documentation is produced or has a version in free open formats, such as ODF (e.g., *.odt, *.ods, *.odp). Open access publishing which will be chosen except for those cases when confidentiality or limitation of access is strictly required by law or internal regulations of the participation institutions. The use of the CCO license for data exchange which will be enforced by INDECIS whenever this is possible according to data provider regulations. INDECIS will always pursue CCO licensing of derived data products. The different WPs, specially WP3 and WP4, include a description of the data management policies, stressing the fact that data will be made available through a dedicated portal except for when restrictions are imposed from data providers. INDECIS will also work to overcome this restrictions, if any, stressing the benefits of open data policies. Publishing costs, as the open access policies may have economic implications, INDECIS contemplates this fact on its budget justification.
Climate-friendly research: Many partners of INDECIS have environmental in practice. This is the case of the coordinating institution, URV(http://www.urv.cat/en/campus-life/corporate-responsibility/environment/). UREAD has the “Clean and Green” program and received the “Greener Business Love Energy Savings Awards 2016”. BRGM complies with the international ISO 9001 standard (version 2008), with certification awarded by AFAQ AFNOR in 2004 and renewed in December 2010. It also obtained ISO 14001 (version 2004) certification in December 2012 for its environmental management system in recognition of its environmental practice. BRGM, assisted by A2DM, has drawn up mandatory Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reports (BEGES). Climate friendliness of INDECIS will be pursued by following the JPI Climate Friendly Research Recommendations. We will reduce the number of printed documents and rely on an e-document policy. INDECIS will reduce its CO2 footprint of routine mobility by suggesting to the consortium employees to use public transportation alternatives, reducing internal mobility in the institutions and fostering homework when the role of the employee permits. The impact of internal meetings will be reduced by replacing, whenever its possible, face-to-face meetings with the use of teleconferencing facilities or linking the Consortium meetings to other events attended by the participants (e.g. international conferences, see section 14). When the Consortium meets in a stand-alone event, INDECIS will select from the possible venues the one that, being cost-effective, implies less overall travel. INDECIS meetings will foster the use of public transportation, (preferably bus, metro, tram) for local transportation. Also INDECIS will pursue the provision of regional, fresh, seasonal food during the meetings and suggest the use of compensation mechanisms to the participants.
Climate, climate variability and change strongly impact Europe. Drought severely affects agriculture; precipitation extremes are associated with flooding, severe damage to properties and lives; temperature extremes can increase mortality; the seasonality and availability of snow affects water resources and winter tourism and wind speed or sunshine hours affect the production of renewable energy. These relations can be studied through the computation of climate indices, defined as tailored combinations of climate variables. To be useful, they need to be based on long and reliable climate datasets and be formulated to express relevant and comparable information. INDECIS will develop an integrated approach to produce a set of relevant climate indices targeting the high priority sectors of the World Meteorological Organization’s Global Framework for Climate Services (agriculture, disaster risk reduction, energy, health, water) plus tourism. To accomplish this, INDECIS will inventory and catalog existing datasets of precipitation, temperature, wind speed and sunshine duration, search new data holdings and develop new methods and tools to operationally assure their quality and homogeneity. In parallel, we will gather information on climate indicators routinely computed by the participating institutions and third parties across Europe and work to improve them in consultation with sectorial experts. It is also intended to use sectorial statistics and teleconnection indices to explore predictive relations and responses to climate variability and change. This will be accompanied by the development of tools for near-real time calculation, spatial interpolation, visualization and communication of climate monitoring. INDECIS will compare its products with those derived from reanalysis simulations to assess their validity as an alternate means to provide sectorial indices in the absence of observational datasets and with climate model output for validation and interpretation.
Gender Balance: INDECIS will follow EC’s policy on Gender Issues expressed in the Article 141 (ex Article 119) of the EC Treaty. The gender issues will be addressed within the INDECIS consortium with different approaches. First, by observing the gender policies already established at the participating institutions. Within WPs, priority will be given to ensure that the final team will have an adequate presence of women with the right position and competencies. The representation towards externals will be well balanced between men and women to act as successful ante type to young women. Recruitment of young, talented female researchers will be encouraged in INDECIS. Job advertisements will state the project’s commitment to gender equality and will explicitly encourage women to apply. Annual reports will be submitted to the Management Board detailing the level of progress made in the gender aspects of the project and suggesting ways and means to improve these aspects as the project progresses in time. INDECIS will protect members of this Consortium exercising the rights inherent in fatherhood, motherhood or the combination of professional and family lives. We shall ensure participation of women by providing equal access and opportunities.