The SPARCCLE project held its Kick-Off meeting at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Laxenburg, Austria, just outside of Vienna, on 12-14 September 2023, providing a fruitful start to cooperation within the project. All 12 consortium partners, represented by over 30 attendees, came together to discuss cooperation going forward, with additional interventions from the European Commission Joint Research Centre and the SPARCCLE Project Officer from the European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency (CINEA). 

Partners met to discuss individual work packages which range from project coordination and stakeholder engagement to biophysical impacts of climate change, projections of multi-dimensional socioeconomic vulnerabilities, multidimensional damages, adaptation and risks, to how to integrate these assessment frameworks to better inform climate resilient transitions in Europe and beyond. The outputs of each work package will feed significantly into many others, which will require close inter-disciplinary cooperation, facilitated somewhat with a consortium dinner the last night of the meeting. Additionally, the project has a dedicated budget for mobility funding to support research visits dedicated to knowledge exchange among partners and key stakeholders. 

A session was also dedicated to discussing the planned stress-test scenarios which will explore the implications of exceptional, yet plausible, changes in socioeconomic risk factors due to climate change. While conducting stress-test scenarios is a well-established method across primarily the financial sector, SPARCCLE plans to adapt the practice for examining climate change resilience across other key sectors. The project aims to co-develop scenarios with key stakeholders to understand the limits of our ability to adapt to climate change, ensuring policymakers have the best modelling possible when faced with difficult decisions relating to managing climate change risks. It is crucial to identify the parameters for the models and tools early in the process to ensure the key “levers” are integrated into the final output. This aspect of the project will be developed further in May 2024 when a Scoping Workshop will be held with key stakeholders. 

As the SPARCCLE project gets underway new developments will be added to our webpage, to keep up with new publications and keep an eye out for upcoming events that might interest you. You can also follow our X (formerly Twitter) account for bitesize updates as it happens. If you are interested in getting involved with the project as a stakeholder or want to learn more, please get in touch using our contact form.