This topic aims to build upon the achievements of the project CLIMAAX, funded HORIZON-MISS-2021-CLIMA-02-01 :

1. by consolidating and further mainstreaming its regional climate risk assessment framework and supporting toolbox (1st objective thereafter)
2. by supporting additional regional and local authorities (not supported by CLIMAAX) to conduct regional climate risk assessments and to develop or revise community-based emergency and risk management plans (2nd objective thereafter).

Both objectives detailed below should be addressed by the proposals. By doing so, this topic directly contributes to the follow-up of the Commission Communication on managing climate risks, where, in its response to EUCRA, the European Commission committed to improving tools that support regions and local authorities better prepare for climate risks.

1st objective- Consolidating and further mainstreaming the framework and toolbox for climate risk assessments.

Further developments of the framework and toolbox for regional climate risk assessment should keep their initial requirements, namely:

• The improved toolbox and framework should be for multi-risk and multi-sector and include exposure and vulnerability.
• The improved toolbox should be broadly applicable in EU Member States (including Outermost Regions) and Associated Countries of Horizon Europe.
• The improved toolbox and related IT tools should be made open source, free and open licensed.

Further refinements of the methodological framework and supporting toolbox should aim to address emerging knowledge and data gaps and could reflect but are not limited to the following elements:

• Incorporating tailored ‘responses’ as a key part of the risk framework, as introduced in the sixth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change;
• Considering, cascading and compounding risks and/or risks from other crises such as biodiversity loss and pollution;
• Accounting for the dynamic nature of climate risk that changes with time;
• Exploring how to translate future scenarios, designed at the global scale, into local risks;
• Incorporating supporting tools for regional climate risk management planning to effectively use the results of the climate risk assessments as basis for community-based emergency and risk management plans.
• Exploring ways to integrate the developments for multi-risk by previous and ongoing Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe projects

Those refinements to the framework and supporting toolbox should be co-designed and co-produced with regional/local authorities and practitioners from several EU Member States/Associated Countries, to ensure that their needs and constraints are addressed in a practical way. The improved framework and associated toolbox should benefit from a built-in mechanism for continuous feedback and iterative improvements, ensuring that the tools and assessments remain relevant as climate science and policy evolve.

The consolidated version of the toolbox should strive to include newly produced datasets, in particular those coming from other EU programmes and initiatives such as Copernicus and Destination Earth or from EURO-CORDEX. Exploiting digital technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) in the tool to better quantify and assess climate risks is encouraged. Proposals are also encouraged to consider — where relevant — the services offered by European research infrastructures as well as related projects such as IRISCC.

An effective, timely and targeted communication of climate risks is key to drive climate action. The proposals should dedicate efforts to make the improved toolbox and its results more accessible and understandable by non-experts and to combat climate disinformation. This toolbox should include a simple Graphical User Interface to facilitate the dissemination of risk information across the European Union and Associated countries. These efforts to increase accessibility should occur in parallel to the developments of the toolbox for more advanced/expert users.

2nd objective- Using the improved framework and toolbox to support regional and local authorities in assessing their climate risks, as a basis for development or revision of local adaptation, risk management, disaster prevention plans (cascade funding).

The proposals must provide financial support to third parties in the form of grants to allow at least 50 regional and local authorities to conduct a comprehensive climate risk assessment.

The grants for third parties should be used for conducting comprehensive climate risk assessments or refining existing ones, using the framework and toolbox developed under the 1st objective of this topic.

Eligible third parties are regional and local authorities in EU Member States and Horizon Europe Associated Countries (and/or other entities acting on their behalf), provided that they did not receive financial support under the CLIMAAX project nor the concerned territories were already covered by CLIMAAX.

At least 60% of the total amount of the EU requested contribution should be for financial support to third parties. Preferably, the (first) cascade call should be launched in the first 12 months of the project.

Proposals must describe how they intend to provide financial support to third parties, in accordance with the FSTP Annex provided with the application form. They should also specifically take account of provisions on ‘financial support to third parties’ set out in General Annex B and incorporate them into the proposal. While remaining as simple as possible, proposals should specifically consider elements within the FSTP scheme to address geographical balance and inclusivity/equity.

To this purpose, learning from the experience of projects with financial support to third parties/cascading funding could be considered: on top of consulting publicly available information on lessons learnt, the project retained for granting is expected to hold dedicated exchanges with the projects CLIMAAX, Pathways2Resilience and the Mission Secretariat during the preparation of the cascade funding call.

Moreover, the project should collaborate with the Mission National Hubs also in view of facilitating good practice sharing and replicability at National level.