The RISKADAPT consortium gathered in person for its second Plenary Meeting in Bologna, Italy, on February 15 and 16, 2024. Hosted by the University of Bologna (UNIBO), this event brought together approximately 30 partner representatives from eight European countries. The Plenary meeting facilitated dynamic discussions and workshops dedicated to advancing our collective understanding of climate change-induced compound events and their impact on structural systems. RISKADAPT project aims to provide a platform that will be developed in close collaboration with end-users and stakeholders and will offer a customizable, modular, and interoperable system to support risk-informed decisions regarding adaptation to climate change at the asset level.
During the first day of the project’s Plenary Meeting, Stephanos Camarinopoulos (project coordinator from RISA) warmly welcomed participants and outlined RISKADAPT’s focus on effective project management, including governance, financial management, quality control, risk management, technical and compliance considerations.
After the opening remarks, the consortium shifted its focus to the user requirements and architecture definition of the project. This involved identifying and engaging stakeholders, analyzing their needs, and outlining technical specifications and system architecture of the platform.
Continuing the discussion, the consortium analyzed the climate data used from services like Copernicus and GEOSS; the scalable methods applied for wider data application; the hazard curves that derived based on climatic variables including precipitation and winds; as well as the quantitative assessment of changes in probabilistic climatic hazards using climate model projections.
The consortium progressed into addressing Multi-Hazard Vulnerability and Adaptation, along with the Integration of Structural Resistance in Lifecycle Analyses. This phase involved tasks like developing a library of low carbon structural options, analyzing material degradation and vulnerability, studying glass window damage in tall buildings, and establishing a database for materials and transactions. Additionally, it included developing a probabilistic life cycle assessment and cost model.
Following that, attention turned on addressing objectives related to social impacts assessment and the development of TPRISKADAPT and PRISKADAPT, which aims to integrate technical and social considerations to support Climate Change adaptation decisions.
The first day of the Plenary Meeting concluded with presentations about the Demonstration and Validation in Pilot Cases, along with facilitating Third-Party Use of TPRISKADAPT/MIS. This phase included objectives such as field evaluation of PRISKADAPT and MIS, making PRISKADAPT accessible to engineers and scientists beyond the consortium, and providing training to associations of communities/regions in the utilization of MIS.
On the second day, our activities commenced with a technical workshop, which was followed by an insightful discussion with the ethics advisor, Dr. Ron Iphofen FAcSS, regarding various Legal, Gender, and Ethics issues pertinent to our project.
We concluded our activities with a focus on preparing the exploitation of results and organizing dissemination activities aimed at promoting and diffusing the concepts and results of RISKADAPT among potential users and beneficiaries. Additionally, efforts were made to monitor the performance of these actions and maximize awareness of RISKADAPT in the general public. Objectives included creating and enhancing the visibility of the project and its outputs to pave the way for widespread acceptance and implementation of results, developing and applying exploitation strategies for the results, and contributing to relevant European policies through preliminary standardization activities.