Climate-fit.city at OLLD19 Thessaloniki
Climate services from local to global
Climate Fit City was given the opportunity to participate in the Open Living Lab Days 2019 (OLLD19) in Thessaloniki, Greece, from 3 to 5 September.
This conference, and in particular the ‘Scaling Up Challenge’ workshops in which we were invited to intervene, is considered as an important pivotal point in the transition from the current Horizon 2020 EU research and innovation program towards the new Horizon Europe 2021-2027 R&I framework, an ambitious €100 billion research and innovation programme to succeed Horizon 2020. It was very exciting, and a challenge indeed, to present our experiences and the lessons learned as building stones for the new programme, which will become more concretely elaborated at the upcoming European Research & Innovation Days on 24-26 September 2019 in Brussels.
Co-creation as a lever to boost creativity and participation in all sectors of society, was the backbone methodology used to create all six services offered by the CFC one-stop shop for urban climate data and services. It ensures that our services really meet the needs of cities and their citizens to adapt to climate change. OLLD19 provided us with the opportunity to present our project to many of the participants.
Although the conference covered a very broad range of subjects, it became clear in the discussions that climate change is affecting all layers, sectors and activities of society. Mitigating the climate crisis is a stark priority, but adapting to it has already become a stark necessity, since climate change is happening here and now, not in some distant future. It is obvious that cities, being the main hub for almost all human activities, will play a crucial role in this. But as was remarked by one of the high level speakers in the opening panel, municipalities need to be very provident in unrolling their means, and often lack expertise in the use of climate data. It is exactly the bundle of accomodating and ‘plug & play’ principled services provided by Climate Fit City that will help them to adapt to climate change in the fastest and most economic way possible. Our next step is scaling up our services from local to global. OLLD19 has proven to be a very successful first stage in this process.
