FOCAL - Efficient exploration of climate data locally
The EU Horizon project FOCAL aims to improve our understanding of the local impacts of climate change in order to develop effective solutions to mitigate them. It aims to bridge the gap between the data generated by climate and Earth system modelling and Earth observation and the decision-making of stakeholders at different levels, from local to EU level.
The initiative, coordinated by the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, brings together leading research institutions and practical partners from Germany, the Czech Republic, Greece, Belgium, Spain and Slovakia.
The project's areas of activity include:
• Co-Design: Involvement of stakeholders from urban planning and forestry to specify and validate the applications to be developed.
• Development of the FOCAL platform: Creation and provision of an HPC-based platform to support intelligent workflows.
• AI models and climate data integration: Development of advanced AI models to refine and utilise climate data, including the integration of Earth observation data.
• Pilot demonstrations: Implementation and evaluation of the developed applications in real urban and forestry scenarios.
GERICS at Hereon will use regional climate modelling up to the convection-resolving scale and work with the project partners to localise and make efficient use of high-resolution geodata, new statistical methods and artificial intelligence. GERICS is leading the development of the FOCAL city pilot with the city of Constance. The workflows are being developed and evaluated together with municipal authorities and made available via web applications.
Further information on the FOCAL project