Climate change adaptation and mitigation are to be studied with the help of data and Artificial Intelligence in a new international research project. Launched in June 2021, EIFFEL will introduce new methods to the field of climate research by harvesting the benefits of the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS). Finnish Environment Institute SYKE is one of the 19 partners contributing to the project.
The vast resources of the GEOSS will be used in novel ways, building upon prior knowledge and data. GEOSS consists of a set of coordinated, independent Earth observation, information and processing systems that are provided by a large number of organizations from all over the world. The EIFFEL project partners will design added-value services for GEOSS using cognitive search and metadata augmentation tools based on Artificial Intelligence, including Natural Language Processing.
Multi-hazard risk assessment
In EIFFEL, SYKE is responsible for a pilot on disaster resilience and will develop a multi-hazard framework for the risk assessment of droughts, forest fires and forest pests at regional and national levels in Finland. GEOSS data sources will be integrated with national databases to potentially enhance existing drought and forest fires risk assessments and to develop a new forest pest risk mapping tool. The pilot will support monitoring, seasonal forecasts and long-term projections of forest risks and the development of adaptation measures.
“SYKE brings into the project expertise from various domains: hydrological modelling, climate scenario and impact assessments, stakeholder engagement, biodiversity and remote sensing. SYKE will also coordinate the demonstration, impact assessment and stakeholder engagement for the five EIFFEL pilots”, says researcher Kristin Böttcher, who manages SYKE’s contribution to the project.
A wide range of geographic areas and climate regions
EIFFEL is coordinated by the Greek Institute of Communications and Computer Systems ICCS and funded under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Programme. The project consists of a consortium of 19 partners from 8 European countries.
The project will promote the development and uptake of five pilot applications from different geographic areas and climate regions. It will address the UN Sustainable Development Goals, The Paris Agreement and the Sendaï Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction. The project targets regional, national and cross-border scales with a view to upscale their scope to a pan-European scale.
More information
Researcher Kristin Böttcher, Finnish Environment Institute SYKE, forename.surname@syke.fi, Tel. +358 295 251 092