Enhancing the value of climate data - translating risk and uncertainty utilizing a Living Labs approach

The EVOKED project tailors the presentation and specification of climate data to end-user's knowledge and needs, thus enhancing the value of the data. The main aim of the project is to translate climate data from the scientific community into knowledge products (i.e. climate services) more understandable and useful for end-users and for decisions related to adaptation planning. End-users and stakeholders are engaged in Living Labs at case study sites dealing with climate impact challenges in the vulnerable sectors of water management, disaster risk reduction and coastal management. The Living Labs approach ensures the involvement of end-users as co-creators and serves as a mechanism for innovation in the context of climate services, important for improving our capacity to manage climate-related risks. Through the Living Labs, climate services have been co-designed at five different case study sites located in Norway, Sweden, Germany and the Netherlands. The process has been based on information design methodology - starting by identifying the information needs of the relevant stakeholders and subsequently working though steps of identifying the issue to be addressed, the desired action to be taken, and finally the graphic format of the desired climate service. The products of this work include story maps, infographics and checklists. For example, climate stories were created to increase climate impact awareness for i) citizens in Flensburg, Germany, ii) officials and politicians in Värmland County, Sweden, and iii) practitioners in the Waterboard Drents Overijselse Delta, the Netherlands. The North Brabaant province in the Netherlands decided to improve an existing climate service, an infographic on climate adaptation options, together with the municipalities and waterboards located in the province. Larvik municipality, Norway created a 'Climate menu' checklist to function as a discussion tool between planners and developers for addressing climate adaptation measures early in the planning and permitting process. A central element in Living Labs for climate services is the need to co-develop with the relevant users. In a review of co-design and the co-family of concepts, practices that support co-design have been identified and include: ? Using iterative methods of engaging with end-users and stakeholders and moving beyond informing stakeholders and learning from stakeholders to learning with stakeholders. ? Initiating engagement with users and stakeholders early in the process of developing climate services. For example, this can be achieved by collaborating and participating on the problem definition and data analysis prior to the development and testing of the climate services. ? Creating processes that enable user-driven development of the climate services. For example, processes that have high levels of intensity where the ownership is moved from the domain of science to the domain of practices.

EVOKED results have been dissemination at several academic conferences throughout the project. Due to Covid-19 travel restrictions, a final EVOKED conference was not possible. However, EVOKED co-organised a session on co-design of climate services at one of the popular Climateurope Webstivals (https://www.climateurope.eu/events-climateurope/festival/webstival). The EVOKED website (https://www.ngi.no/eng/Projects/EVOKED) also functions as an archive for future dissemination of EVOKED publicly available deliverables and project newsletters. The climate services developed at the different case study sites are also available via their respective organizations' websites to be further managed by the end-user partners after the completion of the project. Project results are being published in the peer-reviewed literature. Early results are published with a forthcoming article which is part of the recently approved special issue in Climate Services on the co-design of climate services.

EVOKED places the user's knowledge needs at the forefront as the driver for further specification of climate data, enhancing the value of climate data and subsequently improving the interface between the climate science community and policy makers with regard to adaptation measures to address the impacts of climate change. The project team will implement Living Labs in Norway, Sweden, Germany and the Netherlands at established case study sites. EVOKED will focus on the vulnerable sectors of water management, disaster risk reduction and coastal management. Utilizing the Living Labs approach ensures the involvement of users as co-creators, implementation of climate adaptation measures, and serves as a mechanism for innovation in the context of climate services. EVOKED builds on NGI's expertise within the field of risk management and climate adaptation of natural hazards, with the added benefit of an integrated transdisciplinary approach that creates a bridge between existing climate knowledge (observations, forecasts and predictions, operational products) end-users with local, regional or sector-specific expertise. As a scientific expert, NGI assesses these hazards and their uncertainty to assist Norwegian municipalities with incorporating the impact of climate change (climate adaptation) in their mandatory risk and vulnerability analyses. EVOKED enhances this work with the addition of project partners with experience in facilitating stakeholder dialogue as well as partners within the fields of public policy, political science and spatial planning in order to better understand end-user needs and preconditions for knowledge uptake. This transdisciplinary approach, together with the end-users is relevant for NGI as it improves NGIs capacity to translate risk and uncertainty in climate knowledge to usable products to improve the decision making processes and the implementation of climate adaption measures.