Why knowledge ‘translation’ is needed

We organise online and offline dialogues based on existing knowledge in order to harmonise climate change adaptation (CCA) and disaster risk reduction (DRR). During these dialogues, knowledge is co-produced and new understanding may emerge which is taken up by the PLACARD evolving issues brief on an annual basis. The outcomes are relevant for the broader CCA and DRR communities. To ensure that the outcomes of the PLACARD dialogues reach the appropriate audience, we use a translational approach.

  • Making sense of the outcomes by putting it in the specific context that is of relevance for the targeted CCA and DRR people
  • Using words that are frequently used by and familiar to the targeted CCA and DRR people.

Policy briefs and blogs

PLACARD legacy framework – a universal approach to foster long-term impact

Research programmes, policy initiatives and practical interventions can benefit from a legacy framework to make clear what they will leave behind once the initiatives have ended. This framework is a systematic approach to pursue the legacy.

Who is it translated for?

  • Managers of research programmes, policy initiatives and practical interventions

Research and practice gaps: outcomes from ECCA 2019

Developed by the organisers of ECCA2019 as a summary of discussions during the conference, several research gaps have emerged. These are of critical importance for future research planning in Europe and internationally. This policy brief has been used to inform the new working programme Horizon Europe.

Who is it translated for?

  • Managers of research programmes: DG Research, JPI Climate, JPI Urban Europe, JPI Face, DG Clima, DG Echo, national research organisations, Horizon Europe.

Why knowledge ‘translation’ is needed

Policy brief on why research programmes should put effort in translating results to respective target audiences.

Who is it translated for?

  • Managers of research projects.

PLACARD: stories for action

Stories are a way to engage people and motivate them to act. We share findings and inspiration to build successful stories and narratives.

Who is it translated for?

  • Researchers, public action

Why CCA & DRR are important for achieving European Green Deal goals?

The blog article points at very scarce (INSUFFICIENT) coverage of the CCA and DRR- related issues in the European Green Deal that are a necessary condition to achieve sustainability and resilience – the main objective of the Green Deal.

Who is it translated for?

  • EC policymakers, all interested CCA&DRR stakeholders (first and foremost practitioners) willing to engage in a public debate on GD and improve it via EC platform “have your say”

Climate Change 2019 conference – challenges & solutions

An important conference message focused on how we, as humankind, need to aim for the best scenario, but must be prepared to cope with the worst. Foresight methods are a way to prepare for several potential futures.

Who is it translated for?

  • International community of climate change – Convened at Bratislava, PLACARD community

Boosting public-private sector cooperation in DRR finance

The main goal of the article is to highlight the most important results of the meeting under the auspices of the DG ECHO, summarize the most important challenges in CCA and DRR finance, provide information about the possible solutions on how to unlock financial resources and elaborate effective climate insurance mechanisms with application of Distributed Ledger Technologies on the EU-level.

Who is it translated for?

  • EU Commission, insurance companies and financial institutions, CCA and DRR communities, NGOs.

Extreme wildfire events: addressing governance & management challenges

To prevent wildfire, there is a need to better manage the landscape, and improve the integration of prevention and emergency response processes

The session brought together researchers and experts to discuss Integrated Fire Management Strategies

Climate finance stream at ECCA 2019, EURF and ICLEI

The purpose of this blog article is to highlight the main outcomes of the most relevant events within the PLACARD project on CCA and DRR; sum up the main outcomes of the ECCA 2019, EURF and ICLEI; outline the most important current issues in the above- mentioned areas.

Who is it translated for?

  • CCA and DRR practitioners, local policymakers, local community and NGOs, ECCA community.

ECCA 2019 summary: Preparing for change requires action now! PLACARD project, FC.ID, Lisbon

The conclusion of the ECCA conference 2019.

Who is it translated for?

  • Research community, research funders

Adapting to a changing climate in wildfire management

Climate change is expected to increase the risk to wildfires. The impacts can be very different and there is a need for more research to understand the impacts and strategies to deal with it. Insurance sector play an important role to address wildfire risks. It was recommended to identify and map wildfire hazard zones, improve science-policy engagement, develop effect risk assessment and prevention measures and raise awareness on the risks of wildfire.

Who is it translated for?

  • Governments, international organisations, insurance companies, emergency managers, science community

Blogs: European Climate Change Adaptation conference 2019

Fun with forecasts

IMPREXive game teaches you to interpret forecasts and spotlights how difficult decision based on forecasts can be.

Who is it translated for?

  • ECCA community

Adaptation as part of Water Wise Cities

The IWA Principles for Water Wise Cities have four levels of actions, which build on the base principle, that all citizens have access to water and sanitation services, which requires planning, prioritization, monitoring and reporting of the human rights to water and sanitation. It is a way to deal with climate change and disasters.

Using urban resilience to assess extreme weather events in Lisbon city

The city of Lisbon has developed a resilience strategy with the powerful help of GIS tools. They have helped to assess the most affected areas and have enabled to combine physical and socio-urban variables. Furthermore, the Resilience framework from the RESCCUE project was used to reassess climate change adaptation strategies.

Delivering successful adaptation – how can we tell what works?

Climate adaptation programmes can learn from how disaster risk reduction programmes assess the impact of measures – in particular by measuring changes in vulnerability and exposure.

Who is it translated for?

  • ECCA community, adaptation officers, monitoring and evaluation consultants.

Urban resilience is a common benefit for all citizens

Defined as the ability to withstand and to recover quickly from threats, tragedies or severe stress, the application of resilience to cities becomes key. Therefore, cities should have cities must have a Resilience Action Plan. This applies an integral analysis of the operation of urban services, the monitoring of service and infrastructure networks, simulation models, action protocols and alert systems to know the state of the city in real-time, and guarantee coordination that allows efficient management of the critical events that a city may suffer.

Who is it translated for?

  • ECCA community, city officers

Climate resilience in cities: the main barriers are soft, not hard

UN-Habitat was looking to develop a methodology that was sufficiently flexible to adapt to all urban contexts, but robust enough to deliver insightful and actionable recommendation to local governments on how to build climate resilience – City Resilience Profiling Tool. This has been tested today in some cities.

Who is it translated for?

  • ECCA community, city officers

Holistic approach to increase urban resilience

Cities are complex multidimensional systems containing an endless number of elements constantly interacting among themselves. The Rescue project is applying a new approach that leaves sectoral approaches behind and instead considers the cities as systems of interdependent systems. In this way, the project helps to improve the capability of cities to anticipate, prepare for, respond to, and recover from significant multi-hazard threats with minimum damage.

Who is it translated for?

  • ECCA community, city officers

Videos

PLACARD video on Connectivity Hub

The video illustrates how the connectivity hub can be used. City planners, researchers, public officers from European and national level.

PLACARD video on the power of stories

The video highlights the often underestimated effect of words and framing (how do we talk about an issue) on our perception and respective actions. It shows that stories can be used to induce behavior change and trigger prevention and preparedness among citizens. The clip serves as a teaser encouraging users to explore further details of PLACARD work on narratives by downloading the Narrative Recipe Book available on the PLACARD webpage.

Who is it translated for?

  • Public officers, researchers

European Climate Change Adaptation conference 2019 videos

ECCA conference participants highlight the gaps and solutions to strengthen collaboration between CCA and DRR

Who is it translated for?

  • Research community, climate change officers, practitioners, emergency managers

Scientific articles

Street R., Bontemps C., Mysiak J., Karali E., Pulquerio M., Murray V., Swart R., 2019. How could climate services support disaster risk reduction in the 21st century. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 34: 28–33.

Climate services can be useful for the different phases of the disaster risk management cycle and user needs of disaster sector should be detected to develop tailored climate services.

Who is it translated for?

  • Scientific community and beyond

Karali, E., Bojovic, D., Michalek, G., Giupponi, C., Schwarze, R. 2020. Who Is Connected with Whom? A Social Network Analysis of Institutional Interactions in the European CCA and DRR Landscape. Sustainability 2020, 12: 1275.

The article explains the pattern of institutional interactions between CCA and DRR stakeholders at the European level through a Social Network Analysis (SNA). Based on follow-up stakeholder interviews, it formulates initial recommendations on increasing institutional openness, collaboration and communication between CCA & DRR stakeholders.

Who is it translated for?

  • Policy advisors at the EU and national level, European CCA & DRR institutions, scholars and other interested stakeholders.

Mysiak, J., Castellari S., Kruik B., Swart R., Pringle P., Schwarze R., Wolters H., Jeuken A., van der Linden P. 2018. Brief communication: strengthening coherence between climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction

The report Climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction in Europe: enhancing coherence of the knowledge base, policies and practices of the European Environment Agency identified several ways for how coherence and resilience can be built through knowledge sharing, collaboration and investments.

Who is it translated for?

  • Policy advisors at the EU and national level, European CCA & DRR institutions, scholars and other interested stakeholders

Reports

Economics and finance of disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation. Main gaps identified in arising alignment opportunities for the EU Green Deal

Identification of political, economic and financial shortcomings in the EU Green Deal, highlighting the knowledge gaps between the CCA and DRR communities, elaboration of the concrete actions to eliminate overlaps or conflicting actions within both communities and counteract the fragmentation of knowledge.

Who is it translated for?

  • EU Commission, national environmental protection agencies, CCA ad DRR community

Translation via presentations and workshops

European Climate Change Adaptation conference, 28–31 May 2019

The biennial European conference for climate change adaptation is a major forum for researchers, policymakers and practitioners from several sectors of society. For the first time this edition of the conference specifically focused on bringing together the CCA and DRR communities. International, European, national and local institutions and organisations were represented at a high level, including European Commissioners, Director-General, Directors of public and private organisations, Ministers and Mayors. The conference was well covered by the generalist media.

Who is it translated for?

  • Researchers, policymakers and practitioners working in CCA and DRR, general public

Supporting and further strengthening institutional coordination between and capacities of CCA and DRR communities. Recommendations and ways forward

This session aimed at supporting and boosting efforts to strengthen institutional cooperation across both communities, and support integration and mainstreaming of CCA & DRR into policy, institutional arrangements and practice.

Who is it translated for?

  • ECCA community

How CCA and DRR communities use strategic narratives for joint purposes: preparedness, accessing funding, improving health and ecosystem based solutions?

The session presented PLACARD findings on the power of narratives (stories) to encourage joint CCA & DRR action by giving concrete examples for local preparedness, funding acquisition, prevention of health issues exacerbated by extreme events and benefits of NBS.

Who is it translated for?

  • ECCA community – CCA & DRR practitioners, local policymakers, communities and NGOs interested in resilience.

Financing climate change adaptation and post disaster reconstruction. UFZ. Session at ECCA 2019

Collection of experiences targeting innovative finance and asset management tools for building resilience in climate change adaptation and post-disaster recovery and reconstruction operations, for both individuals and business

Who is it translated for?

  • ECCA community – financial and insurance institutions, local policymakers, local communities, CCA and DRR communities

The PLACARD Connectivity Hub: A new ‘search and discovery’ tool for CCA and DRR.

Tool-shed presentations: 1) PLACARD Connectivity Hub and 2) Participate! online course. To showcase PLACARD’s tools, access information and learn how to engage people.

Who is it translated for?

  • ECCA community

Urban Resilience Forum, May 2019

Session 3B: Strategic narratives for urban heat and health effects (training session)

The session aimed to teach participants how to create an appealing narrative/story that can change urban citizens’ behaviour and encourage respective preparatory and preventive actions in the face of increasing and more extreme heatwaves in the European cities. This aim was achieved by presenting PLACARD findings on narrative building blocks (PLACARD Recipe Book) and a participatory approach (case study and discussion of the results) City mayors, city officers, urban CCA & DRR practitioners, NGOs and local communities

Session 1C: Innovative schemes for financing resilient cities

The main goal of this session is to collect good practices and innovative schemes for the implementation and financing of the projects for resilient cities; to create a short guidance on how to select and elaborate an effective financing scheme for a resilient city.

Who is it translated for?

  • City officers, financial and insurance institutions, local policymakers, local communities, CCA and DRR communities.

PLACARD results in other networks

PLACARD foresight work is mentioned in the following publications

  • Climate change adaptation of major infrastructure projects. ANNEX I: EU Level additional resources. Ey and Arcadis. 2018.
  • European Strategic Actions in Water and Climate Change Policy Booklet. European Commission | TRUST

Other workshops, training and conferences

Note:

This note summarises the translation materials produced from May 2019 to April 2020.