The original EU-CIRCLE research project
Where this site's name comes from, and why it isn't the same organisation.
If you found this page looking for a specific EU-CIRCLE project deliverable, a case study, or the original consortium website, this is the explanation: the research project and this site are related in name only, and the technical archive you're looking for isn't hosted here.
What EU-CIRCLE was
EU-CIRCLE was a research project funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 programme under grant agreement No. 653824 (call H2020-DRS-2014, DG-CONNECT). It ran for 36 months, from June 2015 to May 2018, with a consortium of universities, meteorological agencies and infrastructure operators from across Europe.
The project's stated objective was to build a framework for assessing how climate-related hazards (flooding, extreme heat, storms, coastal erosion) affect interconnected European critical infrastructure: energy networks, transportation, water management systems and buildings. Because modern infrastructure is interdependent, a failure in one system (a flooded substation, for instance) can cascade into others, and EU-CIRCLE's modelling work was aimed at understanding and quantifying that cascade risk rather than treating each infrastructure type in isolation.
Where the research was tested
The consortium ran real-world case studies across several European regions, each focused on a different climate hazard and infrastructure type: climate impacts on critical infrastructure in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region of France, multi-hazard risk assessment in the Vasilikos area of Cyprus, coastal flooding across Torbay in the UK, and rapid winter flooding around Dresden, Germany, alongside a case study on cyclonic flooding and its infrastructure effects in Bangladesh.
The technical deliverables
Like most EU Horizon 2020 projects, EU-CIRCLE produced a series of numbered technical deliverables: reports such as the detailed methodological framework (D1.5), the holistic critical-infrastructure climate-hazard risk assessment framework (D3.4), and others in the D1, D3 and D8 series. These are cited in academic literature (Springer, MDPI, and disaster-risk publications like PreventionWeb reference them directly), but they were produced and are held by the original EU-CIRCLE consortium, not by this site. We haven't republished them here, and we don't have the right to.
Why this site carries the name today
This site inherited the eu-circle.eu domain and, with it, the EU-CIRCLE name. It is an independent editorial project, not a continuation of the original research consortium, and has no institutional affiliation with the EU-CIRCLE partners, the European Commission, or Horizon 2020. What we've kept is the underlying subject: how climate hazards affect the infrastructure and systems people depend on. Where the original project wrote for policymakers, engineers and infrastructure operators, this site translates the same categories of risk (flooding, extreme heat, wildfire, coastal erosion, grid resilience) into guidance a household, property owner or local planner can actually act on. See our editorial approach for more on how that guidance gets written.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is this the official EU-CIRCLE project website?
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No. The original EU-CIRCLE research project ran from 2015 to 2018 under EU Horizon 2020 funding. This site later took over the domain and continues to use the EU-CIRCLE name, but it is an independent editorial project with no institutional link to the original consortium, the European Commission, or Horizon 2020.
Where can I find an EU-CIRCLE project deliverable or report?
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We don't host the original project's technical deliverables. They were produced by the EU-CIRCLE consortium under the Horizon 2020 grant, and copies are most reliably found through the academic and institutional sources that cite them, such as Springer, MDPI, or the original consortium partners' own institutional repositories.
What did the EU-CIRCLE project actually study?
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It studied how climate-related hazards affect European critical infrastructure (energy, transportation, water management and buildings), with a particular focus on cascade failures between interconnected systems, tested through real case studies in France, Cyprus, the UK, Germany and Bangladesh.
How was the EU-CIRCLE project funded?
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Through the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, under grant agreement No. 653824, administered by the European Commission's DG-CONNECT. Funding covered the 36-month project from June 2015 to May 2018.