EU-CIRCLE is a research project funded by Horizon2020 EU’s new research and innovation programme, with an aim to assess the resilience of interconnected and interdependent critical infrastructures to climate change. The project with duration of 36 months (1 June 2015 – 1 June 2018) and a total budget of 7.3 Million Euros brings together leading European research/academic institutions, governmental organisations, meteorological services, and industries and SMEs from the climatology and critical infrastructure protection domains.

As European Infrastructures have lifetime that span in several decades, it is imperative to generate scientifically truthful and validated knowledge on the potential impacts of climate, as a viable pathway for making them resilient to future climate regimes. Owing to the multiple time scales involved, the main policy objective, as underline in the EU Adaptation Strategy to Climate Change (COM (2013) 216) as well as national policy briefs , is to move towards infrastructure network(s) that is resilient to today’s natural hazards and prepared for the future changing climate. Furthermore, modern infrastructures are inherently interconnected and interdependent systems; thus extreme events are liable to lead to ‘cascade failures’.

EU-CIRCLE’s scope is to derive an innovative framework for supporting the interconnected European Infrastructure’s resilience to climate pressures. This will be based on the development of a validated Climate Infrastructure Resilience Platform that will: 1) assess potential impacts due to climate hazards, 2) provide monitoring through new resilience indicators and 3) support cost-efficient adaptation measures. The EU-CIRCLE framework, leveraging upon the vast amount of existing knowledge generated thus in the climate research, will provide an open-source web-based solution customizable to addressing community requirements, either in responding to short-term hazards and extreme weather events or in deriving the most effective long term adaptation measures.

The consortium with 20 partner organizations is led by the National Center of Scientific Research Demokritos (Greece). The consortium is well-balanced in terms of involvement of industrial and SME partners: Aditess Ltd (Cyprus), Satways Ltd (Greece), D’Appolonia Spa (Italy), Xuvasi Ltd (UK), MRK Management Consultants Gmbh (Germany), Artelia Eau Et Environnement SAS (France); Academic and research institutions: Veleučilište Velika Gorica (Croatia), The University of Exeter (UK), Akademia Morska W Gdyni (Poland), The University Of Salford (UK), The European University Cyprus (Cyprus), Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Foerderung der Angewandten Forschung e.v (Germany) ; end-user partners from National Meteorological Services : Hellenic National Meteorological Service / Ministry Of National Defence (Greece), Drzavni Hidrometeoroloski Zavod (Croatia), and Meteorologisk institutt (Norway); National Contact Points for the implementation of Directive 114/2008 on Critical Infrastructure Protection : Drzavna Uprava za Zastitu i Spasavanje (Croatia), Center for Security Studies (Greece) and specialized expertise such as Entente Pour La Forêt Méditerranéenne, (France) and Torbay Council (UK). Furthermore, EU-CIRCLE has initiated an International Stakeholders Advisory Group which consists of end-user organizations and experts in the field.

Project Details

Project No: 653824

Start Date: 01/06/2015

Project Duration: 36 months

More information on EU-Circle can be found on the Horizon 2020 website.

For additional information please contact the Project Coordinator at the National Center for Scientific Research ‘Demokritos’ or the Dissemination Coordinator at the European University Cyprus:

Contact point NCSR Demokritos: Dr. Thanasis Sfetsos, email: tsATipta.demokritos.gr, +30210 6503403

Contact point EUC: Louisa Marie Shakou, email: L.ShakouATresearch.euc.ac.cy, phone +357 22559513

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