CLARITY Screening Service for Climate Hazards, Impacts and Effects of the Adaptation Options

Abstract

The CLARITY project (www.clarity-h2020.eu) aims to implement a new generation of climate services that allow the service users to perform an initial assessment of the expected climate change effects in the project area, as well as an initial assessment of the need for and of the usability of the adaptation options in the early project planning phase. The target users of this service are the consultants and urban planning experts that aren’t climate change experts but need to produce standardized reports indicating the climate hazard, exposure and impact data, as well as the expected impact of the adaptation options in the project area, as a part of the project planning. The initial implementation of this service uses the available open data to calculate the local heat hazard, population exposure and related impact indicators at the project location on the fly. In the initial implementation, the heat related can be automatically calculated for more than 400 European cities, with a spatial resolution of 500 × 500 m2. Extension to the flooding hazards and related impacts is in implementation. This article will describe in more detail the workflow and the technical implementation of the CLARITY screening service and discuss the value, potential and the limitations of the current service implementation.