Over the past months, the ASPECT project has joined forces with the European project Impetus4Change (I4C) to organise joint activities aimed at exchanging knowledge and sharing the two projects’ work. The two projects work to improve climate predictions for climate adaptation and social transformation.
This collaboration involved a series of internal workshops that allowed researchers from the two projects to share and discuss their work, followed by a joint session at the 2025 European Climate Change Adaptation (ECCA) conference.
ECCA 2025 workshop
In June 2025, the two projects co-hosted a session titled “Knowledge Integration for Climate Services: The Role of Knowledge Brokers” at the 2025 edition of the annual ECCA conference. The 90-min workshop focused on the essential role of skilful and well positioned ‘knowledge brokers’ in the development and sharing of useful and usable climate information and knowledge, in the form of climate services.
The session, chaired by Dragana Bojovic (BSC, I4C) and Andria Nicodemou (BSC, ASPECT) opened with an introduction on knowledge brokering. Next, researchers from both projects were joined by experts working in a range of fields, all taking the role of a knowledge broker in different contexts, who provided important insights and lessons learned through their experiences. These experts included: Marta Terrado (Barcelona Supercomputing Center), Stefan Sobolowski (University of Bergen and NORCE Climate), Pete Walton (University of Leeds), Philipp Stanzel (AFRY Austria GmbH), Adeola Jaiyeola (LGI Sustainable Innovation), and Isadora Christel Jimenez (Lobelia Earth).
An interactive activity with the session participants followed. Split in five groups, the 40+ participants built personas for knowledge brokers working in a number of fields: research (focusing on the profiles of social and climate scientists), NGOs (e.g. citizen engagement cooperative), the public sector (e.g. citizens relationships and engagement team, science-policy advisor), or the private sector (e.g. consultant or professional facilitator).
Each group discussed and built the personas of these professional profiles considering their goals and motivation in what they do, the knowledge and skills they must have, as well as the challenges they face. Characteristics such as social influence, analytical, communication and facilitation skills, accountability, and connections were considered and discussed by the groups. The resulting personas will help researchers in ASPECT and I4C to better understand these profiles, and how they can transmit climate information to a wider audience and help co-develop climate knowledge.
Collaboration Workshops
In May 2025, the first internal workshop brought together experts from the two projects to explore the statistical and dynamical downscaling approaches investigated in each project across a range of timescales (e.g. seasonal and (multi) decadal). Several use cases were also discussed, such as event-based downscaling for the Emilia Romagna region and predicting climate extremes. Common challenges and how the two projects could mutually benefit from these methodological insights were also part of the discussions.
A second joint workshop focused on co-production and the scalability of climate services. The presentations and discussions addressed the climate information use in European organisations, barriers and enablers in knowledge networks, and co-production practices in the two projects.
