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Regional Challenges in the Perspective of 2020 - Climate Change Part

Project Leader: Kromp-Kolb Helga, BOKU Project Leader

Contact person:: Trimmel Heidelinde

Duration:: 01.01.2010-31.03.2011

Type of Research: Applied Research

Project partners: Austrian Institute for Regional Studies and Spatial Planning, Franz-Josefs Kai 27, 1010 Wien, Austria.
Function of the Project Partner: Partner; Bundesinstitut für Bau-, Stadt- und Raumforschung, Bonn, Germany.
Function of the Project Partner: Partner; Pöyry Energy GmbH, Wien, Austria.
Function of the Project Partner: Partner; Spatial Foresight GmbH, Luxembourg.
Function of the Project Partner: Partner

Staff: Trimmel Heidelinde, Project Staff

BOKU Research Units: Institute of Meteorology and Climatology

Funded by: Austrian Institute for Regional Studies and Spatial Planning, Franz Josefs Kai 27, 1010 Wien, Austria

Abstract: “The study will broaden and deepen the analysis presented in the EU Commission publications "Regions 2020". It will identify the impact of the challenges on regional disparities in economic, social and environmental terms. Globalisation, Social Polarisation, Demographic Change and Secure and Sustainable Energy, Climate Change will be the challenges that affect regional development potential as well as the dynamics of structural change. The geographical scope of the study is the regions of the EU-27 and the accession and candidate countries at, at least, NUTS2 level. Furthermore, the study will include the EU neighbourhood as far as possible in a regionalized manner. The neighbouring countries are the EFTA countries including Switzerland, the Eastern neighbourhood as well as the Western and Eastern Mediterranean basin.”

The major challenge of such an endeavour is to
· depict as precisely as possible the challenges on a regional scale – imposing the problem of data availability, territorial delimitation (“challenges do not respect administrative borders - therefore, the basic analysis will be mostly based on NUTS2 regions but needs to be accomplished by the notion of functional areas in order to capture the interregional and cross border dimension of the challenges”), complexity of the single challenges
· establish and depict cause-effect relations between the single regional challenges, so that an aggregated result will be possible, which will be indispensible for establishing the future of Cohesion Policy.
· handle the large amount of data and variety of regional setting within the EU 27 and the neighbouring countries.
· Deal with a variety of scientific disciplines, building the stones of the mosaic, which will in the end provide a full picture of regional challenges across Europe in the future.

BOKU-Met is in charge of the challenge Climate Change, which means developing an methodology how to cope with increasing variability of weather through extreme events, effects on weather dependent sectors such as tourism, agriculture, fisheries and energy production, flooding and coastal erosion – causing effects on the quality of life and human health, structural changes through increase in greenhouse gas emissions and adaptation measures in this project. Subchallenges and corresponding indicators will be defined and data sources located. The choice of data, the handling of thematic, spatial and temporal data gaps as well as the aggregation of indicators will be discussed together with the EU Commission and a team of experts during three workshops before the data of all groups is assembled in maps.

Keywords: climatology; meteorology; Agrometeorology; Global warming; Regional development planning ;; Europe; Climate Change; Regional Scale; Structural Change;