CIES (Climate Impact Expert System)

Challenge Platform: Adaptation services

Project Start Date: 07/2010

Lead partner: Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK)

Project type: Innovation - Develops and brings to market climate relevant knowledge, products and services

Project lead: Prof. Dr. F.-W. Gerstengarbe, PIK, gerstengarbe@pikpotsdam.de

Partners

The CIES project involves 2 partners:

Concept

A lack of useful regional climate and climate impact information could threaten the sustainability and competitiveness of a number of key sectors. Thus, CIES develops an online web portal to make that information readily available. In-depth climate and climate impact consulting services based on the data and the underlying climate impact research are to be provided.

The Climate Change Adaption Issue

Climate data has the potential to be a valuable resource for a number of economically relevant sectors such as agriculture, forestry, hydrology, tourism, and energy production. Whilst plenty of climate data is available, it is not in a format which is easily consumable by decision makers and the private sector. This is because there is a time lag between raw data being published and this being transformed into useful regional information. Nevertheless this information could be vital to maintain both competitiveness and sustainability in areas of the market affected by the impacts of climate change.

The Project Solution

In order to address this gap in the market, CIES develops a software which can generate climate information in a format which is widely accessible online to a range of users. This web based tool (www.climateimpactsonline.com) enables end users to quickly obtain climate and climate impact information which is relevant to them. The results which the model supplies in the fields of climate, hydrology, agriculture, forestry and energy will allow users to develop adaptive and preventative strategies for areas vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. The software is developed for the use case of Germany, however with the intrinsic goal to be applied to other regions such as Asia or Africa. For this pilot, PIK integrates existing climate and climate impact models and several scenario runs. The long term aim for CIES is to develop software that covers multiple climatic zones, regions and users groups, in  conjunction with a profound climate consulting.

The Role of Climate-KIC

CIES was one of the first innovation projects in Germany and it is today one of the most successful projects. Climate-KIC has accompanied the project for more than three years and supported it at all levels. CIES is on the way to a successful spin-off, with great opportunities for European and global scaling of its services. Climate-KIC will continue to support CIES in finding additional partners and promising business opportunities.