BRIGAID

Objective

Recent studies from the IPCC indicate that Europe is particularly prone to increased risks of river and coastal floods, droughts resulting in water restrictions and damages from extreme weather such as heat events and wildfires. Evaluations also show a huge potential to reduce these risks with novel adaptation strategies. Researchers, innovators and incubators develop innovative products and services to reduce the increased climate change risks. Many of these innovations however hardly arrive at the markets. BRIGAID BRIdges the GAp for Innovations in Disaster resilience. BRIGAID’s approach is supported by three pillars. (1) At first BRIGAID takes into account the geographical variability of climate-related hazards and their interaction with socio-economic changes, (2) BRIGAID establishes structural, on-going support for innovations that are ready for validation in field tests and real life demonstrations and (3) BRIGAID develops a framework that enables an independent, scientific judgement of the socio-technological effectiveness of an innovation. BRIGAID’s objective is ambitious but achievable with strong consortium partners in EU, two Associated Countries and support from Overseas Territories. BRIGAID (a) brings actively together innovators and end-users in Communities of Innovation, resulting in increased opportunities for market-uptake; (b) contributes to the development of a technological and performance standards for adaptation options by providing a Test and Implementation Framework (TIF) and test facilities throughout Europe; (c) Improves innovation capacity and the integration of new knowledge by establishing an innovators network and (d) strengthens the competitiveness and growth of companies with the support of a dedicated business team. Finally BRIGAID develops a business models and market outreach to launch innovations to the market and secure investments in innovations beyond BRIGAID’s lifetime.

To achieve BRIGAID’s overal objectives, the following main results have already been (partly) achieved:

• Setting-up and providing structural support in testing and validating innovations, by performing tests and demonstrations for innovations that reduce impacts from floods, droughts and extreme weather and by establishing a network of test facilities and implementation sites across Europe that can be utilized for completing innovations during and beyond BRIGAID’s lifetime;
• Creating a test and implementation Framework (TIF), which delivers a standardised methodology for an independent, scientific judgment of the socio-technological effectiveness of innovations that can be applied throughout Europe, in various economic sectors, taking into account the local uncertainties in climate change scenarios, organizational needs and policy implementation requirements. The ambition is that TIF becomes the quality label in the EU to assess effectiveness of risk reducing measures;
• Delivery of support in business development and dissemination of innovations, though development of a Market Analysis Framework (MAF+) to identify market opportunities and select business models, and development of a Public-Private Investment and Financing (PPIF) model for securing ongoing investments in (clusters of) innovations including utilization of other EU funding mechanisms (e.g. European Structural and Investment Funds), and performance of online and offline marketing activities to expose innovations to end users;
• Creating an online Innovation Sharing Platform (ISP) as the EU portal for innovations, that can be accessed by all stakeholders (innovators, risk managers, policy and decision makers, industry, investors) to view innovations, test results and performance according to the TIF, and (to add new) user experiences. The platform will be designed as an interactive medium that functions as an online community. Beyond BRIGAID it can be linked with other important climate platforms such as the European Climate Adaptation Platform (Climate ADAPT) and EIP-Water.