Climate Change Living Lab

Under the leadership of the IntelComp partner ARC (Athena Research Center) in Greece, the Climate Change Living Lab seeks to improve policy making with insights on the STI activities for sustainable energy and agrifoods.

OBJECTIVES

The Objectives of the Climate Change Living Lab are the following:

• Determine the principles and guidelines policymakers use to develop policies.
• Identify the needs of policymakers regarding the creation of IntelComp tools that will assist them in formulating better Energy and Agrifood policies.
• Validate and expand the IntelComp tools
• Feed these requirements into the development and expansion of the IntelComp tools. Review/Resume of the first two years (e.g. major activities)

OVERVIEW

The Climate Change Living Lab was founded on qualitative methodology consisting of five steps. During the first stage, contextual research, participants examine the encompassing environment and the focus areas, i.e. the drivers and challenges facing the Mediterranean and its neighboring seas. Then, during the discovery and co-creation phases, users are asked to share their knowledge regarding unanticipated STI policy-based activities and novel service options made available by the IntelComp platform, and to participate in co-creation. These requirements and priorities are further investigated and analyzed in terms of data availability and practicability before being incorporated into the platform. When this input is available on the platform, we proceed to the evaluation of the tools, where customers evaluate and confirm brand-new products and services provided by the IntelComp platform. Their input is being evaluated and incorporated into the platform. The final phase of the living lab is the technical testing, during which final users can learn how to use the instrument and provide feedback for its enhancement.

The Preparatory Living Lab (PLL), which concentrated on Greece, climate change impacts and adaptation opportunities in the Mediterranean and its neighbouring seas, the Black, Caspian, addressed the first three phases of the methodology above, revealing the platform's most significant challenges and areas of interest. It aimed to identify the primary needs of policymakers in these regions, list the various sources they use for research, and determine the climate change-related focus area. Each workshop consisted of 20 to 25 policymakers, STI analysts, and members of civil society, and all phases were performed in an online collaborative environment. Through these Preparatory Living Labs, Energy was the topic identified as the main concern of the participants.

Data collected by the Preparatory Living Labs were used to feed the IntelComp STI Viewer tool, an Interactive AI-assisted, data and visualization platform for monitoring, evaluation & policy making. Since its development, the Climate Change Living Lab team has hosted three (3) Living Labs aiming at familiarising participants from the Industry, the Academia, Civil Society and Policy Making with the tool and simultaneously identifying the stakeholder needs (and ideas) and communicating them to the technical team for further integration and development.

As subsequent stages, the Climate Change Living Lab team will assist the technical team in developing the Participation Portal and will present the developed work to Energy and Agrifood policymakers.