Ine Vandecasteele

Climate Impacts in Europe. The JRC PESETA II Project

The objective of the JRC PESETA II project is to gain insights into the sectoral and regional patterns of climate change impacts in Europe by the end of this century. The study uses a large set of climate model runs and impact categories (ten impacts: agriculture, energy, river floods, droughts, forest fires, transport infrastructure, coasts, tourism, habitat suitability of forest tree species and human health). The project integrates biophysical direct climate impacts into a macroeconomic economic model, which enables the comparison of the different impacts based on common metrics (household welfare and economic activity). Under the reference simulation the annual total damages would be around €190 billion/year, almost 2% of EU GDP. The geographical distribution of the climate damages is very asymmetric with a clear bias towards the southern European regions. More than half of the overall annual EU damages are estimated to be due to the additional premature mortality (€120 billion). Moving to a 2°C world would reduce annual climate damages by €60 billion, to €120 billion (1.2% of GDP).

Weights and Importance in Composite Indicators: Closing the Gap

Highlights • Composite indicators are widely used in sustainable development and elsewhere.• The effect of weights used in aggregating indicators is complex.• Three tools are presented which help developers and users to investigate effects of weights.• Case studies related to sustainable development demonstrate the benefits.

A multi-criteria optimisation of scenarios for the protection of water resources in Europe: Support to the EU Blueprint to Safeguard Europe’s Waters

A modelling environment has been developed to assess optimum combinations of water retention measures, water savings measures, and nutrient reduction measures for continental Europe. This modelling environment consists of linking the agricultural CAPRI model, the LUMP land use model, the LISFLOOD water quantity model, the EPIC water quality model, the LISQUAL combined water quantity, quality and hydro-economic model, and a multi-criteria optimisation routine. Simulations have been carried out to assess the effects of water retention measures, water savings measures, and nutrient reduction measures on several hydro-chemical indicators, such as the Water Exploitation Index, Environmental Flow indicators, N and P concentrations in rivers, the 50-year return period river discharge as an indicator for flooding, and economic losses due to water scarcity for the agricultural sector, the industrial sector, and the public sector. Also, potential flood damage of a 100-year return period flood has been used as an indicator.

Implementation of the IPCC SRES Scenario A1B with the Land Use Modelling Platform contribution to the JRC PESETA II project

The Land Use Modelling Platform (LUMP) has been chosen to simulate land-use changes under a subset of scenarios (A1B). The modular structure of this platform, together with its high spatial resolution (100m), makes LUMP a suitable tool in the context of PESETAII. First, it guarantees high flexibility in adapting to the input/output interface required by the macro-economic models developed within this project. Moreover, an important added value to the modelling chain of PESETAII is the capability of taking into account specific policies with spatial repercussions.