EGU 26 will take place in Vienna, Austria & Online between 3 and 8 May 2026. Several researchers involved in the ACCREU project will present their work related to adaptation:
CL3.2.10
Beyond Physical Risk: Assessing Socio-Economic Vulnerability and Actions for Climate Resilience
Convener: Sorin Cheval | Co-conveners: Shreya Some, Emma J. S. Ferranti, Francesco Bosello, Edward A. Byers
04 May, 08:30–12:25 (CEST) Room 0.14
Developing effective, efficient, and equitable climate adaptation strategies requires a deep understanding of how physical hazards translate into localized, human-centered impacts. While identifying areas of concentrated physical risk is a critical first step, achieving resilience demands more granular assessments of inequalities, socio-economic vulnerability and adaptive capacity. This session aims to bridge the gap between hazard-focused risk identification, detailed social and economic vulnerability and impact analyses, actionable, adaptation strategies at different levels of governance
We place particular emphasis on the multifaceted human impacts of climate change – beyond traditional damage-cost metrics – encompassing health, livelihoods, well-being, and other critical dimensions of human life. The session will showcase insights from European climate risk assessments which develop science-based, impact-driven decision-support tools to enhance local and regional adaptive capacity. These projects integrate physical and social sciences, promote Nature-Based Solutions, support multi-level climate governance, and employ participatory approaches to co-produce adaptation pathways aligned with the EU Mission on Adaptation to Climate Change by 2030, but longer time horizons are also envisaged.
By bringing together diverse perspectives, empirical evidence, and methodological innovations, this session convened by the coordinators of the EU sister projects ACCREU, CROSSEU and SPARCCLE will advance the science–policy interface for climate adaptation, contributing to climate-resilient development pathways for metropolitan and regional contexts across Europe and beyond.
EGU26-20294 | ECS | Orals | BG3.19
Restoring organic soils under agriculture: cost-effective portfolios in the context of European climate and biodiversity policies
Fanqi (Vicky) Jia, Andre Deppermann, Juraj Balkovic, Zuelclady Araujo Gutierrez, Mykola Gusti, Michael Wögerer, Alexandra Barthelmes, Amanda Palazzo, Stefan Frank, Tamás Krisztin, Sabine Fuss, and Petr Havlik
Mon, 04 May, 08:35–08:45 (CEST) Room 2.95
Organic soils contain nearly one-third of the world’s soil carbon, despite covering only 3-4% of the global land surface. Their degradation releases large quantities of greenhouse gases (GHGs) and reduces ecosystem functions, including biodiversity support. The European Union (EU) is the second-largest global emitter of GHGs from drained organic soils after Indonesia. Although organic soils under agricultural use represent only about 2% of the EU’s total agricultural area, they are responsible for approximately 80% of Cropland and Grassland emissions released to the atmosphere. Restoring drained organic soils therefore represents a significant opportunity for achieving climate change mitigation targets in the EU. However, the economic mitigation potential of organic soil restoration remains insufficiently explored, as existing studies do not consider restoration beyond full rewetting and rarely assess potential synergies with economic incentives and restoration targets. In this study, we apply GLOBIOM-EU, an economic land-use model, to comprehensively assess the economic climate mitigation potential from restoring drained organic soils used for agriculture considering multiple restoration measures: full rewetting, rehabilitation, and paludiculture. Our results indicate that under a GHG price of 100 EUR per tCO2 equivalent (EUR tCO2e-1), 38.2-44.4 MtCO2 equivalent per year (MtCO2e yr-1) could be mitigated in 2050. Paludiculture emerges as a promising option, substantially increasing the attractiveness of rewetting organic soils; under conditions of high demand for paludiculture products, 2 million hectares of drained organic soils could be restored without additional climate mitigation incentives, delivering mitigation of approximately 17 MtCO2e yr-1 by 2050. Moreover, meeting the 2050 targets of the EU Nature Restoration Regulation (NRR) alone could mitigate 23-29% of current emissions from drained agricultural organic soils in the EU. Overall, our findings suggest that the greatest climate benefits would be achieved through the combination of restoration measures that balance mitigation potential, economic viability, and land-use competition under different policy and market conditions, while also enabling opportunities for biodiversity co-benefits. This highlights the importance of integrated policy frameworks that align climate mitigation, ecosystem restoration, and market incentives.
EGU26-2308 | ECS | Orals | CL2.3
A scalable geospatial framework for city-level public-private adaptation infrastructure cost-benefit analysis
Giacomo Falchetta and Armande Aboudrar-Méda
Wed, 06 May, 11:15–11:25 (CEST) Room 0.14
Growing climate change impacts in cities, where people, assets, and infrastructure are densely concentrated, call for adaptation strategies that are effective, equitable, and financially sustainable. Despite rapid growth in quantitative urban climate-risk research, most studies operate either at coarse spatial scales or rely on single-city case studies, limiting systematic comparison across urban areas. This constrains the ability of decision-makers to evaluate alternative infrastructure-based adaptation pathways, particularly at the public–private interface and under explicit equity objectives.
Here we develop a scalable, automated framework for the data-driven assessment of urban adaptation infrastructure options at sub-city scale. The framework is designed to (i) operate at high spatial resolution within cities, (ii) explicitly represent infrastructure-based adaptation measures together with their benefit and cost streams, and (iii) be transferable across cities and climate hazards. It is built around a modular geospatial pipeline that maps present and future climate hazards, overlays exposure and socio-demographic determinants of vulnerability, and represents adaptation-relevant infrastructure options on a common spatial grid. The framework includes both public adaptation options, such as street trees, cooling centres, and heat-health action plans, and private options, such as air conditioning and building-level retrofits. For each option, alternative rollout strategies can be tested, including uniform deployment, hotspot targeting, and prioritisation of vulnerable populations.
For each adaptation scenario, empirically calibrated impact functions implemented within the CLIMADA risk-modelling framework are combined with cost modules to estimate avoided impacts, side effects, and costs. Outputs include reductions in climate-related impacts, such as heat-related mortality and extreme heat exposure, as well as additional effects, such as changes in electricity demand and air-conditioning waste-heat feedbacks that can locally raise outdoor temperatures. Capital expenditures and operation and maintenance costs are tracked separately, enabling consistent city-level cost–benefit assessments of individual and combined adaptation pathways.
We illustrate the framework with an application to urban heat adaptation in Rome, using harmonised climate, population, income, and infrastructure data to compare tree-based cooling and expanded air-conditioning coverage under different rollout patterns. We simulate a needs-based tree-planting policy that raises all municipi to at least the third quartile of the pre-policy distribution of street-level green space. Implemented as a linear rollout over 25 years with empirically estimated costs and maintenance scaling with tree maturity, this policy entails a present-value public cost of about €0.45 billion and avoids an estimated 86 heat-related deaths over 2030–2054. An air-conditioning expansion targeting lower-income areas, adding roughly 190,000 new users, entails a present-value private cost of about €1.24 billion and avoids approximately 1,021 deaths. Implementing both policies jointly costs about €1.70 billion and avoids roughly 1,098 deaths, with tree expansion on top of air-conditioning still preventing additional mortality at higher marginal cost.
Ultimately, the framework is intended for application across a pool of European cities and extension beyond heat to other climate hazards and adaptation infrastructures. It provides a flexible basis for designing, comparing, and optimising city-scale adaptation pathways under explicit efficiency, equity, and policy constraints.
EGU26-7281 | ECS | Orals | HS5.3.1
Mapping Europe’s Net-Zero Trade-offs: An Open Integrated Model of Energy, Land, and Water Systems
Vignesh Sridharan, Constantinos Taliotis, Leigh Martindale, Anastasios Karamaneas, Thomas Nikolakakis, Sophia Kokoni, Konstantinos Koasidis, Alexandros Nikas, Marios Karmellos, Irene Gkiouleka, Elias Kousoulos, Ioanna Konstantinou, Theodoros Zachariadis, and Nathan Johnson
Wed, 06 May, 14:40–14:50 (CEST) Room 3.29/30
CLEWs-EU, an open-source Integrated Assessment Model developed to analyse the coupled climate–land–energy–water (CLEWs) system of the European Union within a single, internally consistent optimisation framework, is presented here. Implemented in OSeMOSYS, the model identifies least-cost system configurations that satisfy exogenously defined energy service demands across electricity and heat supply, buildings, industry, and transport, while simultaneously accounting for land availability, crop production, livestock, forest dynamics, water withdrawals, and climate-sensitive resource constraints. The energy system representation includes primary energy supply, renewable and thermal generation, electricity storage, hydrogen production, and cross-border electricity exchange, with intra-annual time slices capturing seasonal and daily variability in demand and renewable output. The land and water components represent crop types by irrigation class, biomass production, water supply and withdrawals by sector, and land allocation among cropland, pasture, forest, and other uses. Explicit linkages connect irrigation demand, hydropower availability, thermal cooling requirements, and biomass flows into the energy system, enabling assessment of system-wide trade-offs and feedbacks. Baseline projections to mid-century indicate a strong shift toward electrification across end-use sectors, driven primarily by the expansion of renewable electricity generation and the increasing deployment of heat pumps in buildings. Electricity generation is increasingly dominated by wind and solar, supported by storage and intercountry balancing through expanded interconnections. Final energy demand in buildings declines due to efficiency improvements and renovation measures, while transport activity shifts toward electric and, in specific modes, hydrogen-based technologies. Hydrogen supply grows over time, with both domestic production and imports contributing to end-use consumption, particularly in transport and industry.
Land-use dynamics reflect increasing competition between food production, biomass supply for energy, and forest-based carbon sequestration. Crop production evolves through shifts in land allocation and irrigation practices, while water withdrawal patterns change substantially across sectors and countries, with agriculture remaining the dominant user in water-stressed regions. Water constraints influence both agricultural output and energy pathways, including hydropower generation and thermal plant cooling. Emissions trajectories vary markedly by sector, with faster declines in power generation and slower reductions in agriculture and certain industrial processes, highlighting persistent mitigation challenges beyond the electricity system.
EGU26-14072 | ECS | PICO | ITS4.27/NH13.14
Spreading the risk, sharing the burden – Economy-wide and distributional impacts of flood risk financing under climate and socioeconomic change
Eva Preinfalk, Gabriel Bachner, and Nina Knittel
Thu, 07 May, 11:12–11:14 (CEST) PICO spot 1a | PICO1a.11
As climate change increases flood hazard and socioeconomic dynamics reshape patterns of exposure and vulnerability, flood risk financing strategies are under intense debate. In Austria, where floods are among the most frequent and costliest hazards, the public sector often acts as the insurer of last resort, a role increasingly challenged amidst growing fiscal stress. Proposals for mandatory risk insurance and alternative burden-sharing schemes are discussed. However, the implications of these schemes on economy-wide and within-country distributional outcomes remain poorly understood.
This study examines the dynamic interplay of flood hazard, exposure and vulnerability and its economy-wide and distributional consequences in Austria. We ask: who bears the cost of current and future flood risk and how do alternative risk financing schemes modify outcomes under climate and socioeconomic change?
Hazard dynamics are represented through climate scenarios (RCP4.5, RCP8.5), while exposure and vulnerability evolve along socioeconomic pathways (SSP1, SSP2, SSP4), capturing dynamics in spatial development, economic growth and inequality. Methodologically, we couple high-resolution physical flood risk projections with a recursive-dynamic, single-country computable general equilibrium model for Austria, solved annually from 2015 to 2080. Flood damages are derived from GLOFRIS at 1 km resolution and matched with Austrian administrative microdata. Households are differentiated by region (urban, suburban, rural), income quartile, and flood exposure, resulting in 24 representative households. This structure enables a detailed representation of exposure patterns and vulnerability in terms of income, consumption, and recovery capacity. Flood impacts enter the model as forced reconstruction expenditures that reduce welfare-relevant consumption. We analyze three flood risk financing schemes: (i) a risk-based scheme where exposed households fully self-finance recovery, (ii) a government-supported scheme reflecting public co-financing similar to the Austrian Katastrophenfonds, and (iii) a solidarity-based scheme in which recovery costs are shared across all households proportional to income.
Results vary across regions, income groups and SSPs. Under risk-based burden sharing, flood-exposed rural households in the lowest income quartile face welfare losses of 4% in SSP2 – rising to 9% in SSP4 – while urban households lose only 0.5–1%. Government-supported burden sharing reduces regressivity by easing the burden on flood-exposed households. However, this comes at the cost of government consumption and public goods provision. Spillover effects extend to non-exposed households as reconstruction reshapes demand patterns, with impacts on relative factor prices and thus incomes. This generates indirect gains and losses that depend on households’ income composition. As a result, high-income households benefit from rising returns to capital while lower incomes relying primarily on labor and transfer income face additional pressures. Solidarity-based burden sharing distributes losses according to purchasing power rather than exposure, mitigating regressive outcomes, at the expense of GDP and aggregate welfare, highlighting a potential efficiency-equity trade-off.
By integrating flood projections with possible configurations of exposure, vulnerability and risk management strategies, the approach reveals the economy-wide mechanisms shaping within-country patterns of future flood risk.