Nordic-Baltic collaboration will equip us for the wild weather of climate change

The picture is AI-generated.

A collaboration between Danish, Norwegian, Estonian and Latvian partners aims to prepare us for future heavier rainfall, increased groundwater levels and storm surges. With new advanced data models, the international project called ECCO will make it easier to calculate the extent of the most extreme weather events and come up with locally based recommendations for municipalities and cities' climate adaptations. Innovation Fund Denmark is investing 3.7 million DKK in the project's Danish partners.

Climate change is leading to wetter and more unpredictable weather conditions in Denmark. We are already experiencing an increasing number of extreme weather events, and in the future these challenges will only become more pronounced.

A Nordic-Baltic collaboration is therefore working to ensure that we are better positioned to deal with both current and future climate scenarios. The ECCO project focuses on changing water conditions such as increased rainfall, urban flooding and higher groundwater levels and, in the Danish context, has the Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI), the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) and the Danish Association of Local Authorities (KL) as partners.

DTU's partner in the project and professor of climate risk management Martin Drews believes that one of the biggest challenges in relation to climate adaptation is to form a clear picture of future extreme weather events.

- The most serious climate events in Denmark will typically be driven by many different factors. This means that the magnitude of the events over time may not be linear, but exponential, and that it will be more difficult to calculate and predict the consequences.

To address this challenge, the ECCO partners are using, among other things, a data-driven hydrological model, originally developed in Norway. The data model can simulate scenarios where factors such as high groundwater levels and heavy rainfall reinforce each other and at the same time interact with local soil conditions. The model can calculate worst-case weather scenarios for cities throughout the Nordic-Baltic region based on local weather and soil conditions. This will lead to a much more effective and tailored climate adaptation than what we see today.

- What is new in our project is that we can make very locally based recommendations on how much and how each of the Danish municipalities should expand their infrastructure and systems so that they can cope with the most extreme weather events, says Martin Drews.

International cooperation

ECCO includes a number of Norwegian, Danish, Estonian and Latvian partners from the research world and civil service. The project is part of the EU initiative Water4All, a sustainability program focusing on future water challenges, and both DTU and DMI's participation in the project is funded by Innovation Fund Denmark.

For Martin Drews, it makes perfect sense to collaborate across borders when it comes to climate change and water challenges.

- The Norwegians are clearly ahead in some areas and have experience with extreme water conditions. On the other hand, the Norwegians can learn a lot from us Danes when it comes to purely operational matters. Our Baltic partners also get a lot out of the knowledge sharing, and I myself have been over to teach in Estonia and Latvia as part of the project. In that way, the project has also been very valuable in terms of strengthening the connections with our Baltic friends, says Martin Drews.

Fact box

• Innovation Fund's investment: DKK 3,736,800.
• Total Budget: 9,690,213.83 – In addition to Innovation Fund Denmark, the Research Council of Norway also contributes with 3 million DKK and the Estonian Research Council with 1.1 million DKK.
• Duration: 2024 - 2027
• Program: International Collaborations – Water4All
• Official title: ECCO – Enhancing resilience in a Changing Climate through comprehensive urban flood design

About the partners

In the ECCO project, Denmark is represented by the following three parties: the Technical University of Denmark, the Danish Meteorological Institute and the Association of Local Authorities. In addition, the Norwegian Meteorological Institute, the Norwegian Directorate for Water Resources and Energy, the University of Tartu in Estonia and the Latvian Centre for Environment, Geology and Meteorology are also involved.