The fourth IMPRESSIONS General Assembly took place from 24 to 26 January 2017 at the Central European University (CEU) in Budapest, to mark the start of an exciting period for the large scale FP7 project. Entering the last two years of its lifetime, the project is now starting to reap the fruits of three years spent building and testing its conceptual and modelling frameworks through a strong stakeholder engagement programme.
IMPRESSIONS is addressing knowledge gaps related to the assessment of potential impacts from high-end climate and socio-economic scenarios and the need for transformative solutions for reducing these risks. The project has developed new models and methods for exploring the complex interactions between sectors and regions (both within and outside the EU) under extreme climate and societal changes, as well as fostering synergies between adaptation and mitigation actions.
IMPRESSIONS group photo, CEU, Budapest, Hungary; Credit: Pavel Stoev
With the project entering its final phase of implementation, the IMPRESSIONS team is now moving forward by stress-testing existing adaptation plans, applying models to test the effectiveness of different response options, and elaborating adaptation and mitigation pathways in order to determine sustainable solutions to high-end climate change with stakeholders in each of its case studies.
Some of the project results and recommendations are already compiled in a Policy Booklet, expected to be published and made available for the European Climate Change Adaptation (ECCA) Conference, which this year is co-organized by IMPRESSIONS and will take place from 5 to 9 June 2017.
Additionally, an IMPRESSIONS special issue is now under way and is expected to be published by the end of 2017. All project results will also be made available through a dedicated IMPRESSIONS Information Hub that is under development and will be launched next year.
The meeting in Budapest was also an exciting opportunity for the IMPRESSIONS team to meet their colleagues from the now associated Korean MOTIVE project and exchange know-how and ideas for future work and possible collaborations.