EU Horizon Europe MOUNTADAPT

Project Title: Adaptation Solutions to Reduce Climate Change Impact on Health in the Mountain Area (MOUNTADAPT)

Project Description:

In the face of climate change – like for the COVID-19 crisis – it is vital to act with a level of urgency proportionate to the scale of the threat, to be prepared and informed on the basis of the best-available science and practicing clear and consistent communications to all those involved. Therefore, in MOUNTADAPT, various regional and local authorities and community members will take the leadership to co-design, co-develop and test eleven state of the art climate adaptation solutions across the mountain biogeographical regions, in Austria, Slovenia, France, and Romania.

The global objective is to improve the community-driven resilient transformation of the health system in mountain areas to limit the impact on health and wellbeing of direct or indirect effects of climate change.

This will be achieved through five specific objectives:

1. To improve prediction of short- and long-term health effects of climate change.
2. To boost the responsiveness of the health system in the context of climate change.
3. To Improve health professionals’ capacity to prevent, prepare, detect, and respond to climate change threats for health and increase the awareness and preparedness of the general public.
4. To design, test and evaluate innovative win-win adaptation solutions to feed health system planning.
5. To largely upscale adaptation measures and best practices from demonstration sites to other institutions inside and outside the mountain biogeographical area.

To achieve that,

• MOUNTADAPT will develop robust climate and health models to better understand the impact of climate change on health.
• The project will create monitoring tools that will be directly linked to integrated systems, to assess short term forecasts to communicate warnings.
• MOUNTADAPT will develop an emergency management tool to support health systems to optimally organize staff in crisis time.
• The project will provide adaptation guidance for transforming the health systems to better adapt to climate-associated health emergencies.
• The project will empower healthcare professional with training and campaigning toolkit and awareness-raising campaigns for citizens.
• MOUNTADAPT will establish detailed monitoring protocols and impact assessment frameworks, enabling continuous evaluation of adaptation solutions during and after the project.
• Finally, MOUNTADAPT will provide a full guide for the implementation of its adaptation solutions, with the aim of boosting their replication in new territories.

The EU Horizon project MOUNTADAPT will be conducted by a consortium of 27 partners from ten countries and is led by EUROQUALITY SAS in Paris, France.

The MOUNTADAPT project is organized in 6 work packages (WP). UMIT TIROL is involved in several WPs including WP 3 “Testing and Monitoring “, in which UMIT TIROL will perform the Health Impact Assessment (HIA) of selected solutions.

Funding Program: European Commission: Horizon Europe (HORIZON). MOUNTADAPT is a Horizon EU Innovation Action and has received funding from the EU Horizon Action Grant under the Grant Agreement number: 101155958.

Budget:  ca. 5. Mio, UMIT TIROL share: 703,500 EUR

Duration: 36 months (start date not yet available)