Researching and applying the potential of Artificial Intelligence to foster climate resilience at the regional and local levels

Expected outcomes

• Projects may contribute to some of the expected outcomes; say which ones and why.
• For each outcome (EO1 to EO2), name who will use or adopt your results (a specific group, not “industry” or “society”), how they get them, and the indicator that shows the change, with baseline, target and date.
• Use the topic's own words for each outcome, so the evaluator can tick it off.

What the scope asks for

Evaluators check the proposal against these sentences of the scope. Answer each one visibly, in the call's own words.

• “Considering the ever-changing nature of AI growth, proposals should demonstrate that they go beyond state of the art, they should identify a specific gap that can be addressed by an AI-powered tool, and explain why it would improve existing models, tools or applications or, alternatively, justify the need to develop entirely new solutions.”
• “In particular, the proposal should address one of the following two objectives:.”
• “Proposals should explore how AI can be further integrated, including via AI techniques such as deep learning, to make data more accessible and understandable, to facilitate informed decision-making by regions and local authorities.”
• “Improvements should be tested with at least 3 region al and local authorities to ensure that they provide a concrete added value to end-users (i.e. decision-makers).”
• “Moreover, proposals are expected to apply such analysis to concretely improve data integrity and accessibility.”
• “Proposals should develop and test the tools in the territory of at least 5 regional or local authorities.”
• “The work should engage private sector actors with relevant expertise in the sector chosen (e.g. smart agriculture, construction and buildings sector, water management, waste management, transports, resilience of energy systems, etc.), to ensure that such AI-powered tools are designed for scalability and uptake.”
• “Regardless of the objective addressed, all proposals should provide training and dissemination material for different target groups, including regions and local authorities, on how to best take advantage of the AI-powered improvements.”
• “Attention should be given to avoiding biases and ensuring that the data is representative of diverse populations, as well as taking into account possible limitations and potential misinformation when using generative AI tools.”
• “To this purpose, the objective addressed by each proposal should also be specified in the free keywords section of the proposal (e.g. ‘objective 1’ or ‘objective 2’).”
• “Proposals should include a mechanism and the resources to establish operational links and collaboration with the Mission Implementation Platform (including on monitoring), and other relevant knowledge platforms.”
• “Proposals are encouraged to (dedicate resources to) 1) link their monitoring to the framework developed by the project UNDERPIN; 2) to rely on the (updated) CLIMAAX framework for their climate risk assessments, where relevant.”

Conditions that shape the proposal

• Part B, sections 1–3: 45 pages (standard application form). Text beyond the limit is not read; tables and figures count.
• Lump sum: the budget is fixed per work package and paid when each work package is completed. Every work package needs activities and deliverables an evaluator can verify, and the effort must match the money.
• Evaluation and award: Award criteria, scoring and thresholds: “To ensure a balanced portfolio covering both objectives, grants will be awarded to proposals not only in order of ranking but at least also to one proposal that is the highest ranked within each objective, provided that the applications attain all thresholds.”
• Evaluation and award: Award criteria, scoring and thresholds: “To this purpose, the objective addressed by the proposal should also be specified in the free keywords section of the proposal (e.g. ‘objective 1’ or ‘objective 2’).”

Impact pathway and traps

• Users or citizens are part of the scope. Show how they take part in the design and testing, not only that they are informed.
• The scope expects pilots or demonstration. Name the sites, the partners who run them and what is measured there.
• Keep outputs, outcomes and impacts apart: what you deliver, what changes when others use it, and the long-term effect.
• Link your outcomes to the destination's expected impacts in the Work Programme. Destination impacts are long-term effects, not project deliverables.
• Name the barriers outside the project (regulation, markets, user behaviour) that could block uptake, and what you will do if they do.
• Section 2.3 (the summary canvas) is optional on this call; the old split into scientific, economic and societal impact is no longer required.