Effective EU support to a large external crisis requires new approaches. In response to this challenge and to identified user and market needs from previous projects, Reaching Out proposes an innovative multi-disciplinary approach that will optimize the efforts, address a wide spectrum of users and maximize market innovation success. This approach results in five main objectives: to 1. Develop a Collaborative Framework, with distributed platforms of functional services, 2. Implement a flexible and open “collaborative innovation” process involving users and SMEs, suppliers, operators and research organisations, 3. Develop, upgrade and integrate 78 new connectable and interoperable tools, 4. Conduct 5 large scale demonstrations on the field: o health disaster in Africa (Epidemics in Guinea, with strong social and cultural issues), o natural disaster in a politically complex region and a desert environment (Earthquake in the Jordan Valley, led jointly by Jordan, Israel and Palestine), o three global change disasters in Asia targeted at large evacuation and humanitarian support in Bangladesh (long lasting floods, huge storms and associated epidemics,), EU citizen support and repatriation in Shanghai (floods & storm surge), radiological and industrial disasters impacting EU assets in Taiwan (flash floods, landslides, storm surge and chemical and radiological disasters), supported and co-funded by local authorities, 5. Provide recommendations and evaluations for future legal and policy innovations. The project will be conducted under the supervision of senior end-users. It will be performed with flexible and proven procedures by a balanced consortium of users, industry, innovative SMEs, RTO and academia in the EU and the demonstration regions. The main expected impact is to improve external disaster and crisis management efficiency and cost-benefit and increase the EU visibility whilst enhancing EU industry competitiveness and enlarging the market.

Urban areas and traffic infrastructure linking such areas are highly vulnerable to climate change. Smart use of existing climate intelligence can increase urban resilience and generate added value for businesses and society at large. Based on the results of FP7 climate change, future internet and crisis preparedness projects (SUDPLAN, ENVIROFI, CRISMA) with an average TRL of 4-5 and following an agile and user-centred design process, end-users, purveyors and providers of climate intelligence will co-create an integrated Climate Services Information System (CSIS) to integrate resilience into urban infrastructure. As a result, CLARITY will provide an operational eco-system of cloud based climate services to calculate and present the expected effects of CC-induced and -amplified hazards at the level of risk, vulnerability and impact functions. CLARITY will offer what-If decision support functions to investigate the effects of adaptation measures and risk reduction options in the specific project context, and allow the comparison of alternative strategies. Four demonstration cases will showcase CLARITY climate services in different climatic, regional, infrastructure and hazard contexts in Italy, Sweden, Austria and Spain; focusing on the planning and implementation of urban infrastructure development projects. CLARITY will provide the practical means to include the effects of CC hazards and possible adaptation and risk management strategies into planning and implementation of such projects, focusing on increasing CC resilience. Decision makers involved in these projects will be empowered to perform climate proof and adaptive planning of adaptation and risk reduction options.