The dual climate change and biodiversity crises put an urgency for implementing inclusive, just, and effective policies, while their inextricable nature calls for integrated assessment approaches that capture synergies and trade-offs. Mainstream economic methods currently used in the appraisal of environmental policies fail to capture the complexity of the climate-biodiversity-economy nexus. Even though uncertainty, disruption, and irreversibility are inherent to environmental challenges, these are overlooked when designing and evaluating the performance of policies. Policy effectiveness and resilience against other impact areas, such as quality of life, financial stability, political feasibility, innovation is not included in policy appraisal. Rather, policy evaluation is informed by a narrow set of metrics, falling short of encompassing broader considerations of sustainability and wellbeing. DECIPHER employs a systems and multi-disciplinary approach using a diverse set of models, methods, and processes to significantly improve decision-making on climate change and biodiversity and enhance policy resilience and feasibility. Moving beyond state-of-the-art, we will establish a holistic and operational decision-making framework that integrates advanced economic and biophysical models, empirical methods and stakeholder participation tools. The novel framework incorporates environmental damages in the economic decisions of agents and introduces a risk-opportunity approach for decision making. To offer critical insights on system dynamics and risks, the models developed will be equipped with innovative features including improved representations of agent behavior, technology innovation, financial risk valuation and the capacity to assess extreme events and critical tipping points. The new decision-making framework will be the end-result of an iterative co-creation process with stakeholders and applied under real-world conditions in the assessment of flagship EU policies.

CCAM-ERAS aims to build towards the future and address the transition to connected, cooperative and automated mobility (CCAM) from a socio-economic perspective. The project will develop the necessary knowledge and prepare for the possibilities that potentially will arise from the deployment of CCAM, and will aim to increase knowledge regarding the necessary skills required for CCAM deployment. CCAM-ERAS will take advantage of the possibilities arising from CCAM deployment, by envisioning a future whereby CCAM can contribute towards a more attractive and inclusive labour market by providing solutions to ensure that the relevant skills are available and are able to be up scaled across the entire CCAM value chain. Mitigating the resulting effects of introduction of CCAM requires multi-sectoral knowledge and cooperation between what were previously separate sectors (transport, technology, education etc.) CCAM-ERAS will develop new approaches and solutions to anticipate and mitigate the impacts and rebound effects on potential job losses and job relocations due to the deployment of road based CCAM systems and services, as well as boost innovation capabilities through the availability and upscaling of CCAM-specific professional skills. Schemes and actions that can contribute to the specific labour market challenges will be developed, in relation to specific 'real world' use cases. CCAM-ERAS will also identify innovations and key innovators relating to CCAM deployment, particularly those relevant to the employment, socio-economic and skills effects Including various stakeholders in the project activities will be crucial in achieving credibility and support for the results of the project. The development of a roadmap to support the socio-economic transition to CCAM will contribute to the legacy of the project. CCAM-ERAS therefore offers a set of building blocks that pave the way for a smooth transition to CCAM deployment over the short, medium, and long term.