Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics Research IGDClimate change is a global challenge, but its effects are felt locally. Municipalities, cities, and forest administrations require solid, data-driven decision-making foundations. This is precisely where the EU-funded research project FOCAL (Efficient Exploration of Climate Data Locally) comes in. Its goal is to make highly complex climate data not only accessible to scientists but also to local stakeholders – enabling effective and forward-looking climate adaptation.
The FOCAL project aims to develop an open digital ecosystem that makes complex climate, environmental, and Earth observation data accessible for local decision-making. By integrating high-performance computing, artificial intelligence, and intelligent workflow management, the project is creating a platform that makes global climate models locally available and application-oriented.
Local Decision Support for Urban Planning and Forestry
At the heart of the project are two pilot areas: urban planning and forestry. In close collaboration with industry partners, interactive web applications are being developed to provide reliable information for local climate impact assessments – such as adapting urban infrastructure or selecting resilient tree species. FOCAL thus enables data-driven, forward-looking action strategies for dealing with the impacts of climate change.
Specific use cases include exploring how temperature and precipitation patterns in cities will change over the coming decades and what planning measures can be derived from this. In the forestry sector, the project is examining which tree species and management practices will be most suitable for specific locations in the face of changing climatic conditions.
Intelligent Technologies for Climate Data Processing
The Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics Research IGD coordinates the international consortium of 15 partners and is responsible for key technological components of the platform. Learn more: https://www.focal-euproject.eu/
With its workflow management solution Steep, Fraunhofer IGD provides a cloud-based technology that automates, scales, and resource-efficiently manages complex analysis and processing workflows. Steep coordinates specialized software services, ensuring seamless integration of individual processing steps for efficient and reliable data workflows. Through intelligent parallelization and flexible use of cloud resources, the solution optimizes computing capacity and prepares large data sets for specific applications.
Scientific Contribution and Policy Relevance
Additionally, Fraunhofer IGD brings its extensive expertise in AI-based geodata analysis and the visualization of complex environmental data to the FOCAL project. Together with its partners, Fraunhofer IGD contributes to combining high-resolution Earth observation data with innovative modeling approaches, refining regional climate models, and better understanding previously underexplored feedback mechanisms in the Earth system.
A special focus of the project is on the transferability of its results. To ensure structured dissemination and further development, a Domain Working Group is being established in collaboration with the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). Furthermore, the project is investigating the policy relevance of its findings at local, national, and European levels in collaboration with specialized partner institutions.
FOCAL connects climate science, computer science, urban and forestry planning in an interdisciplinary approach to provide robust decision-making foundations for forward-looking climate adaptation at the local level.
