Adaptation to Climate Change, Proposals

On 25 May 2009, the Executive Board of Knowledge for Climate has officially launched the call for pre-proposals. A maximum of € 20 million in subsidy funding is available for this open call. The research will be executed in cooperation with Rotterdam, Haaglanden, Schiphol, the Wadden Sea provinces, different parties in the South-West Netherlands Delta, and many other organisations such as water boards, municipalities, agricultural organisations and nature conservation organisati-ons.

They have brought in their research questions into the programme and will co-finance. Therewith, the total budget available for research will exceed € 30 million.

As consortia, knowledge institutes and research groups are invited to submit a 'pre-proposal' for one or more research themes. The themes are listed below. In September, the best 'pre-proposal' for each of the themes will be selected by a review committee. The selected consortium will be invited to develop the research theme in the form of a research proposal, which has to be submitted to the Executive Board in December. The research proposal will be reviewed by international scientists.

The research proposals are multiannual, in which PhDs and/or post docs will execute an important part of the research. In detailing the proposals, the connection between general and hotspot-specific research questions plays a central role. The hotspots serve as case studies for the general questions. In the phase in which the selected consortia develop a full proposal, consortia must have finalised the co-financing.

The selected research themes are:

Theme 1: Water safety at national and regional level
Theme 2: Freshwater supply at national and regional level
Theme 3: Climate-proofing rural areas
Theme 4: Climate-proofing urban areas
Theme 5: Infrastructure and networks
Theme 6: Improving climate projections and the set of instruments used for modelling
Theme 7: Governance of adaptation
Theme 8: Decision support tools

These research themes and research questions are formulated on the basis of:

(a) the questions by the hotspots
(b) the questions by ministries and provinces that relate to the national adaptation strategies
(c) the options as seen by the research community for developing applicable knowledge for the adaptation to climate change.

See the following document for the text related to the open call:

Brochure open call: Adaptation to Climate Change (pdf)

Other documents are available on the Dutch website (only in Dutch) http://kennisvoorklimaat.klimaatonderzoeknederland.nl/opencalldocumenten:

Source document of the open call Adapatatie aan klimaatverandering with descriptions of the themes and the specific research questions from the hotspots
A list of all projects in the first phase
The exploratory scientific reports used for the research programming
Subsidy agreement Overeenkomst tot verlenen van financiële bijdrage door Stichting Kennis voor Klimaat
Frequently Asked Questions about the available research
Procedure for lodging an objection

At the same time with this open call, a second call is published in cooperation with the NWO programme National Partnership for a Sustainable Earth. The title of this call is: 'Integrated Sustainable Earth Research'. The programme has three main themes: modelling, uncertainty and governance. The central elements are the underlying relationships between levels of scale and feedbacks in the 'earth – life – society' system.

In april 2010, the KfC board had approved eight adaptation themes. These consortia themes are:

Deltas in Times of Climate Change II Conference

24-26 September 2014
Rotterdam, the Netherlands