The 3rd MED-GOLD annual meeting was held from 19-21 October 2020, this year in an online format owing to the restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemics.
As the project was approaching its last year, the General Assembly was built around three key objectives: (i) encompassing the topics retrospective, (ii) management and (iii) perspectives of the project.
The retrospective part of the meeting was structured in small trials where project partners presented the different climate service tools available in the project by means of short pitch presentations and videos*. Presentations were followed by a discussion on each tool, under the format of a ‘trial’ where partners played the role of ‘accusers’ and ‘defenders’, highlighting positive aspects as well as aspects that needed improvement. This was the basis for a SWOT analysis (which stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) aimed at improving the project strategy for future exploitation of the developed climate services.
The management part put special emphasis on the planning of activities in view of the potential prolongation of COVID-19 restrictions. In this session, partners were divided into groups to discuss topics ranging from the organization of workshops and training, to the development of the MED-GOLD demonstrators and the planning of upcoming interactions with the policy community. These interactions include the joint MED-GOLD and VISCA session at the event ‘Climate services for a climate-resilient Europe’, organised by the European Commission – EASME Executive Agency and the Climateurope project, taking place on December 2nd, 2020.
The perspective part addressed aspects beyond MED-GOLD, with discussions on the legacy of the project both in terms of business exploitation and contributions to policy-making. The members of the Advisory Board Prof. Anna Rufolo, from COPA-COGECA and CIA-Agricoltori Italiani, and Prof. Mladen Todorovic, from the Mediterranean Agronomic Institute of Bari (CIHEAM), were invited to provide some perspectives from the point of view of their organizations regarding what MED-GOLD is able to offer, both at present and once the project ends.
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* Learn more about the MED-GOLD climate services watching the short videos below:
- ICT Platform: Cloud-based infrastructure to import, store, process, compute, export and visualize data, which provides climate data files and APIs to ensure that the tools benefit a broad audience.
- MED-GOLD Dashboard: Tool for the grape and wine sector that allows to check historical data but that is also a window into the future, providing seasonal forecasts and long-term projections.
- Olivia: Tool for the olive and olive oil sector that provides guidance on the optimal irrigation, fertilization and pesticide application integrating advanced artificial intelligence with climate and satellite information.
- CASAS-PBDMs: CASAS Global physiologically based demographic models (CASAS-PBDMs, http://www.casasglobal.org/) provide the capacity for modeling a variety of tri-trophic agroecosystems in a general way, including olive, grape, and coffee.
- Granoduro.net: Tool for the sustainable management of the durum wheat crop, including information on crop phenology, climatological indices and risk of diseases.
- Delphi: Tool that provides seasonal predictions for durum wheat to assess yield results.
Written by Marta Terrado (Barcelona Supercomputing Center)
