Current annual global estimates of premature deaths from poor air quality are estimated in the range of 2.6-4.4 million, and 2050 projections are expected to double against 2010 levels. In Europe, annual economic burdens are estimated at around 750 bn €. Climate change will further exacerbate air pollution burdens; therefore, a better understanding of the economic impacts on human societies has become an area of intense investigation. European research efforts are being carried out within the MACC project series, which started in 2005. The outcome of this work has been to establish a European capacity for Earth Observation, known as Copernicus. In MACC, key pollutant concentrations are computed at the European scale and globally by employing chemically-driven advanced transport models. The proposed work in GLANCE would develop a novel integrated assessment model for calculating the health impacts and damage costs of air pollution at different physical scales. It would combine MACC (assimilated Earth Observations, an ensemble of chemical transport models and state of the art ECWMF weather forecasting) with downscaling based on in-situ network measurements. The strengthening of modelled projections through integration with empirical evidence would, therefore, reduce errors and uncertainties in the health impact projections. In addition, GLANCE would yield improved data accuracy at high time resolution. This project is a multidisciplinary approach which would bring together leading experts from natural sciences and socioeconomic fields. The fellow would benefit from learning new and multidisciplinary skills, collaborating in international networks, and publishing novel results in high impact journals. Moreover, GLANCE would benefit the European community by contributing a novel approach to assess air quality at the local and regional levels, thus benefiting to long running EU commitments, while exploring new pathways for exploiting earth observational data.

UNTWIST aims at exploring new pathways to operationalize Water-Energy-Food (WEF) nexus concepts into practice. Despite the urgent need of adopting systemic thinking for the governance of water resource and interconnected sectors has been widely recognized and stressed by EU, several challenges for an effective mainstreaming of such frameworks into policy remain. These can be largely attributed to the lack of frameworks and tools able to effectively quantify interlinkages and feedbacks between nexus component and related ecosystems and to account for the effect of exogenous drivers of change (e.g. climate change). By combining ESs theories with complex system analysis, UNTWIST aims at contributing to fill these gaps demonstrating, through case studies applications, the potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in developing integrated models supporting the quantification of critical interactions occurring in WEF nexus systems. Ecosystem Services (ESs) flows, being in the centre of the WEF relationships, will be used as common assessment endpoints to disentangle the nexus, thus contributing to reveal potential interdependencies between policy sectors and unlock opportunities for delivering integrated solutions addressing key challenges towards the achievement of interconnected Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The research project, which will last 24 months, will be mainly conducted at the Basque Centre for Climate Change (BC3) in Bilbao (Spain), under the supervision of Professor Ferdinando Villa, while a secondment period, will be performed at GECOsistema (Italy), an environmental consulting based in Rimini. UNTWIST results will be disseminated and the main findings will be communicated with tailored actions to a wide audience, including the academic community, policy makers, industries and the general public.

Impacts of climate change are happening as a result of extreme temperatures, sea-level rise, storm surges or droughts. Communities and governments across the globe are preparing through actions to increase climate resilience. However, progress made to date to adapt is still poorly understood and tracked due to a lack of theoretical understanding and means to evaluate how well the world is adapting. Further barriers are unclear goals and metrics for adaptation in the absence of a shared definition of successful adaptation. Finding a response to this question is at the core of the international climate debate and has particular significance at the local level where assets and lives of millions of people are at risk. 'IMAGINE adaptation' addresses the imperative of how to evaluate adaptation in urban areas as a contemporary complex phenomenon with implications across governance scales. The current focus on policy progress can be useful as a first step, but it is not indicative of effective adaptation. A broader understanding of success in adaptation is required: one that transcends technocratic approaches and considers equity, justice and maladaptive issues. Through 'IMAGINE adaptation', I aim to respond to four timely and ambitious objectives: First, I will revisit and reformulate the concept of successful adaptation using expert and local views (Objective 1, O1). Second, I will explore trends and needs regarding monitoring and evaluation and how these may enable or hinder adaptation (O2). Third, I will participate and learn from local adaptation evaluation practices through a comparative case study research across 12 urban areas worldwide (O3). Finally, I will discuss how evaluations of local progress can inform global goals (O4). The outputs of this project will be a reference for future adaptation assessment studies and will pioneer the understanding of the ways to enable far-reaching transformative urban adaptation through processes of evaluation and learning.

Global change degrades ecosystems worldwide. To mitigate its effects is the environmental challenge of our age, and restoration has emerged as the main strategy to stem the biodiversity crisis and repair damaged ecosystems. Despite substantial progress on the number of restoration studies and datasets, there is a fundamental gap in our understanding and prediction of the patterns and mechanisms underlying ecological restoration and how they are altered by global change. The goal of RECODYN is to determine the recovery rates and trajectories of biodiversity, community structure and ecosystem functioning in complex multitrophic communities, and how climate change and habitat fragmentation – two of the largest threats to biodiversity and ecosystems in terrestrial systems – influence those dynamics. To achieve this, I will use an integrative approach that combines the development of new theory on metacommunities and temperature-dependent food web dynamics in close dialogue with a unique long-term terrestrial mesocosm experiment. RECODYN is articulated around three objectives. First, I will investigate differences between natural assembly and recovery dynamics. Then, I will determine the effects of global change – i.e. climate change and fragmentation – on biodiversity, community structure, spatial and temporal stability, and key ecosystem functions of recovering ecosystems. Finally, I will provide creative solutions to restore ecosystems in a warmer and more fragmented world. RECODYN proposes an ambitious integrative and innovative research program that will provide a much-needed new perspective on ecological restoration in an era of global change. It will greatly contribute to bridging the gap between theoretical and empirical ecology, and to move restoration from an idiosyncratic discipline to a more predictive science. RECODYN will foster links with environmental policy by providing new restoration measures that derive from our theoretical and empirical findings.

Food demand is increasingly satisfied with imported products from distant locations. This makes countries and consumers more vulnerable to supply chain disruptions and price spikes, challenging food security. Trade in food is also associated with the displacement of resource-intensive activities from industrialised to developing countries, influencing the distribution of land uses and related impacts on a global scale. The goal of the project GIFTS is to develop an integrated framework for the assessment of the long-term sustainability of food consumption, capturing the global interconnections between agricultural expansion, crop management, climate change and food security. The methodology departs from a physical Multi-Regional Input-Output (MRIO) model developed by the host institution, with an unprecedented level of detail in agro-food products. I propose to improve this model by developing environmental extensions with spatially-explicit carbon stocks across land uses and greenhouse gas emissions from livestock production. Co-product flows between crop, livestock and energy sectors will also be implemented to represent reuse and recovery. The extended MRIO table will be used to assess the mitigation potential of climate change adaptation strategies along global supply chains, considering increased resource efficiency and land use change. The project involves training on the application of MRIO analysis for environmental evaluation as well as in spatial analysis at the host institution. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations is involved in the secondment, providing training on the estimation of livestock emissions and fostering inter-sectoral research exchange between academia and decision-makers. Overall, GIFTS can greatly promote my interdisciplinary research career for providing science-based evidence to assist policy-making towards a more resilient, sustainable and circular society in the framework of the Sustainable Development Goals.