Deliverable No. 7.3 User Engagement Plan

The main objective of the APPLICATE project is to develop enhanced predictive capacity for weather and climate in the Arctic and beyond, and to determine the influence of Arctic climate change on the Northern Hemisphere. To produce usable and trustworthy predictive information for decision making, APPLICATE will actively engage with users, including policy makers, businesses and society within and outside the EU. Only by effectively exchanging information with stakeholders and co-developing knowledge, can we assure the stakeholder- relevance of the project results, which can then enhance their capacity to adapt to long-term climate change.

The proactive dialogue with users will be performed using modern and interactive user engagement mechanisms that will be developed and maintained throughout the project. This plan presents the user engagement approach that will be applied. It provides a detailed description of the three main user categories defined by the project: key, primary and secondary users. It builds around three main mechanisms of user engagement to be applied in the project: i) User Group involvement ii) Participation in meetings and organization of workshops and iii) User blog, surveys and interviews.

In addition, different communication channels that are also being developed as a part of the project will enhance information exchange and knowledge transfer, reaching a broad and diverse group of users.