FAIR Data Infrastructure: The Missing Layer in EU Climate Resilience Policy

Why FAIR Data Infrastructure is Critical for EU Climate Resilience: Our Response to the European Commission The European Commission is preparing a new integrated framework for climate resilience and risk management, scheduled for adoption in Q4 2026. This framework aims to drive transformational change to make Europe significantly better prepared for climate impacts, with ambitious goals including harmonized risk assessments, common climate scenarios, and coordinated decision-support tools. But there's a critical gap. The open public consultation on this framework repeatedly calls for "easier access to data," "harmonized risk baselines," and "digital tools" - yet nowhere does it address the foundational data infrastructure needed to make these ambitions technically feasible. This is where FAIR2Adapt and ClimateAdapt4EOSC come in. FAIR2Adapt just answered to his open consultation, highllighting what we see as the missing layer: FAIR data management and interoperable data infrastructure as structural prerequisites for climate resilience by design. The Problem You cannot have: Harmonized climate risk assessments without harmonized metadata and semantic interoperability Common scenarios that work across governance levels without machine-readable, well-documented data Digital decision-support tools without FAIR-compliant APIs and standardized vocabularies Cross-border coordination without structurally interoperable data that can be found, accessed, and correctly interpreted across administrative systems The current framework asks stakeholders what information they need - but doesn't address what must change structurally to make climate data usable, comparable, reusable, and trustworthy across Europe. Our Solution Our position paper presents concrete recommendations to integrate FAIR data infrastructure as a foundational pillar of the EU Climate Resilience Framework: 1. Mandate FAIR data management for all publicly-funded climate risk assessments, adaptation plans, and monitoring data—ensuring datasets are published with standardized metadata, semantic vocabularies, and machine-readable formats. 2. Require Member States to adopt FAIR Implementation Profiles (FIPs) documenting which metadata standards and interoperability specifications they use, creating accountability while respecting national diversity. 3. Integrate climate data with EOSC infrastructure to enable federated access across Member States and avoid duplicative national platforms. 4. Include data FAIRness metrics in monitoring frameworks—measuring metadata quality, cross-border data reuse, and adoption of common standards rather than just data publication. 5. Align with EU Open Data Directive and Data Spaces by building climate resilience infrastructure on existing EU frameworks for data governance and interoperability. We demonstrate that implementing FAIR principles for climate adaptation is technically feasible through the FAIR2Adapt and ClimateAdapt4EOSC projects, which are developing FAIR Digital Objects (using RO-Crate), semantic frameworks (I-ADOPT), and stakeholder-driven approaches for climate data. This is not about adding FAIR as a nice-to-have feature—it's about addressing a foundational gap that will determine whether the framework creates coordinated European climate resilience or 27+ incompatible national systems. To know more, read the full position paper!