ERC Consolidator Grant to explore disruptive forces of climate change on socio-economic development with innovative simulation models
Tatiana Filatova will receive a Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council (ERC) for her SPHINX project. She and her team will be developing new simulation models to understand how local physical climate-induced hazards could escalate to cause systemic risks for economies and societies, and explore strategies to reduce losses. Consolidator grants support outstanding scientists and their independent research teams in developing promising scientific ideas.
Climate change is already causing damages worldwide, via floods, storms, wildfires, heatwaves, droughts, and rising sea levels. ‘These events do not only manifest via direct physical risks. They pose a fundamental threat to global socio-economic development and can create bigger, interconnected cascading losses that disrupt entire economies and societies’, explains Tatiana Filatova, expert in computational economics and Academic Leader of the ‘Climate Change Governance’ theme of the Delft Climate Action Programme.
‘We don’t fully understand the key processes amplifying these risks, and there are very few detailed studies on the subject. Progress is limited because past data doesn’t reflect future changes, and current economic models cannot handle complex tipping dynamics triggered by unprecedented events’, according to Filatova.
About SPHINX
The SPHINX project (Systemic Physical climate risk in complex adaptive economies) aims to fill this gap by developing cross-scale cause-effect feedbacks, testing them in simulations and collecting new data to understand how these risks spread through societies and economies. It will also explore strategies to reduce the costs of such systemic risks, revealing policy levers to prevent them. SPHINX focusses on European regions but strives to develop theoretical, empirical, and methodological contributions applicable elsewhere.
Filatova is very happy to have been awarded the Consolidator Grant: ‘I am very much looking forward to start working on this project with my team. It will not only contribute to the understanding of systemic physical climate risks, but also to other areas where economic and social tipping points play a key role.’
About ERC Consolidator grants
ERC Consolidator grants are part of the EU’s current research and innovation programme, Horizon Europe, and the 2024 call was worth in total €678 million. The ERC Consolidator Grants are awarded to outstanding researchers with at least seven and up to twelve years of experience after PhD, and a scientific track record showing great promise. Research must be conducted in a public or private research organisation located in one of the EU Member States or “Associated” Countries. The funding - up to €2 million per grant, plus in some cases an additional €1 million for start-up costs - is provided for up to five years and mostly covers the employment of researchers and other staff to consolidate the grantees' teams.
