Climate stress testing the UK food supply chain using earth observation

该项目将支持英国食品供应链中的利益相关者了解和评估他们与气候相关的风险。英国的“准时制”供应链模式使英国容易受到气候变化以及其他压力因素导致的食品供应变化的影响，例如英国脱离欧盟和新冠肺炎疫情。英国大约一半的食品从海外进口，其中相当大一部分来自相对较少的国家。因此，国外少数地区食品供应的变化将对英国这里的食品供应产生很大影响。由于气候变化将影响国外和英国的农业生产率，必须确定供应链中最脆弱的点，以确保英国的食品安全不会受到威胁。由于英国的食品供应链是全球性的，理解这些威胁需要进行全球评估。地球观测(EO)数据在这方面具有得天独厚的优势，因为它带来了跨越政治边界的高质量一致评估和可重复监测的优势。地球观测是指利用卫星传感器等遥感技术来研究地球。英国EO行业拥有相当多的相关专业知识、产品和服务，但他们正在努力接触到英国食品供应链中的潜在用户。通过在Space4Climate上安置一个项目，该项目将在EO数据的潜在用户与这些产品和服务的供应商之间进行知识撮合。Space4Climate是政府、行业和学术界为促进英国的EO能力而做出的协调努力。这将包括将用户需求映射到供应商的能力，并为气候压力测试工具(S)创建功能规范(S)。这项工作将通过刺激英国商业气候数据服务的发展，帮助英国食品供应链中的组织更好地了解它们面临的气候相关风险，从而为适应气候变化做出贡献。因此，该项目有能力在创造就业机会的同时，提高英国对气候变化的适应能力，带来社会和经济效益。

The project will support stakeholders within the UK food supply chain to understand and assess their climate-related risks. The UK's 'just-in-time' supply chain model leaves the UK vulnerable to changes in food availability caused by climate change as well as other stressors, such as our departure from the European Union and the COVID-19 pandemic. The UK imports around half of its food from overseas, with the considerable majority of this coming from relatively few countries. Therefore changes in food availability in a few locations abroad will have a large effect on food availability here in the UK. As climate change will affect agricultural productivity abroad and in the UK, the points of the supply chain with the greatest vulnerability must be identified to ensure UK food security is not jeopardised.As the UK food supply chain is global, understanding the threats requires a global assessment. Earth observation (EO) data is uniquely-placed to inform this, as it brings the advantages of high quality consistent assessment across political boundaries and repeatable monitoring. EO refers to the use of remote sensing technologies such as satellite sensors to study the Earth. The UK EO industry has considerable relevant expertise, products and services, but they are struggling to reach potential users within the UK food supply chain. Through a placement at Space4Climate, a coordinated effort across government, industry and academia to promote UK EO capabilities, this project will undertake knowledge-broking between potential users of EO data for understanding climate risk and the suppliers of these products and services. This will include mapping user requirements to supplier capabilities and creating functional specification(s) for climate stress testing tool(s).This work will contribute toward climate change adaptation by stimulating the development of UK commercial climate data services to help the organisations within the UK food supply chain better understand their exposure to climate-related risks. This project therefore has the capacity to create employment opportunities while also increasing the resilience of the UK to climate change, bringing societal and economic benefit.