Who are the PCP WISE partners driving innovation in water management and climate resilience across Europe through Pre-Commercial Procurement? 

Our Partner Interview Series highlights the leading organisations in the PCP WISE consortium, showcasing their expertise, contributions, and key roles in the project. 

Each partner also shares its vision of how PCP WISE advances the European Green Deal’s objectives—whether by leveraging Environmental Observation (EO) data to tackle critical challenges or pioneering innovative governance and procurement approaches like PCP. 

🔍 Discover our latest interview to learn more about the Institut Cartogràfic i Geològic de Catalunya and (ICGC) and its impact! 

Briefly introduce your organisation

The City of Haarlem is a historic city, founded almost 800 years ago. It consists of a historic centre and old neighbourhoods; both lined with small streets. As we start to notice that climate change has a big impact on the local environment, we only have limited space to deal with the consequences. This makes it important to utilise all data available to make the city climate change proof. In order to save our beautiful city and keep it liveable, we have started a 25–year program to adjust it to the new standards. 

Introduce the team working on PCP WISE within your organisation

The team working on PCP-Wise in our city consists of 3 people:

  • Onno Oosterhof is strategic policy adviser on climate change and provides most information in the project.  
  • Joram de Ruijter is Programme manager sustainability and makes sure all information integrates in our working plans and procedures, in order to maximize efficiency and efforts of all projects. 
  • Willemijn Odekerken, controller at the City of Haarlem, is involved in the project with the ambition to gain insight into the progress of sustainability goals, focusing on monitoring and accountability. 

Together we make sure the necessary information is used as input for the programme and that the output is used within our organisation. 

What is your organisation’s role in the project? What unique contribution does it bring to PCP WISE?

The role of our organisation in the project is limited. Due to capacity restraints, we are not able to make a large contribution. However, we do try to find a way to deliver our information and other input. In order to do this, we work together with STOWA and the city of Rotterdam to maximize inputs. At the start of the project, we worked on the use cases and whenever needed we can give input from all the research we have done to make our city sustainable and climate proof.  

To what extent do you think PCP WISE will contribute to enhance Europe’s ability to adapt to and mitigate the effect of climate change?

The coming decades will be decisive as to whether we will become climate proof and also be able to minimize the impact of climate change. The PCP WISE project can help us find more specific data in order to make better choices where to make the most of the climate investments. What choices we make is crucial for the way the city and country can deal with climate change. PCP WISE can provide crucial data in order to make the right decisions and thereby help us greatly improve our decision making process.  

To what extent do you think Environmental Observation (EO) and Innovation Procurement (IP) can help develop innovative solutions for water management and climate resilience across Europe?

Both Environmental Observation (EO) and Innovation Procurement (IP) can support the decision–making processes across Europe. More, and more detailed, data will improve the quality of investments and thereby improve the capability of the continent to deal with future changes in the climate. Heavier rain, langer droughts, more heat, increased chances of flooding are all coming to us and we need to prepare for it. 

EO and IP can help support the direction Europe is moving in, in order to prepare for the coming changes. EO and IP play a crucial role in that process.