European hospitals are operating in a fundamentally altered environment. The compounding effects of climate-driven demand shifts, fragile global supply chains, and volatile energy markets have permanently changed the baseline conditions of healthcare delivery. Heatwaves and altered disease vectors drive unpredictable seasonal surges in patient volumes. Geopolitical instability threatens the security of critical pharmaceutical, device and fuel supply chains. Grid instability and volatile energy prices expose continuous-care operations to systemic risk. Yet hospital planning frameworks continue to treat these pressures as future modelling exercises rather than daily operational realities.
At the same time, hospitals are among the most energy- and resource-intensive public infrastructures in Europe, generating substantial greenhouse gas emissions through thermal processes, electricity use, and material and waste flows. The decarbonisation of hospital operations is both a climate imperative and - when designed correctly - a direct contributor to operational resilience: energy efficiency reduces exposure to volatile energy markets, circular procurement reduces supply chain fragility, and demand-side management creates the operational slack needed to absorb clinical surges.
ANCHOR addresses this dual challenge by treating resilience and decarbonisation as co-equal, interdependent planning objectives. The project develops, pilots, and validates an integrated methodology for climate-resilient hospital resource planning that connects demand-side intelligence, supply-side vulnerability mapping, operational capacity assessment, and carbon reduction pathways into a single, actionable planning framework designed for hospital managers.
Hospitals are modelled not as generic sources of emissions, but as federations of functionally distinct operational modules - operating theatres, ICU, emergency departments, inpatient wards, day hospitals, outpatient clinics, diagnostic imaging, pharmacy, logistics - each with different vulnerability profiles, energy demand curves, climate sensitivity, and supply chain dependencies. This modular architecture enables ANCHOR’s methodology to scale across different healthcare facilities in the EU without requiring bespoke external support.
The methodological core is a four-scenario planning framework - Current State, Acute Stress, Structural Demand Shift, and Resilient and Efficient Operations - operationalised through a Dual-KPI multi-criteria prioritisation system that scores every proposed intervention simultaneously against resilience performance and environmental metrics. IoT sensor networks and enhanced Energy Management Systems are deployed as planning instruments rather than standalone efficiency tools. A Climate-Aware Clinical Planning Platform (WP5) integrates three historically siloed domains: clinical demand planning, facility and energy management, and epidemiological intelligence - enabling AI-driven early warning of climate-induced surges and pre-designed surge response protocols activatable within hours.
Pilot implementation across a geographically diverse hospital network generates the evidence base for an open-access Hospital Resilience Planning Toolkit with a module configurator, replication roadmaps, and a multilingual e-learning platform. WP6 builds the financial and regulatory case for adoption at scale, embedding outcomes within the European Health Union preparedness pillar, the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive, and the Critical Medicines Act.