Projects (EU R&I)

Our work began in 2017, when a group of research centres, universities and climate service purveyors from across Europe, began a collaboration aimed at building cleaner, healthier, safer and more resilient cities through better access to climate data. Together, the Climate-fit.City partners have developed a suite of tailored solutions to support climate service use for cities. 

The knowledge to know how

Climate services are the intelligence behind climate-resilient and low-carbon strategies. Their function is to channel science and technology into solutions for climate change resilience and sustainable economic growth.  

Urban areas are not only major contributors to climate change, they are also particularly vulnerable to its effects.  The associated social, economic and infrastructural risks can be dramatically curbed through efficient design and mitigation strategies, but this requires climate-informed decision-making across all levels of governance and planning.

Although there is a vast body of publicly available climate data, it is not always presented in line with the requirements of specific regions and sectors. Often, the economic and social benefits of climate services are not clear, quantifiable or specific enough to be used easily and effectively.

Usability, reliability, adaptability

The Climate-fit.City team works to identify and address the barriers preventing urban administrators, planners and coordinators from seizing the opportunities offered by climate services.

Working closely with city officials, we transform complex, high-calibre scientific data into a set of highly usable tools to address specific local challenges.

We produce high-level spatial resolution urban climate data to the scale our clients require, as well as detailed, local-scale climate-change impact information, and very specific impact analyses, giving them a clear insight into the best way to build sustainability and resilience.

By facilitating clear communication between the climate community and sector specific experts, we create urban climate service communities capable of integrating climate wisdom into the very fabric of their cities.

Facing the future with confidence

Whether our clients are urban administrations, commercial consulting companies or wider organisations such as city networks or international financing organisations, we deliver customised solutions to guide them through the adaptation process, from infrastructural planning to citizen outreach. We target your city’s entire system to create integrated and sustainable strength in the face of climate change. Everyone has a part to play in creating climate resilience.

Source: Climate-fit.City

The past 50 years have seen European cities adopt new pollution control policies, air quality-related regulations and remediation technologies to conform to ever more stringent standards. But even though these are welcomed improvements, the 800 000 premature deaths caused by pollution every year – in the EU alone – act as a constant reminder of the need to do more.

For members of the EU-funded iSCAPE consortium, this need doesn’t only concern public authorities. It should involve all citizens, to help inform better policies and make the most of available technologies. By leveraging passive control systems and behavioural changes, the project launched in September 2016 hoped to help achieve air pollution-free cities.

A tale of six cities

Six cities have been selected for the project’s research: Bologna, Bottrop, Dublin, Guildford, Hasselt and Vantaa. In each of these cities, the team led by Dr Francesco Pilla from University College Dublin (UCD) started by conducting a thorough and neutral assessment of existing and future challenges and opportunities for each city with respect to air quality and climate change.

“Once the possible solutions were identified, we initiated a dialogue with the citizens and relevant stakeholders of each test city through Living Labs, to assess non-technical challenges to the implementation of relevant passive control systems and behavioural interventions,” Dr Pilla explains. “Those activities are then integrated thanks to the use of sensing technologies and the development of two quality monitoring kits.”

The first, high-end monitoring kit assesses the effectiveness of the implemented solutions, which can consist of low boundary walls, trees and hedge-rows, green walls and roofs, photocatalytic coatings, urban design or road geometry. The second one, however, is perhaps the main singularity of the project: a low-cost monitoring kit to involve and educate citizens, and ultimately build a community around the global challenge of air pollution.

“As such, iSCAPE focuses on research activities. We ran air quality and meteorological simulations at various scales to pre-empt the effects and improve the impact of our solutions, as well as extensive monitoring to assess the effectiveness of these solutions. This evaluation was then complemented by simulations having a direct impact on population behaviour. These include bottom-up feedback for policymakers, which links anthropogenic urban activities to environmental models. The idea is to provide new insights into how traffic policy measures need to be designed to improve environmental quality,” says Dr Pilla.

Each city a unique case

Each of the cities running an iSCAPE Living Lab was treated differently, based on the results of the assessment phase. The project consortium identified the most pressing issues for each one and prioritised actions accordingly. For example, the priority in Bologna and Dublin was to create a ‘living lab mindset’ among relevant stakeholders. In Bottrop, the team focused on understanding the role of ‘sensors and citizens’, while in Guildford, Hasselt and Vantaa, the focus was on ‘communicating the project’ and on establishing more collaborative relationships with stakeholders, respectively.

In each city, the project team provided a bespoke practical guide for citizen engagement, while promoting a sense of ownership of the Living Lab to ensure that the interventions would outlive the project.

Source: iSCAPE's - European Commission

Click here to read more about the success stories.

'Hoe wil jij wonen, werken en reizen in de stad van de toekomst? Dat is de vraag die we stellen aan burgers in heel Europa voor een groot nieuw project: ClairCity. ClairCity wil bewustwording onder burgers creëren over luchtvervuiling en over de uitstoot van CO₂ in onze steden.

Samen met inwoners van Amsterdam willen wij onderzoeken hoe je als burger zelf kunt bijdragen aan het oplossen van die problemen. Uniek aan dit project is dat burgers de hoofdrol krijgen om, samen met het onderzoeksteam, uit te vinden wat de beste oplossingen zijn.'

Dit EU project wordt uitgerold in zes partner steden: Amsterdam in Nederland (Gemeente Amsterdam AMS en Trinomics), Bristol in het Verenigd Koningkrijk, Ljubljana in Slovenië, Sosnowiec in Polen, de Aveiro regio in Portugal en de Liguria regio in Italië. De burgers van deze steden zullen betrokken worden in ons project door middel van een online spel, een app, school competities en lokale workshops en evenementen.

Dit project brengt gedetailleerde informatie over luchtkwaliteit in elke stad samen met het gedrag en het dagelijks leven van burgers. We zullen geavanceerde toekomstscenario’s genereren waarin verschillende beschikbare beleidsopties voor de steden worden verwerkt. Deze toekomstscenario’s zullen niet alleen gebaseerd zijn op statistische data. Inwoners van iedere stad zullen hun eigen visie geven op hun stad van de toekomst, zodat de modellen ook echt de aspiraties van de lokale bevolking weerspiegelen.

Bron en meer informatie: website ClairCity

Zie ook: website Team Europese Subsidies Het project is met 6,7 miljoen Euro gefinancierd door het Europese onderzoeksprogramma Horizon 2020. Looptijd: mei 2016- april 2020

As a result, CLARITY will provide an operational ecosystem of cloud-based climate services to calculate and present the expected effects of CC-induced and -amplified hazards at the level of risk, vulnerability and impact functions. CLARITY will offer what-if decision support functions to investigate the effects of adaptation measures and risk reduction options in the specific project context and allow the comparison of alternative strategies. Four Demonstration Cases will showcase CLARITY climate services in different climatic, regional, infrastructure and hazard contexts in Italy, Sweden, Austria and Spain; focusing on the planning and implementation of urban infrastructure development projects.

CLARITY will provide the practical means to include the effects of CC hazards and possible adaptation and risk management strategies into planning and implementation of such projects, focusing on increasing CC resilience. Decision makers involved in these projects will be empowered to perform climate proof and adaptive planning of adaptation and risk reduction options.

Source: Clarity - Project Overview

After the conclusion of the project (December 2020), Eklipse will begin operating as an autonomous entity and continue its activities and competences under the management of Alternet.

The first four years of the development of "this support mechanism" are supported by the EKLIPSE project, funded by the European commission under the Horizon2020 funding stream, and coordinated by the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology*. 

   EKLIPSE is an unusual project in several ways, particularly:

• The project is funded for four years to develop a sustainable mechanism that will be in place for many years to come. 

• The development of the support mechanism through the project is facilitated by project partners.Their role is to facilitate linkages between science, policy and society, through different actions, such as knowledge synthesis, identifying research priorities, and building the Network of Networks  that will support the other actions. [View the project partners]
• A large part of the budget of the EKLIPSE project will be made available to the wider community through open calls .

• The project, and the developing mechanism, is reactive. Most 3-5 year projects predict what will be important, or make an assumption on what policy and society actors should be interested in. We look at this from the end-users' perspective. This is why we have an open call for requests, so that policy-makers and societal actors can tell us what they need, and can discuss with us how we can best meet their needs. Our first request came from the European Commission, and was on nature-based solutions in cities. The Expert Working Group selected to work on this request released a report and peer-reviewed article in 2017. More information on this first request can be found under ongoing activities.

• The governance of the mechanism- how it will be run, by who, with what funding etc- is really important to get right, so we can ensure the mechanism is self-sustaining and long-term. So, we have put in place several key components:
  • The Secretariat (Juliette Young, Jorge Ventocilla and Marie Vandewalle): for the day to day activities, including communication between all relevant people.
  • The Strategic Advisory Board: the "ambassadors" of our project, who can advise on our direction, our budgets etc .
  • The Knowledge Coordination Body: (KCB, not to be confused with KGB...), responsible for working with requesters on what they need, and how they need it. They also decide on whom to appoint and fund - all in a transparent and clear way.
  • The Business Plan Group: responsible for developing the Business plan for the mechanism. 

• To check whether these components are the right ones, and whether they will work in the best possible way, we have an internal evaluation that will run over the life of the project. This evaluation assesses the ways in which we do things, and informs improvement of all our processes as we go along, so that the end product - the mechanism - will be really effective. 

Click here for their reports.

Source: Eklipse 

URBiNAT consists of a worldwide consortium of academic and business partners in 7 European cities. Each URBiNAT city will act as Living Lab for the implementation of Healthy Corridor solutions. Cities are supported by local partners, associations and research centres, and other European centres, universities and companies.

Together partners are developing a participatory process, an NBS catalogue and a Healthy Corridor, while monitoring impacts, and disseminating and marketing results. Together, they form an inclusive community of practice (CoP), collaborating with partners from Iran and China, and NBS observers located in Brazil, Oman and Japan.

Partners contribute their innovative NBS experience deployed through an array of transdisciplinary knowledge, methodologies and tools, as nature-based solutions. This is supplemented by ‘smart’ digital tools, citizen engagement, solidarity and social economy initiatives, social innovation for value-generation, incubation for business development and capacity building, and ICT governance platforms. The social, economic and urban impacts will be measured and replicated by URBiNAT Observatory.

Watch this video externally on: YouTube

Source: URBiNAT - About

Local teams including citizens, businesses, knowledge partners and local authorities have been formed in Hamburg, London and Milan. This collaborative structure will ensure that the urban transformation process is open, inclusive and tailored to local needs.

Belgrade, Larissa, Madrid, Malmö, Sfântu Gheorghe and Quito share and learn with London, Hamburg and Milan on how to adapt nature-based interventions for the needs of towns and cities around the world.

Nature Based Solutions

Nature Based Solutions are positive responses to societal challenges, and can have the potential to simultaneously meet environmental, social and economic objectives. They are actions inspired by, supported by or copied from nature; both using and enhancing existing solutions to challenges, as well as exploring more novel ones. Nature Based Solutions are ideally resilient to change, as well as energy and ressources efficient. They recognize the importance to develop a systemic approach and at the same time to adapt interventions to the local context.

Objectives of the project

• Improve the Integration of NBS in urban and spatial planning
• Build a new and active community network around NBS
• Offer high quality decision-support tools for re-naturing cities
• Build a holistic assessment framework for NBS
• Develop a reference knowledge base on NBS and Best Practice sharing
• Propose new governance, business and financial models for NBS implementation

Source: Nature4Cities - About

FutureAgriculture proposes an efficient metabolic bypass for photorespiration in plants which leads to the loss of CO2 and consequently to reduced growth yield. Using new enzyme based synthetic pathways to bypass photorespiration has the potential to significantly increase the photosynthetic efficiency, supporting higher yields of crop, a pressing need for a continually growing world population.

GOTSolar aims to develop the next generation of solar cells, solid-state perovskite solar cells (PSCs). Transparent and available in various colours PSCs will significantly broaden the traditional solar cell application area.  Perovskite solar cells will be highly efficient, long-lasting and environmentally safe, which would make them a sustainable power source not only from the harvesting but also from the production point of view.

HELENIC-REF aims to the establishment of a new sustainable methodology for the water thermolysis at temperatures below 300°C and the immediate corresponding production of energy or fuels, using water as a source for renewable fuel.

LIAR (Living Architecture) plans to develop a programmable bioreactor able to extract valuable resources from waste water and air and to generate oxygen, proteins and fibre. Its possible installation in domestic, public and office settings will significantly improve the environmental performance of our living spaces with undeniable benefits for health, productivity and ecosystems. 

Read here more about LIAR. 

Source: H2020 FET projects related to Green Technologies. European Commission.

Source: Citizens' Observatories & Crowdsourcing: Novel ways to engage citizens in science and environmental policy-making. 

Watch this video externally on: Vimeo

At the core of this project, there are 7 Urban Labs based in seven European cities. Each one of them groups together non-governmental cultural organisations and local/regional authorities, as well as other relevant stakeholders. Their goal is to address local challenges together and find participatory and commoning solutions to them.

From October 2018 to March 2019, we organised 2 international conferences, 21 workshops, 14 traineeships, 5 urban explorations, 3 co-creative policy events, etc.

Click here for their publications.

Source: Cultural Creative Spaces & Cities

Watch this video externally on: YouTube

Source: Cities-4-People - About

The project SOLUTIONSplus sets up a global platform for shared, public and commercial e-mobility solutions, and to kick start the transition towards low carbon urban mobility. The project encompasses city level demonstrations to test different types of innovative and integrated e-mobility solutions, complemented by a comprehensive toolbox, capacity development and replication activities. 

SOLUTIONSplus brings together highly committed cities, industry, research, implementing organisations and finance partners. Through numerous synergistic projects, networks and a strong technical experience, the project will be able to deliver its highly ambitious goals. Direct co-funding contributions will be provided by partner cities and SOLUTIONSplus works closely with UN Environment and the International Energy Agency (IEA) on a joint global urban e-mobility programme that will significantly boost replication and impact of this Innovation Action. 

Through the regional platforms, a global programme and local teams, the project aims to develop highly effective and innovative approaches to urban e-mobility ensuring that mobility systems and interventions from this project deliver on the Paris Agreement, meet the Sustainable Development Goals and address the New Urban Agenda.

Source: SOLUTIONSplus - About

Global warming, together with exacerbating climate variability and extremes, threatens the well-being of European citizens and is already damaging our economy and natural capital. Despite mitigation efforts, climate change will continue to create significant stress across Europe and the need to adapt to its impacts will not cease.

Three runner cities - of Valladolid (Spain), Liverpool (UK) and Izmir (Turkey) – will validate and demonstrate the effectiveness of the URBAN GreenUP methodology. Based on their experience, five follower cities, Mantova (Italy), Ludwigsburg (Germany) Medellin (Colombia), Chengdu (China) and Binh Dinh-Quy Nhon (Vietnam), will set up their own Renaturing Urban Plans to replicate the URBAN GreenUP strategy and its green economy approach.

The nature-based solutions that will be implemented during the project cover a variety of complementary yet interconnected aspects of urban life and infrastructures. They are grouped into four main categories: re-naturing urbanization, water interventions, singular green infrastructures and non-technical interventions. Examples of the planned initiatives are the deployment of green bike and pedestrian routes, the installation of parks and urban farming facilities, the usage of smart soils and bio pollutant filters, as well as the implementation of sustainable drainage systems, which reduce the impact of floods and for irrigation purposes.   

Through the implementation of very technical nature-based solutions in large-scale districts, URBAN GreenUP aims at achieving a variety of impacts related with both environmental and socio-economic aspects. For example, the new cycle lane and the parking green pavements that are to be installed in Valladolid will prevent the emission of almost 200 tons CO₂ equivalent and reduce temperatures by 5^oC during summer time, respectively. Liverpool’s sustainable drainage system, on the other hand, will be able to store 1500 m³ of rain water during storms, whereas the smart soils used in Izmir will be capable of sequestrating carbon from the atmosphere and use them for self-fertilization.  These are just a few of the impacts expected through the implementations of nature-based solutions in the three cities.

Apart from urban green transformation, the project is expected to achieve important results in other fields too. URBAN GreenUP will improve life quality in urban areas, raise awareness on the importance of environment preservation among citizens, generate new market opportunities for European companies at international level , foster the creation of transnational networks and synergies. Last but not the least, it will highlight the importance of the local communities’ active participation when addressing climate problems through co-creation activities also directly involving the citizens, who are at the core of their cities’ green regeneration.

Source: URBAN GreenUP - About

Our three front-runner cities - Eindhoven, Tampere and Genova - are through the establishment of Urban Living Lab (ULL) demonstration areas experimenting, demonstrating and evaluating a range of different nature-based solutions targeting climate change mitigation and adaptation along with the sustainable management of water resources. These solutions have been co-created with and for local stakeholders and citizens.

The front-runner cities actively collaborate and share their experiences with our five European follower cities - Stavanger, Prague, Castellón, Cannes and Başakşehir - and support them in their development of individual NBS roadmaps, which is done in a co-creation approach. Our non-European follower cities - Hong Kong and Buenos Aires - as well as our two observers - Guangzhou and the Brazilian Network of Smart Cities – actively learn from the European NBS approach, which will enable the creation of a global NBS marketplace.

The collaborative knowledge production among this wide network of cities enables UNaLab project results to reflect diverse urban socio-economic realities, as well as differences in the size and density of urban populations, local ecosystem characteristics and climate conditions. The project results will enable the development of a European NBS Reference Framework on benefits, cost-effectiveness, economic viability and replicability of nature-based solutions, which will guide cities across Europe and beyond in developing and implementing their own co-creative nature-based solutions.

Click here for their resources.

Source: UNaLab - About

We will form a community of cities that fosters peer to peer learning and capacity building among our front runner cities who are experienced in delivering large scale nature-based solutions, and our fast follower cities who have the desire to implement large scale nature-based solutions but lack the expertise.  As knowledge and expertise increases, so too will our community to include new members (multiplier cities).

At the same time, project partners will develop policy and practices necessary to scale up urban resilience, innovation and governance using nature-based solutions. Our approach will be open and innovative, fostering the development of co-operation between local governments, SME’s, academic research and community partners to produce a tool kit and guidebook for cities seeking to deliver nature-based solutions in their locales.

Challenges

Most innovation occurs in cities, but cities are also the location where most of today’s major and urgent challenges occur; challenges such as rapid climate and environmental change, complex water and waste management, adverse health and well-being, changes in social cohesion and migration patterns. Nature-based solutions can provide an entry point to addressing these challenges.

While the benefits of nature-based solutions are clear and can directly address the challenges outlined, the development and implementation of nature-based solutions has been slow, uneven and, in many cases complex; requiring efforts across many disciplines.  Issues like “silo thinking”, managing social cohesion and tackling the deficit of knowledge that exists around nature-based solutions need to be confronted when developing plans to introduce nature-based solutions in cities. 

Connecting Nature has taken these challenges on board and will devise and test approaches using multi-disciplinary methods where solutions are designed and created collaboratively that will lead towards the creation of resilient, greener, healthier cities, leading to a more sustainable living for their citizens.

Objectives

• Develop an urban planning process that will ‘burst open’ silos, enrich and nurture social, business and governance innovations and focus on the scaling-up of nature-based solutions in cities;
• Develop a new master planning process that accelerates the scaling of nature-based solutions in cities by connecting policy and market needs and turning barriers into opportunities for innovations;
• Develop a guiding process for identifying funding and financial mechanisms that establish nature-based solutions as evinced valid solutions for sustainable and resilient cities that are climate prepared; and to valorise knowledge and market mechanisms of nature-based solutions’ scaling for stimulating the market for new innovation;
• Showcase, and share learning from, the scaling-up, replication and integration of nature-based solutions for city-making within front-runner cities;
• Implement resourced masterplans in the fast-follower cities, that is collaborative, employing sharing of good practice, working examples and quantifiable evidence, interdisciplinary work and stakeholder engagement;
• Engage the fast-follower cities in capacity-building and experiential learning building on effective knowledge sharing and mentoring between front-runner cities and fast-follower cities and the use of proven curatorial planning processes;
• Secure adequate funding to realise fast-follower city accelerator masterplans for scale up of nature-based solutions in the fast-follower cities;
• Develop sustainable support for innovation, exploitation and enterprise development building on selected and promising new nature-based solution exemplars from the front runner cities and other solutions co-created to better suit the specific environmental, organisational and funding scenarios of the fast follower cities;
• Experiences and knowledge gained will be fed back into the reference framework for nature-based solutions.

Source: Connecting Nature - What is Connecting Nature?

Nature-based solutions use the natural properties of ecosystems. They have the potential to limit impacts of climate change, enhance biodiversity and improve environmental quality while contributing to economic activities and social well-being.

Examples are green roofs and city parks that limit heat stress, city lagoons that store water and permeable surfaces, vegetation and rain gardens to intercept storm water. Yet despite their significant potential, the use of nature-based solutions remains marginal, fragmented, and highly uneven within and between cities.

The use of grey infrastructure and technology-driven solutions continues to dominate urban development, from the design of wastewater systems to efforts to improve energy efficiency in the built environment.

Source: NATURVATION - About

Watch this video externally on: YouTube

Source: ThinkNature

A work approach in two steps

To reach its objective, the DECISIVE project will rely on a two-step approach, mixing research activities and practical implementation.

• A concept and tools consolidation step to validate the methods and processes allowing the implementation of a network of decentralised anaerobic digestion plants. New technologies, methods and indicators will be developed and integrated in a decision-support tool to allow their implementation in urban contexts.
• An innovative demonstration step to prove the efficiency of the methods and processes. It will focus on the implementation of two demonstration sites, the assessment of the integrated social, ecological, and economic impacts, and the identification of business outlooks.

New concepts and tools

The consortium will develop new processes allowing to treat municipal bio-waste in urban and peri-urban context, namely micro-scale anaerobic digestion units allowing to treat the bio-waste production of a district and solid stade fermentation plants to produce valuable bioproducts out of the micro-AD’s digestate. Moreover, a decision making tool will be also develop to allow public authorities and waste experts to assess the potential of such processes for their territory. Finally, communication and training materials will be designed to promote the new system to local stakeholders: citizens, restaurants, urban farms…

Demonstration sites

The new methods, tools and technologies will be implemented and tested in two demonstration sites:

• In Lyon (France) the system will be implemented on the site of an urban farm to test the coupling of urban bio-waste management with urban farming
• In Catalonia (Spain) the concept will be tested in an urban context with mainly household waste

These pilot sites will be closely monitored to determine the benefic environmental, social and economic impact and prove the theoritical concept in concrete situations.

Watch this video externally on: Vimeo

Source: DECESIVE - The project

Specific objectives are to: 

• Engage cities, enterprises, citizens and academia in 16 participatory value chain based partnerships to create and develop eco-innovative solutions together.
• Develop 10 viable end-markets by demonstrating new applications for plastic waste, metals (EEE devices), biowaste and wood waste.
• Develop a governance model for cities based on value chain based partnerships.
• Develop decision support tools and assess the actual impact by use of Big Data.
• Ensure replication through the FORCE Academy aiming at enterprises, citizens and policy makers.

The eco-innovative solutions will be demonstrated across four cities (Copenhagen, Hamburg, Lisbon and Genoa) and using the four materials:

Flexible plastics: Recycling and upgrade of 5,000 tonnes of flexible plastic from enterprises and private households will enable virgin material substitution, corresponding to preventing emissions of 12,500 tonnes of CO2.

Metals: Citizens will be mobilised to reclaim an additional 2 kg/capita of WEEE (app. 3,600 tonnes). A communication campaign will reach 100,000 citizens and support at least five SME’s that repair damaged EEE devices so that 10-20% of the collected WEEE can be redistributed.

Wood waste: additional 12,000 tonnes wood waste from urban and mountain areas will be collected. 8-10,000 tonnes of brushwood will be used for compost production, and 14-16,000 tonnes will be processed into wood particles.

Biowaste: around 7,000 tonnes of biowaste from the municipal mixed waste stream will be recovered: 3,000 tonnes coming from restaurants and hotels, and 4,000 tonnes coming from households.

The partnerships will result in the creation of viable eco-innovative market solutions, exploited by the partners. Replication in other cities will be incentivised thus ensuring competitiveness of European Circular Economy and green growth.

Source: FORCE Project - Project Description

Watch this video externally on: YouTube

CIRC-PACK (Towards circular economy in the plastic packaging value chain) is a three-year EU-funded project that aims to develop a more sustainable, efficient, competitive, less fossil fuel dependent, integrated and interconnected plastic value chain.

To this end, the consortium will work in the following three areas with three demo cases:

1. decoupling the chain from fossil feedstock; 
2. introducing innovative formats and reducing the negative environmental impact of plastic packaging; and 
3. creating an effective after-use plastics economy.

All CIRC-PACK activities will be supported by non-technological and advanced methodological analysis in order to facilitate the transition from the current linear plastic packaging value chain to circular economy principles, which will trigger a broad deployment of the tested solutions.

In addition, awareness raising activities targeting consumers and related stakeholders will boost an enabling regulatory environment, the replicability of developed solutions and the adoption of new business models.

The CIRC-PACK project is in line with the objectives of the platform representing Plastics Recyclers Europe and the PPP Bio-based Industries, as well as with European Commission´s challenges regarding a better management of waste, expecting an increase of the collecting rate up to 48% and a reduction of landfilling rate up to 15% by 2020.

Watch this video externally on: YouTube

Click here to see their publication. 

Source: CIRCA-PACK

Source: Centrinno - About

Spatial justice involves the fair and equitable distribution in space of socially valued resources and the opportunities to use them. As part of addressing the challenge of uneven spatial development, territorial cohesion, along with social and economic cohesion, has come to be a major goal of European policy. It emphasis the role of place and territory, and their specific assets (territorial capital) in EU cohesion policy.

Watch this video externally on: YouTube

Click here to see their results and publications. 

Source: SMARTDEST

The design of PARTISPACE includes

• National research literature reviews and policy analysis;
• Analysis of European Social Survey data on young people’s participatory orientations;
• Local case studies in one major city per country including expert interviews, focus groups discussions, city walks and biographical interviews with young people, ethnographic case studies of formal, non-formal, and informal participatory spaces.
• Activating and supporting participatory action research by young people themselves.

The analysis relates local constellations with national and European patterns and discourses of youth participation. Findings are constantly discussed with representatives of the youth sector at local and European level.

Outcomes

The PARTISPACE project provides empirical knowledge on how to broaden the concepts of participation. The core of this knowledge lies in relating individual biographies of young people and the social spaces in which they act in order to understand the meaning of participation from their perspective. On the one hand, this knowledge contributes to a deeper theoretical understanding of participation of young people in individualized societies. On the other hand, this knowledge is relevant for practices and policies aimed at enhancing and facilitating participation across formal, non-formal and informal settings.

Source: PARTISPACE

Vision and scope

The focus is on applying design tools and methods, since this offers a systematic approach to conceive user-driven innovations. DESIGNSCAPES aims to achieve a better uptake, further enhancement and up scaling, of Design-enabled Innovation in Europe, through direct financial support to flagship and innovation generating initiatives as well as a huge capacity building effort targeting\ multiple stakeholder groups (citizens, researchers, practitioners, innovators and policy makers). In doing so, the project will foster the linkages between research, policy and practice, while contributing in making Europe a global leader in the domain.

Source: Designscapes 

Background

Against the background of global trends such as urbanization and agglomeration, economic and forced migration flows are also moving outside urban areas. So far, this has largely been perceived as yet another burden for already marginalized territories. 

The specific needs of rural and mountain regions have been scarcely considered at the time of formulating the governance of migration. If unaddressed, the sentiments of people in ‘places that don’t matter’ risk fuelling an authoritarian dynamic, rejecting diversity altogether.

Notwithstanding the prominence of urbanization as a global trend, migrations to rural and mountain areas can play an important role for European rural regions, among the other things, by contributing to revitalise social and economic local milieu, reducing territorial inequalities and reconfiguring urban-rural interconnections. Migration has a potential to trigger development in the medium and long run especially in remote areas, where it can operate as a counter-process to depopulation and economic decline. Migration can be a crucial element to attain balanced territorial development, as defined in the UN Sustainable Development Goals. To avoid the existing risk that migration flows exert a negative impact on socio-economically and geographically fragile areas, place-based policies and adequate governance measure are needed.

Main objectives

What were the main goals of your SHARECITY project?

SHARECITY was seeking to understand contemporary food sharing and particularly sharing beyond familial settings, so beyond the family. We were particularly interested in its impact on society, the economy and the environment. 

Watch this video externally on: YouTube

Source: The online world of food sharing. European Research Council. European Commission.

Objective

Architecture and urban design, disciplines heavily rooted in visual epistemologies, have long neglected sound, or else treated it in very limited ways: as a physical quantity that can be modelled and controlled; or else as noise, something to be reduced or eliminated. The neglect of sound on the part of the built environment professions has been damaging for cities, which suffer from poor acoustic design. As cities come under increasing scrutiny in a rapidly urbanising world, it is time to turn attention to one of the most pervasive—yet most neglected—aspects of urban life: how cities sound; how the experience of urban soundscapes is differentiated along social and cultural lines; and how to harness the creative potential of sound to build healthier, more inclusive, more sustainable cities. SONCITIES will bring together sound theorists, urban sociologists, architects, urban designers and sound artists to develop the conceptual framework of sonic urbanism: a new acoustic paradigm for cities.

First, we will conduct unprecedented ethnographic research with urban residents and communities, aiming to discover how people experience and shape urban soundscapes in their everyday lives. On this basis we will form a mobile urban sound laboratory to generate new sonic modes of urban analysis in dialogue with built environment practitioners internationally. Finally, we will develop new sonic modes of urban design in the context of Design Weeks, public exhibitions, and creative sonic interventions in cities: projects that will serve as prototypes for sonic urbanism. SONCITIES is led by a sound theorist and sound art practitioner at Oxford University with a proven record of collaboration with architects and urbanists. Through SONCITIES, sound will be placed at the forefront of creative practice in architecture and urban design, and sonic urbanism will emerge as an innovative theoretical paradigm that fundamentally transforms how cities are understood, designed and experienced.

Source: Sonorous Cities: Towards a Sonic Urbanism. European Research Council.

Under Horizon 2020, FET actions have been allocated a provisional budget of 2 696 million euro.

The FET programme has three complementary lines of action to address different methodologies and scales, from new ideas to long-term challenges:

• FET Open funds projects on new ideas for radically new future technologies, at an early stage when there are few researchers working on a project topic. This can involve a wide range of new technological possibilities, inspired by cutting-edge science, unconventional collaborations or new research and innovation practices.
• FET Proactive nurtures emerging themes, seeking to establish a critical mass of European researchers in a number of promising exploratory research topics. This supports areas that are not yet ready for inclusion in industry research roadmaps, with the aim of building up and structuring new interdisciplinary research communities.
• FET Flagships are 1-billion, 10-years initiatives where hundreds of excellent European researchers unite forces to focus on solving an ambitious scientific and technological challenge, like understanding the Human Brain or developing the new materials of the future, such as Graphene.

Source: Future and Emerging Technologies. Horizon 2020. 

Objective

Living Architecture (LIAR) is a modular bioreactor-wall, which is based on the operational principles of microbial fuel cell technology and synthetic ‘consortia’ of microbes. LIAR is conceived as a next-generation selectively-programmable bioreactor and integral component of human dwelling, capable of extracting valuable resources from waste water and air, generation of oxygen and production of proteins and fiber by manipulating consortia performance. Its operational principles are grounded in distributed sensing, decentralised autonomous information processing, high-degree of fault-tolerance and distributed actuation and reconfiguration. Applications within urban systems are examined as a form of customizable micro-agriculture for installation in domestic, public (schools, hospitals) and office environments. Such a system has far reaching impacts on the building performance (resilience, resource recycling) manufacturing and design with ecosystems.

The project establishes:

• Foundational concepts through which ‘designed’ metabolisms can computationally process, recycle, remediate and synthesise valuable compounds from waste water.

• Transferable principles by which synthetic ecosystems can shape the environmental performance of our living spaces to increase our health, productivity and ecosystems impact.

• New standards for synthetic ‘ecosystems’ through consortia design, engineering and optimization.

Source: Living Architecture. European Commission.

Rooted in international and regional frameworks, such as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the strategic cooperation on environment and health (E&H) between the European Commission and the World Health Organization (WHO) Europe, the Network emerged from three decades of work towards better integration of environment and health in research.

EU Environment and health research and history context

Ambitions

The Equal-Life project is as ambitious as it  is large, comprising 20 partners from 11 European countries. Between 2020 and 2025, the consortium will examine birth-cohorts of over 250 000 children from seven different countries, as well as longitudinal school data sets and cross-sectional studies from four other countries. Equal-Life’s ultimate goal is to develop a toolbox that will help evaluate the effects of  physical and social environmental exposure at different levels. Results will provide a basis for new policies to prevent and/or reduce negative mental health impact on children from preconception to adolescence.

Focus on mental health and development in children

Mental health issues have largely been neglected in environmental research, but pose an increasing public health problem in Europe. This is especially true for early childhood and adolescence, as these are vulnerable developmental phases. Thus, differential  exposure to physical and/or social environments may have a profound impact on an individual’s health status as an adult. 

Equal-Life will be using data from exposures, effect markers and outcomes of mental health and social and cognitive developments. Additionally, the project will  contribute to the development and the subsequent utilization of the exposome concept, by

• integrating external and social exposome with biomarkers of intermediate effects. Studying a distinct set of effects on (mental) child development;
• characterizing, measuring and modelling the child’s environment at different stages and settings;
• focusing on environments that support child development, rather than negative factors (such as pollutants) only;
• combining physical and social indicators with novel effect biomarkers and using new data sources describing child activity patterns and environments which are relevant for them.

Includes data from existing studies (> 250,000 individuals) and collects new data

Equal-Life uses data from existing birth-cohorts, longitudinal school data sets and cross-sectional studies (N=>250.000), including data on exposures, biomarkers, mental health and developmental outcomes, in their social context.  Also,  Equal-Life will collect new data on children.

Takes the following impacts as a point of departure 

• Equal-Life seeks to innovate internal and external exposure assessment and data management:
  • With specific focus on restorative environments for children;
  • The approach will combine aspects of early life physical environments with social aspects of the environment;
  • Focus on the sound environment, other aspects relevant for restoration (blue light, access to green, variation) and resilience (household situation, parental styles) and distribution of these environments along the social and economic gradient. 
• The data collection and management will be organized in such a way that for the purpose of research as well as policy new information can easily be included.
• Equal-life is aimed at mapping the environmental health promoting/risk factors of  mental health and cognitive and social development:
  • By mapping the environmental features  which are relevant for restoration;
  • By describing the biological, psychological and developmental  pathways at different developmental stages and
  • By studying early markers of disturbed  mental, cognitive and social development.
  • While accounting for environmental sensitivities (influenced by gene activities, previous disease, or social inequalities) to answer the question which vulnerable sub groups of children have specific problems?
• Resulting in a set of interventions for different life stages.

Source: Equal-Life - Project

The aim of the Citizen Science Project on Urban Environment and Health (CitieS-Health) is to develop an effective citizen science model at the maximum collaboration level. The project will develop citizen science projects in five diverse European cities (Barcelona, Kaunas, Ljubljana, Amsterdam, Lucca), assessing urban air and noise pollution, wood burning, urban design and mobility at local levels. An innovative aspect of CitieS-Health is studying the link between these exposures and health impacts. Citizens will participate in defining research questions, designing and implementing studies, and analysing, interpreting and communicating results. The projects will inform the first open toolkit for the development and promotion of citizen science projects in urban environment and health. The project will also co-design a set of governance principles and procedures to allow participants control over project data and outcomes, and will contribute indicators to assess the project's impacts on different sectors. 

Source: CitieS-Health - European Commission

Objective

The general aim of FUSILLI is to support the participant pan-European cities (and their peri-urban areas) with the aim to address by a strong cooperation for knowledge sharing and mutual learning the challenges of the food system transformation. The main objective is to build an urban food plan to reach an integrated and safe holistic transition towards healthy, sustainable secure, inclusive, equitable and cost-efficient food systems, through feasible and replicable innovative urban policies leading to deploy improving actions in all stages of the food value chain in line with the four FOOD 2030 policy priorities (Nutrition for sustainable and healthy diets; Climate-smart and environmentally sustainable food systems; Circularity and resource efficient food systems; and Innovation and empowerment of communities).

Each city will create or improve the development of a living lab, which is an open innovation ecosystem where concrete actions will be deployed to develop and implement urban food systems policies delivering on the four FOOD 2030 priorities. These living labs have an objective to solve with the implementation of different innovative actions through all the stages of the food chain: production and processing, distribution and logistics, consumption, food loss and waste, and governance. Living lab will involve several stakeholders representing all the actors in the food system at local level: it will have at least a public authority, industry partner (SME or association), consumer association and education.

Objective

Objective

The Executive Agency for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (EASME) has been set-up by the European Commission to manage on its behalf several EU programmes.

Vision, mission, values

Our vision

'We aim to help create a more competitive and resource-efficient European economy based on knowledge and innovation'

Our mission

'We provide high quality support to our beneficiaries, turning EU policy into action. As an executive agency of the European Commission, we manage significant parts of COSME, LIFE, Horizon 2020 and EMFF. We ensure that actions funded by these programmes deliver results and provide the Commission with valuable input for its policy tasks'.

Our values

The EASME is committed to the public service principles for EU civil servants. These are:

• commitment to the European Union and its citizens;
• integrity;
• objectivity;
• respect for others;
• transparency.

Source: EASME

SHOW will conduct real-life urban demonstrations taking place in 20 cities in Europe for 24 months, with real service seamless operation in each pilot site lasting at least 12 months.

In total, SHOW will deploy a fleet of more than 70 SAE L4/L5 AVs of all types for both passenger and cargo transport in dedicated lanes and mixed traffic, connected to a wide range of supporting infrastructure (5G, G5, IoT) and operating under traffic speeds ranging from 18 to over 50km/h.

By doing this, SHOW aims to promote and evaluate the future transformation of the current city traffic environment and ecosystem to a fully sustainable one driven by automation, electrification, cooperativeness, and inclusiveness.

Objectives

1. To identify and specify priority urban automated mobility scenarios that guarantee high user acceptance, true user demand and cost-efficiency under realistic operation conditions.
2. To identify new business roles and develop innovative business models and exploitable products and services for sustainable automated fleet operations in urban and peri-urban environments.
3. To develop an open, modular and inclusive system architecture and the enabling tools for it; that allows for cross-site, cross-vehicle and cross-operators data collection, analysis and meta services realisation.
4. To improve the necessary functionalities to all vehicle types: shuttles and pods, buses and cars, taking into account the local, physical and digital infrastructure, weather and traffic conditions, improving their energy efficiency and safeguarding the safety of vulnerable traffic participants through appropriate interfaces.
5. To deploy demonstration fleets, infrastructure elements and connected services (DRT, MaaS, LaaS, etc.) to realise and validate seamless, personalised and shared electric Cooperative Connected Automated Vehicle (CCAV) services for all travellers in real urban and peri-urban traffic environments across Europe and through a vast international collaboration at global level.
6. To assess the impact at city level of shared automated cooperative and electric fleets through holistic impact assessment.
7. To transfer the outcomes through proof of alternative operational schemes and business models to replication sites across Europe and beyond.
8. To support deployment of urban traffic automation, through replication guidelines, road-mapping, reskilling and training schemes for the future workforce, input to certification and standardisation actions and policy recommendations.

Click here for their project deliverables and here for their scientific publication and reports.

Source: SHOW - About

Objective

MULTI-MOBY is an ambitious proposal aiming at quickly finalizing the results of a cluster of GV and FoF EU projects addressing the development of technology for safe, efficient and affordable urban electric vehicles.
A fleet of multi-passenger and multi-purpose commercial vans will be manufactured assuring:

• Best-in-class safety for occupants and Vulnerable Road Users (VRUs) protection as required per the M1/N1categories,
• Autonomous capabilities by adopting the most on-the-road-experimented sensing and computational platforms, with the addition of low-cost scanning and night vision functionalities,
• High efficiency 48V and 100V powertrains adopting the most advanced power semiconductor technologies amongst Si, SiC and GaN,
• Robust battery packs based on hybrid cells with specific energy close to 200Wh/kg at pack level,
• On-board charger integrating a DCxxV-DC12V converter optimized for the two voltages of interest,
• A standardized low cost charging system able to operate DC charging at 48V and 100V,
• Advanced Electric Electronic (EE) architecture with implemented secured procedures for remote updates and upgrades of the firmware and predictive maintenance, by applying advanced artificial intelligence (AI) methodologies,
• Application of low-cost, flexible, agile and lean manufacturing through a low-investment micro-factory concept,
• Competitive price positioning with respect to existing and forthcoming fully electrical urban passenger and commercial vehicles.

Source: Multi-Moby - European Commission 

Objectives

The steadily growing demand related to increasing urbanisation is turning the management of logistics flows in urban areas a more complex process, with higher demand for adaptability and flexibility for the new solutions to contribute to optimise the overall transport capacity, reducing operational costs and negative impacts (health, safety). URBANIZED develops and demonstrates the next generation of modular vehicle architectures for urban-sized commercial e-vehicles, satisfying design principles of optimization and right-sizing vehicles for their mission, delivering outputs in 3 dimensions:

1. High-performance e-powertrain components and control architectures, through the use of advanced co-design approaches
2. Interchangeable, plug & play cargo modules for different urban freight transport use case scenarios
3. Integrated energy and fleet management strategies using data, connectivity and learning algorithms

URBANIZED follows a holistic design approach working at 3 levels (systems, vehicle, fleet) during the entire project: starting with the definition of specific mission profiles within 2 main pre-selected use cases (last-mile delivery of retail, e-commerce, courier and post; HoReCa and other urban on-demand services), during the optimisation loops of the design process, and until project demonstrations, to be performed both physical and in virtual environments, covering the specific requirements of operators. URBANIZED brings a complementary multi-disciplinary consortium of 9 partners from 6 EU countries, involving all relevant actors from the value chain, from academic, to industrial (TIER1, OEMs) and logistics operators. Aiming at broadening dissemination and impact, URBANIZED defines an extended partnership, involving 3 satellite cities (Groningen, Madrid and Bergen) committed to CO2-emissions free logistics in their city centres by 2030 and a high volume OEM (Ford) highly positioned in the LCV market, all interested in replicability of project results.

Source: URBANIZED - European Commission

Objective

Transport related emissions and urbanisation are creating an unparalleled demand for less polluting and efficient means of moving. Tackling the challenge is imperative and it calls for comprehensive understanding of the landscape, its every aspect and innovative mindset.
It is a well-known fact that electric vehicles are a big part of the solution (combined with renewable energy production). We aim at developing and demonstrating an innovative, modular vehicle concept that is just perfect for the urban needs: zero emission, compact, safe and rightsized for the mission. Furthermore, we aim at intensifying the utilisation of the vehicles through versatile designing to promote, e.g. multipurpose usage and shared concepts.
The key technical innovations of our RECONFIGURABLE LIGHT ELECTRIC VEHICLE, REFLECTIVE, vehicle are:

1. Modular, scalable, electric powertrain and reconfigurable interiors fit from L7 quadricycles to M1/A vehicles
2. Supreme structural and active safety proven in Euro NCAP crash test and real life experiments of our L7 demonstrator vehicles
3. Added usability and comfortability through adaptable charging solution combining conductive and wireless charging and limited automated features.

Source: REFLECTIVE - European Commission

Objectives

1. To develop a new microvehicle based on the smart fusion of the concepts of monowheel and scooter. The monowheel and the scooter have the best characteristics to be used as a means of daily transport and to fully exploit the intermodality. The new microvehicle will take the best features of these two vehicles and eliminate the disadvantages, obtaining a silent, clean, energy efficient and safe vehicle, as well as attractive and affordable to the public so that the barriers for adopting it are minimized. The development includes a) the consolidation of already outlined conpects, through analysis of functionality and comparison with existing vehicles, on the basis of an extensive analysis of user's needs and safety and regulamentary aspects b) structural and electrical / electronic design c) in-house testing
2. To do an extensive demonstration and re-design activity. The vehicle will be tested in a real environment in 4 European cities: Rome, Eilat and 2 others that will be identified with a tender. In these demonstration tests, a fleet of vehicle will be tested for free by hundreds of users, on a rotating basis. Each vehicle can be used in stand alone mode or in battery sharing mode, through a system already developed by UNIFI, made available for the project. Operating data will be automatically collected through a platform and users will be asked to give feedback weekly. The pilot in Rome will start with 50 vehicles and will be used for a revision and re-design process, to arrive up to a TRL 7. Afterwards, the other pilots will start, in sequence, for 3 months in each city, in which 100 vehicles will be tested. These tests will be used to refine the vehicle up to the TRL8-9 and to do a physical demonstration of the technical and economic feasibility. During the pilots, pre-orders will be accepted. A detailed exploitation strategy and a draft business plan for the vehicle will be draft with the data collected.

Source: LEONARDO - European Commission.

Objective

The use of different and optimally combined transport modes in a seamless way is one of the key challenges to achieve greater sustainability in smart cities transport systems. Each mode of transport has its own advantages and satisfies different mobility purposes and needs. The core of new electrified microvehicle concept is to combine design and user needs for an easier usage within traditional transportation modes (e.g. public transport) in both urban and suburban areas.

The project aims at finalizing and testing a safer and modular electric kick scooter (e-KS) for personal urban and suburban mobility. It presents 2 main innovation levels: on the vehicle side with the development of new features in term of modularity, foldability and improved safety; on the systemic side, the consortium will study and present (a) new business model(s) for a win-win situation for all stakeholders. The consortium relies on the extensive experience of consortium partners, on key learnings of on-going projects (e.g. H2020 STARS, CIVITAS Eccentric, IMOVE, STEVE, EU-LIVE), main partner core business (Bumpair for safety, Elaphe & Domel for in-wheel motor and motor controls) and on the inputs from an Advisory Group within the project that will involve representatives from mobility managers, local and city administrators and standardization and certification bodies.

By embedding NBS in long term city planning, development and management, accessible green and blue spaces are a permanent feature of all urban areas around the world, creating harmony between people, economy and the environment, for the benefit of all.

The GrowGreen partnership will give space to nature in urban planning and development by joining forces with cities and experts in Europe and around the world, to implement solutions that deliver social, environmental and economic benefits. The effective use of green will contribute to health, reduce climate impacts, and create an attractive environment for citizens, visitors and investment.

The main objectives of GrowGreen are:

1. Contribute to the evidence base of nature-based solutions in cities for cost-effective, replicable means of increasing urban climate and water resilience, social, environmental and economic benefits, to underpin the development of NBS policies and the global NBS market

2. Develop an easy-to-use replicable approach to support the development and implementation of NBS strategies in cities, aligned with existing city priorities

3. Support the creation of the required conditions to support, drive and enable the implementation of city NBS strategies by awareness raising and capacity building in cities around the world, supporting the development of the required policy framework, business models for investment in NBS and the global market for NBS.

At the heart of this five year project is the creation of value by city governments through the promotion of nature-based solutionswith involvement of citizens, business and public-private partnerships in neighborhoods and across cities. GrowGreen will promote learning, sharing and replicating the nature-based solutions and strategiesdeveloped in its partner cities and will join forces with other relevant networks, projects and initiatives to create a global movement for a sustainable urban future.

Source: GrowGreen - About 

Source: Clearing House - About

REGREEN works through Urban Living Labs (ULLs) as the central elements of the project, where co-creation of knowledge involves local citizens, schools, businesses, organisations and public administrations enabling new forms of urban innovation. The ULLs will be the testbed, where generic tools, together with scientific results, new ideas and methods, are applied in the real context. This results in novel guidelines and standards for developing and deploying urban NBS at a systemic and strategic level. REGREEN puts particular focus on the needs of vulnerable groups (such as young children, gender aspects, and socially deprived).

In addition to scientific dissemination, REGREEN has a strong outreach component targeting urban planners, business, and the broader public. REGREEN will initiate in a set of networking arrangements for sharing experiences among a broader scale of European cities, and to the extent possible among Chinese cities, including workshops, webinars and field trips. REGREEN reiterates the importance of connecting NBS with the business and start-up community, organises accelerator programmes and explores innovative business cases, all with the aim of strengthening future NBS market.

Click here to see their resources

Source: REGREEN - About

Contextualised information is provided on policy developments, research results and key lessons. The resulting evidence base includes figures and monetary values showing the relative cost-effectiveness of NBS, and exploring how they support policy implementation. Policy recommendations and knowledge gaps are also highlighted to support the strengthening of strategies and practical action for the uptake of NBS, to deliver targeted and efficient interventions to help solve societal challenges in Europe and beyond.

Source: Naumann, S., Calfapietra, C., Freitas, T., Bulkeley, H., Vandewoestijne, S., Whiteoak, K., Wild, T., & Vojinovic, Z. 2020. Nature-based solutions - State of the art in EU-funded projects. Directorate-General for Research and Innovation (European Commission). 

The consequence is that there is a growing risk that the decay of heritage increases year by year, because of lack of funding support and viable business models.

This is the context of CLIC trans-disciplinary research project whose overarching goal is to identify evaluation tools to test, implement, validate and share innovative “circular” financing, business and governance models for systemic adaptive reuse of cultural heritage and landscape, demonstrating the economic, social, environmental convenience, in terms of long lasting economic, cultural and environmental wealth.

Approach 

The CLIC project applies the circular economy principles to cultural heritage adaptive reuse for achieving environmentally, socially, culturally and economically sustainable urban/territorial development. Adaptive reuse of cultural heritage is seen as a mean to circularize the flows of raw-materials, energy, cultural capital as well as social capital. The circular paradigm is assumed in the project not only for the economic growth but also for promoting human development.

Methodology 

The CLIC project adopts a trans-disciplinary and systemic approach that integrates technology, business models and economic organisation, finance, governance and regulations as well as skills and social innovation, framed in the perspective of the circular economy as possible model for a more inclusive, resilient and sustainable development. The project combines traditional knowledge with scientific knowledge, developing multistakeholder win-win business, financing and governance models, inclusive planning and decision-making.

Background 

The first step to enhance resilience is associated to the improvement in understanding the direct and indirect impacts of climatic and environmental changes and natural hazards on historic sites and buildings, by linking concepts commonly used in disaster risk management and climate change adaptation with cultural heritage management, in order to provide inclusive and informed decision-making. Comprehensive disaster risk management plans need to be drawn up, based on the specific characteristics of cultural heritage and the nature of the hazards within a regional context, taking into account the diverse heritage typologies as well as the specific socioeconomic conditions, since this directly affect the vulnerability of such systems.

By a deep understanding of the hazard, the exposure and the vulnerability of the historic area, the local dynamics and the provision of innovative governance and community-based models, it is possible to provide useful methodologies, tools and strategies to enhance resilience and secure sustainable reconstruction. Due to the information complexity and the diverse data sources, SHELTER framework will be implemented in multiscale and multisource data driven platform, able to provide the necessary information for planning and adaptive governance. All the developments of the project will be validated in 5 open-labs, representative of main climatic and environmental challenges in Europe and different heritage’s typologies.

SHELTER aims at developing a data driven and community-based knowledge framework that will bring together the scientific community and heritage managers with the objective of increasing resilience, reducing vulnerability and promoting better and safer reconstruction in Historic Areas.

All the developments of the project will be validated in 5 open-labs, representative of main climatic and environmental challenges in Europe and different heritage’s typologies.

Source: Shelter - About

Vision

Recent studies highlight the potential impact of Climate Change and geo-hazards (such as landslides and earthquakes) on historic areas hosting Cultural Heritage sites and monuments, which in turn yield significant adverse impacts on economies, politics and societies. The deterioration of Cultural Heritage sites is one of the biggest challenges in conservation; aspects such as building technologies/materials, structural responses, preventive measures and restoration strategies, resilience and adaptation methodologies must be considered.

Watch this video externally on: YouTube

The HERACLES effectiveness will be ensured by the design and validation of manageable methodologies also for the definition of operational procedures and guidelines for risk mitigation and management. It will be validated in two challenging test beds, key study cases for the climate change impact on European CH assets.

The strength of HERACLES solutions is their flexibility in evaluating a big quantity of different information that can be changed and tailored to the specific CH assets needs, guaranteeing in that way a general applicability. In this context, a fundamental role will be played by end-users, which will be active part in the project activities.

HERACLES system will be designed and developed by accounting for the economic sustainability and future acceptance by the market and for the social and economic impact for public and local communities while respecting the integrity of CH and the value it hold for communities.

Effective technological transfer of HERACLES outcomes to large companies, SMEs and end users, suitable dissemination, communication, education and training activities are also organized to disseminate vision and progresses obtained to different communities, in a vision of wide audiences awareness.

Source: Heracles

Objective

An important result of STORM will be a cooperation platform for collaboratively collecting and enhancing knowledge, processes and methodologies on sustainable and effective safeguarding and management of European Cultural Heritage. The system will be capable of performing risk assessment on natural hazards taking into account environmental and anthropogenic risks, and of using Complex Events processing. Results will be tested in relevant case studies in five different countries: Italy, Greece, UK, Portugal and Turkey. The sites and consortium have been carefully selected so as to adequately represent the rich European Cultural Heritage, while associate partners that can assist with liaisons and links to other stakeholders and European sites are also included.
The project will be carried out by a multidisciplinary team providing all competences needed to assure the implementation of a functional and effective solution to support all the actors involved in the management and preservation of Cultural Heritage sites.

Source: STORM - European Commission 

Objective

Hubs of Innovation and Entrepreneurship for the Transformation of Historic Urban Areas
HUB-IN aims to foster innovation and entrepreneurship in Historic Urban Areas (HUA), while preserving the unique identity of the historic sites regarding their natural, cultural and social values. HUB-IN adopts the innovation and entrepreneurship as the main drivers of urban regeneration in HUAs and it´s fully aligned with the International agendas for Cultural Sustainable Development (UNESCO) and Cultural Heritage Strategy (Council Europe). HUB-IN will have two main stages. In the first stage, a network of Hubs of innovation and entrepreneurship (Hubs) will be developed in the HUAs of eight city partners and in the second stage, the resulting methods and tools will be upscaled to a global network of HUAs of follower cities. The Hubs of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (Hubs) will test, demonstrate and pilot activities of co-creation and co-design in three meaningful clusters with potential for sustainable transformation of HUA: i) Cultural and creative industries, ii) New lifestyles and iii) Endogenous Natural & Social Resources.

HUB-IN defines 12 specific goals, that will be achieved by the following methodology: i) Building an ecosystem of interconnected Hubs to accelerate urban regeneration in eight HUAs, ii) Creating value in pilot Hubs, piloting social innovation and accelerating sustainable entrepreneurship in HUAs, iii) Packaging, upscaling and exploiting the results and create collaborative global network of Hubs of innovation and entrepreneurship in HUA, iv) Creating the HUB-IN digital space. HUB-IN expect to contribute to reverse trends of abandonment and neglect of historic heritage in a systemic way through the creation of networks of Hubs where innovation will be the main driver. HUB-IN will also have a direct impact on the creation of new sustainable opportunities for local traditional businesses and for the development of new creative skills and jobs.

Source: HUB-IN - European Commission.

Rock Vision 

Rock aims to support the transformation of historic city centers afflicted by physical decay, social conflicts and poor life quality into Creative and Sustainable Districts through shared generation of new sustainable environmental, social, economic processes.

Rock Ambition 

ROCKS aims to develop an innovative, collaborative and systemic approach to promote the effective regeneration and adaptive reuse in historic city centers by implementing a repertoire of successful heritage-led regeneration initiatives related to 7 Role Model selected cities:Athens, Cluj-Napoca, Cluj-Napoca, Eindhoven, Liverpool,  Lyon, Turin and Vilnius.

The replicability and effectiveness of the approach and of the related models in addressing the specific needs of historic city centers and in integrating site management plans with associated financing mechanisms will be tested in 3 Replicator Cities: Bologna, Lisbon and Skopje. 

Concept

The overall concept of Rock is based on the development of a shared multi-cultural, multi-heritage and multi-stakeholders city vision, which integrated heritage-led regeneration, sustainable economic development, city promotions, and knowledge sharing. 

All the involved cities are characterized by their high Cultural Heritage (CH) value: the Role Model cities have already experienced a transformation from Heritage cities to Creative and Knowledge-based cities, while the Replicators are currently initiating the process, developing transformation programs, finance and engaging key-players. 

ROCK develops and apply an innovative circular systemic approach to connect different actors, places of CH value and systems, at a European level as well as at a local level, facilitating the innovation process and the adoption of environmentally and socially sound solutions to achieve sustainable growth. 

ROCK conceptualizes an innovative circular urban system model - the ROCK Circle - to implemented such process. 

Read here the project strategy.

Click here for the tools.

Source: Rock - About

Objectives

Source: euPOLIS - About

Objective

The objective of GOGREEN ROUTES is to position European cities as world ambassadors of urban sustainability. Our inspirational approach shifts the focus of NBS towards the co-benefits to multidimensional health-termed 360-Health. GOGREEN ROUTES transdisciplinary consortium will pioneer a unique approach augmenting NBS, urban design with the goal of fostering a positive human-nature relationship, flourishing nature connectedness and promoting citizen engagement through digital, educational and behavioural innovation. GOGREEN ROUTES components focus on nature-based enterprise (GROW), sustainable physical activity (MOVE), digital, cultural (FEEL) and knowledge innovation (KNOW). GOGREEN ROUTES fosters mental health and well-being by optimising human-nature interactions for all citizens.

These innovations will increase the uptake and acceptability of NBS across “Cultivating Cities” (Burgas, Lahti, Limerick, Tallinn, Umea & Versailles), “Seed Cities” (Munich, Murcia region & Malta) and a “Cross-Pollination Network: (Beijing, Mexico, & Tblisi). An urban well-being lab, based on the living lab methodology will couple participatory approaches with the Big Data analyses. To advance knowledge, best practice and dissemination GOGREEN ROUTES will cluster with H2020 projects including those involving our partners (e.g. proGIreg, bluehealth2020, Connecting Nature). In addition, linking all open-sourced data to the OPPLA and Think Nature Hubs, delivering online resource (e.g. Urban 360-Health Toolkit, MOOC’s) and empowering citizens in an iterative process of co-creation will ensure perpetuation beyond the end of the project. This novel approach, coupled with the high capacity of the consortium, makes GOGREEN ROUTES an exciting prospect.

Source: GO GREEN ROUTES. - European Commission.

For more information click here. 

Source: Research and innovation - European Commission

Objective

Watch this video externally on: YouTube

The seven cities involved in CityLoops are structuring their pilots in three phases:

• inception and preparation phase, including a series of preparatory analysis and stakeholder mapping and participatory planning;
• demonstration phase, during which the solutions will be implemented and tested, and
• replication phase, when the CityLoops measures will be upscaled at regional and European level

The solutions and actions go from instruments for predicting future excavated CDW and soil production, to awareness-raising campaigns, circularity decision making support tool, simulation of impacts 3D visualisation tools and procurement guidelines for biowaste products. A total of ten demonstration actions will be implemented, testing over 30 new tools and processes.

The tools developed by Bodø, Høje-Taastrup and Roskilde are to be implemented in demonstration actions aimed at construction and demolition waste, while Portois developing tools to be implemented in demonstration actions within biowaste. Apeldoorn, Mikkeli and Seville are tackling both waste streams with the tools they develop. (More information about these tools and demonstration actions can befound on the respective city pages)

Building Circular Knowledge 

The CityLoops project is also developing a series of tools for circular planning and decision making. The project will carry out an urban circularity assessment developing a consolidated material flow and stock accounting methodology to assess sector- and city-wide material stocks and flows. 

CityLoops is developing Circular City Indicators, a comprehensive indicator set for cities, including guidance on how to measure them. At the end of the project, this will result in an evaluation framework based on a series of circularity and sustainability indicators. The results will be published on this platform soon.

Circular procurement is a key aspect of CityLoops. Circular procurement experts Rijkswaterstaat (RWS) and ICLEI will help each city identify how and which procurement activities could be used to strategically support the actions they undertake to tackle construction and demolition waste (CDW) and biowaste. The project will also produce guidelines for how to include circular procurement in these two sectors.

Source: CityLoops - About

Circular economy is a promising alternative to existing linear production and consumption patterns that generate enormous waste and have a huge negative impact on the environment overall. Circular use of material, through for example recycling and reusing, can reduce the generation of waste as well as our dependence on extraction or import of raw materials. As such, it has the potential to bring about significant environmental and economic benefits.

Maker movement brings together individuals engaged in do-it-yourself (DIY) activities, sparking communities all over the world. These communities typically create products from waste materials or re-assembly products that are discarded, broken or unused. The movement has grown rapidly in the recent decades, benefitting from the expansion of open workshops (makerspaces), the increase of availability and affordability of digital fabrication tools such as 3D printers and laser cutters, and the prosumer trend in general.

Maker movement is one of the most promising agents for driving the transition of cities to a more circular economy model and so holds great potential for urban regeneration, improved sustainability, social welfare and cohesion.

Pop-Machina aims to 

• Demonstrate the power and potential of the maker movement and collaborative production for the EU circular economy

• Support the implementation of the EU Circular Economy Action Plan
• Contribute to the growth of maker ecosystems and the production of circular innovations in European cities
• Mobilise citizens under the banner of circular economy and collaborative production
• Empower communities to innovate and make their cities more resilient and adaptive to socio-economic and environmental challenges

Source: Pop-Machine - About

Mission 

Source: REFLOW - About

The relation between economic inequality and territorial and social differences is complex. Therefore, to gain an understanding of this complex relation, we need not only better tools and concepts with which to grasp these differences, but also a better understanding of how and why different governmental programmes and governmental relations might intervene in and mediate between such differences, and especially the role of local belonging and community relations in this regard (Böhme et al. 2011).

Therefore, the principal aim of COHSMO is to investigate the relation between socioeconomic structures of inequality, urbanization and territorial cohesion, and how territorial cohesion at different European scales affect economic growth, spatial justice and democratic capacities.

Across Europe, we see pockets of growth areas adjacent to areas of decline. Processes of demographic change and urbanization directing flows of people and investments to particular regions create areas of service exclusion, and thus, in some instances, these processes even out any mediating effects from social investment strategies. Territorial cohesion at local, regional and national scale is increasingly being challenged by increasing hyper-diversity and segregation, both of which minimize interaction across social and cultural backgrounds. In some instances, this might undermine solidarity with other socialn groups and across scales, and hence challenge the democratic capacities and legitimacy behind public investments at different  levels. Thus, the interactions between policy programmes, structures of inequality and territorial cohesion are complex and have specific local outcomes. We need to develop our knowledge of these interactions, not only in terms of recommendations for bringing about sustainable economic growth, but also because such konwledge can be viewed as the foundation for developing the European social model.

A decade of economic crisis and austerity measures has exaggerated already existing locational differences and created new ones as mediating, publicly funded initiatives have been rolled back in many European countries to cut public expenditure. Even though in the last two decades we have witnessed the emergence of a “social investment state” (Morel, Palier and Palme 2012) emphasising public investment in human capital and the role of social policy in delivering economic growth, such strategies have very different regional forms. While they were primarily developed in the Nordic countries, Southern and Continental Europe has also embraced these strategies to a lesser degree. Moreover, low growth rates and pressure to reduce public spending have reduced the willingness to maintain and develop burgeoning ideas of social investment. More knowledge is needed on how social investment strategies interact with local conditions, as patterns of territorial cohesion create both inertia and fertile conditions for local innovations supporting regional and national, as well as supra-national growth strategies.

Studying how location matters through focusing on relations between inequality, urbanization and territorial cohesion, COHSMO will develop new angles of the relationship between territorial cohesion and economic growth, spatial justice and democratic capacities. Moreover, the project will develop a set of policy recommendations for how policy instruments at different scales can intervene in these relations.

To investigate these challenges outlined above, a multi-method set-up and consortium with a broad spectrum of expertise ranging across different disciplines and different methodologies is needed. The consortium behind COHSMO will combine demographic investigations, ethnographies, statistics, surveys and mapping in comprehensive analyses of inequality, urbanization and territorial cohesion. Statistical enquiry and policy analysis will be combined with an analysis of the layers of interaction, community and sense of belonging which play important parts in the understanding of how place influences opportunity, in terms of growth as well as individual life chances. The consortium consists of expertise that not only crosses disciplines, but also crosses structural, political and micro-level perspectives. This expertise will provide the project with cross-sectorial and multilevel explanations and conceptual developments which will be essential in order to answer the question of how location matters for inequality.

Source: COSHMO - Project Brief

Objective

MICADO is an interdisciplinary international project that involves research institutions, public authority agencies and SMEs from Germany, Belgium, Italy, Spain and Austria, whose purpose is to co-develop a MICADO-“one-fits-all”-solution (generic solution) that can be adapted by the local actors to their respective local challenges and manage migration issues with a local solution:

The generic solution will first be piloted in the MICADO-partner cities Hamburg, Bologna, Madrid, and Antwerp, and will then eventually be modified by the local communities. The outcome of the project will empower public authorities and local communities that attend migrants and refugees from their moment of arrival in the EU with more efficient and more effective digital services. It will also support migrants and refugees by enabling essential communication, orientation, and navigation within their new life environments. 

It evaluates the outcomes of the new interaction model between PA and citizens under a set of metrics in three dimensions:

1. social and cultural: citizen engagement, change in relationship with public servants.
2. economic: value of services produced, effects on workplaces, consumptions and economic sustainability
3. legal: legal implications for PA including privacy and data protection.

CO3 will devise a business plan ensuring long-term sustainability for the PAs on the basis of the metrics applied to the pilots’ data.

Impacts

• Enable Public authorities to develop pathways for the introduction of disruptive technologies while addressing societal challenges raised by such technologies.
• Enhance knowledge on digital democracy based on a thorough understanding of users’ needs and develop new ways of providing public services, of ensuring public governance and of boosting public engagement with the help of disruptive technologies.
• Contribute to developing new practices, to optimize work processes and to integrating evidence-based decision-making processes in public services and in services such as health, education, social welfare and mobility.

Source: CO3 project

Watch this video externally on: YouTube

Click here for their publications and other resources. 

Source: urbanA

Watch this video externally on: YouTube

The project examines examples of crime fiction, film and TV dramas from 1989 to present, to learn how mobility strategies such as co-production, serialization, translation, adaptation, distribution, and more, have influenced the transnational dissemination of European popular culture. It also investigates how the treatment of specific ‘mobile signifiers’—including representations of gender, ethnic and class identities—affect the ability of European narratives to migrate outside their place of origin, and be appropriated elsewhere in different and variegated ways. Researching the contemporary history of the crime genre in Europe, DETECt aims to identify the practices of production, distribution and consumption that are best suited to facilitate the emergence of engaging representations of Europe’s enormously rich, plural and cross-cultural identity.

The knowledge acquired through a detailed research programme will be used in cultural, learning and public engagement initiatives designed to prompt the elaboration of new transnational formats for the European creative industries. These activities will profit from a set of experimental research and learning resources and innovative collaborative tools, aggregated and organized on DETECt Web portal. A range of activities will be addressed to the general public. In particular, the development of a Web mobile app tools will allow users to contribute to the creation of a collaborative atlas of European crime narratives.

Source: DETECt - overview

The technological embodiment of MEMEX is an app installed on a smartphone allowing non-expert users to create and visualise stories related to their personal memories and experiences digitally linked to the geographical locations of either intangible (e.g. an event) or a tangible cultural places/object. The interface, designed on the needs of the community, will allow users to annotate using Augmented Reality (AR) any physical object or location with their memories in the form of digital images, videos, audio recordings or textual input using a smartphone. Then, the targeted communities will be able to connect their experiences and memories with a new Knowledge Graph (KG), linking CH items and places with stories that are bound and entangled within the European history. Effectively, the users of MEMEX will be active actors shaping contemporary and historical content, including new material from their experiences and memories, and personalising cultural heritage and creative media content in a meaningful and social inclusive manor.

The target communities of MEMEX are socially fragile people that are systematically blocked from various cultural opportunities and resources that are normally available to members of a different group, and which are fundamental to social integration. As an heterogeneous sample of these communities, MEMEX will deploy three distinct pilots to analyse different expectations from communities dislocated in different regions of the European territory. 

Clicks here for their scientific publications.

Source: MEMEX 

Research and innovation contribute with evidence on how to address urban dilemmas, while supporting capacity building for urban transformation and turning wicked issues into synergistic potential. This needs to be supported by aligning ongoing related initiatives and activities, as well as building upon existing knowledge in order to achieve stronger synergies towards greater impact.

ENUTC aims at pooling resources from 16 participating research programme owners / managers of 14 countries to implement joint actions, including one main call and one additional call for proposals, in the area of urban transformation capacities.

The objectives of ENUTC are to:

1. To enable capacity building in research, business, city administration and society for urban transformation;
2. To support integrated approaches and solutions for sustainable urban development for the three topics of ENUTC: Urban circular economies, community-based developments and urban innovation ecosystems, and robust and resilient urban infrastructure and the built environment;
3. To support transnational, pan-European research networking, community building and ensure synergies;
4. To support activities which have a clear impact on transnational and evidence-based urban policies;
5. To support research and innovation, which make a clear progress to reaching targets of the international policies, goals and missions;

Source: ENUTC - European Commission

Source: Examples of Horizon 2020 and Bio-based Industries Joint Undertaking's projects on circular economy and circular bio-based economy with local and regional components. 2020. Research and Innovation. European Commission. 

The NADINE platform aims to use open data to gain a better understanding of migrant realities and the challenges associated with their integration. Data about local services and migrants will feed user-friendly tools for employability and career guidance, whilst assessing supply and demand of migrants’ skills.The platform will also focus on the social, educational and cultural needs of migrants and how these fit to existing services offered by local hosts. Overall the system will allow public authorities and guidance professionals to offer a personalised service to migrants based on real needs and the opportunities available to them.

NADINE Technology

The NADINE system will be based around two key banks of data – a repository of information about host societies and migrants  from which a range of services will be produced. As users access the services, more data will be captured to enhance the existing banks and feed reliable information into the system.

Click here to see their publications. 

Source: NADINE - About

Objectives

1. Developing systematic frameworks: a) theoretical - for improved knowledge of the complexity of SIs and its dimensions, and its impact on unfolding territorial capital; b) operational - based on a trans-disciplinary coalition (researchers and practitioners) to advance understanding of preconditions and success factors (e.g. instruments, incentives etc.) for implementing/operationalizing SI.
2. Creating a categorisation of SIs which encompasses the specificities in terms of social priorities, relationships/collaborations etc. and serves as an instrument to explore reasons why regions with similar conditions display diverging paths and to 'turn diversity into strength’.
3. Creating an integrated set of methods to evaluate SI and its impacts on economic, social, environmental, institutional and policy dimensions of territorial capital.
4. Co-constructed evaluation of SIs in case studies across the spatial variation of European rural areas, considering which components of territorial capital foster and, or mainstream RD.
5. Synthesis and dissemination of new or improved knowledge of SIs and novel governance mechanisms to promote social capital and institutional capacity building and inform effective options/solutions for shaping sustainable development trajectories.
6. Creating collaborative learning and networking opportunities and launching innovative actions at different/multiple scales, with continuous interactions among researchers, ‘knowledge brokers’ and stakeholders to foster and mainstream SI, leaving a durable legacy.

Source: SIMRA - European Commission

They can be user-oriented, user-integrating and sustainability services (Sustainable Development Goals, SDG) oriented. They combine open innovation and user engagement processes, making it possible for new solutions to be developed. They offer tools to local, regional, and national authorities to help them develop and validate solutions to significant societal challenges.
It is crucial to engage the public and all stakeholders if the European Green Deal is to succeed in reaching climate neutrality by 2050.

Objectives

Methodology

The JRC FMS-Lab applies stakehoder and Citizen Engagement methodologies such as focus groups, surveys, interviews, material deliberation methods, etc. as well as experimental methods like laboratory testing, field tests, VR testing, etc.

Source: JRC Living Lab for Future Urban Ecosystems - Future Solutions. European Commission.

The Smart Cities Marketplace has thousands of followers from all over Europe and beyond, many of which have signed up as a member. Their common aims are to improve citizens’ quality of life, increase the competitiveness of European cities and industry as well as to reach European energy and climate targets.

Source: Smart Cities Marketplace

The project facilitated the exchange of information and good practices on regional and urban development policy issues. Cooperation was based on the identification of pilot regions and cities and the development of concrete actions, for implementation in the short-term, in areas including urban innovation (smart-city) and green technologies (energy efficiency, low carbon development). Intervention areas were decided by the involved cities/regions, with strong support of the project team, and in coordination with the EU Commission (DG REGIO), the EU Delegations in the respective countries and national authorities of the non-EU countries where relevant.

During 2015-2016, World Cities involved cooperation of EU pilot cities with pairs in India, China, Canada and Japan.

During 2017-2018, working meetings and pilot projects were developed between cities from the EU, Australia, the Republic of Korea, South Africa, Indonesia and Vietnam.

The programme developed a collaborative online platform (forum) to facilitate the exchange of information and good practices between EU and non-EU cities. Project cities cooperate based on similarities between their thematic areas, experiences, and goals; communication with all cities in the exchange provides additional opportunities for collaboration and potential for new ideas.

Actions were designed to increase so-called ‘triple-helix cooperation’ between governments, research and business. World Cities ultimate goal was to strengthen market opportunities and job creation while pursuing the sustainable economic development of the cities involved, thus fostering win-win cooperation.

Source: World Cities

Objective

The aim of the research is to study the effects of smallest traffic related ultrafine- or nanoparticles beyond the lung on brain health. Air pollutants have been shown to cause a vast amount of different adverse health effects. These effects include impairment of many respiratory (e.g. asthma, COPD) and cardiovascular (ischemic heart disease, infarction, stroke) diseases. However, in recent years, the evidence showing effects beyond the lungs and circulatory system are becoming more evident. Neurological diseases, namely Alzheimer´s disease (AD) has shown to be associated with living near traffic. However, reason for this has remained unresolved until today. This consortium aims on revealing the mechanisms and exposures both behind cardiorespiratory diseases and beyond the current knowledge in neurological diseases.

This consortium includes experts in areas of aerosol technology, emission research, engine and fuel research, human clinical studies, epidemiology, emission inventories, inhalation toxicology, neurotoxicology and disease mechanism studies. This enables research of resolving the effects of nanoparticles from different traffic modes for both air quality and concomitant toxic effect of these air pollutants. In this study, we will investigate adverse effects of air pollutants using cell cultures, animal exposures and volunteered human exposures as well as the material from epidemiological cohort study. These are going to be compared according to inflammatory, cytotoxic and genotoxic changes and furthermore beyond the current state of the art to neurotoxic and brain health effects. With this approach, we are aiming in to a comprehensive understanding of the adverse effects of nanoparticles from traffic. In current situation only particles above 23nm are measured in regulations, traditional toxicological methods are used in risk assessment and emission inventories and regulations are largely based on old technology engines. Our project will change this.

Source: TUBE - European Commission

Objective

The impact of road traffic on local air quality is a major policy concern and there have been numerous projects aiming at improving underlying vehicle and fuel technologies, traffic management and enforcement. MODALES will contribute to a substantial reduction in air pollution from all types of motorised road vehicles by encouraging the adoption of low-emission oriented driving behaviour and maintenance choice, improving the effectiveness of OBD devices and retrofits. The main goal of MODALES is to advance the fundamental understanding of the co-variability of user behaviour and vehicular emissions from powertrain, brakes and tyres, and modify user behaviour via dedicated training, including a driver assistance app and awareness campaigns, in order to support effective air quality plans and enforcement strategies to be developed by local and national authorities.

MODALES proposes a user-centric approach to addressing all of the challenges which on the one hand enhance low-emission practices and on the other hand suppress high-emission behaviour by researching, developing and testing a number of innovative and complementary solutions in four key areas (namely, Driver, Retrofits, EOBD and Inspection) in order to substantially reduce vehicle emissions from 3 main sources (i.e. powertrain, brake wear and tyre wear).

The results will be used as evidence with adequate quality to guide the derivation of effective driving practices and training courses for different user groups. MODALES echoes the EC ambition to open up global markets in transport services, through the creation of a worldwide platform for sharing and exchanging innovative solutions, experience and best practices for low-emission practices.

Source: MODALES - European Commission

Objective

Since technology and renewal of the vehicle fleet do not lower the level of pollutant emissions or improving air quality fast enough, uCARe develops specific, simple and effective measures targeted at users to further reduce pollutant emissions. These measures are based on the aggregation of scattered high quality data already collected by the consortium, supplemented with results of additional measurement campaigns, and knowledge on the behavior and underlying motivation of users. uCARe sets the following objectives:

• To identify all user-influenced emission aspects (such as driving behavior and component choice) and the reduction potential of these aspects. The reduction potential is determined with an in uCARe developed emission model
• A toolset consisting of the emission model as well as measures to reduce emissions. This toolset forms the basis for intervention strategies, in which measures are translated to desired behavior. The tools are made available in such a way that they can easily be used by stakeholders (such as cities and consumer organizations) outside of the project. Through this, anybody can set up local initiatives at limited cost.
• The deployment of awareness campaigns and pilot projects via (already committed) stakeholders, tuned towards specific users and their motivation, to show that proposed measures are effective and feasible.
• An impact assessment of user-related reduction measures, accompanied with technical evidence and options to improve pollutant emission legislation and policy.

uCARe aims to be complete in the coverage of user-related emissions aspects and types of pollutants. By also implementing, monitoring and evaluating proposed measures, uCARe ensures that these are the most effective. When these effective reduction measures are implemented, pollutant emissions reductions for an individual vehicle as high as 50% are envisaged.

Source: uCARe - European Commission

Objective

The aim of CARES is to further develop remote emission sensing instruments, data handling and analysis such that it becomes a widespread means for the monitoring and enforcement of real-world vehicle emissions, leading to reduced emissions and improvements in air quality. To reach this goal, CARES will complement existing commercial remote emission sensing instruments with two other non-intrusive and contactless methods of measuring real-world vehicle emissions to greatly expand current measurement capabilities. We develop plume chasing instruments into easy to use tools for enforcement agents to detect high-emitters in free flowing traffic. We turn fast-response air quality sensors into roadside point samplers, adding particle mass, number and size to the remote emission sensing measurement capabilities.

Furthermore, we speed up the data handling of all types of remote emission sensing instruments – existing commercial types as well as those further developed within CARES – to move them towards a real-time analysis of vehicle emission data; we merge the emissions data with vehicle technical data from national vehicle registers and relevant data from traffic and air quality management systems. Third, we eliminate today’s often very time consuming data analysis by providing a suite of open-source analytical functions for a first, quick analysis of remote emission sensing data. All our innovations aim to improve the user friendliness, to bring down costs by quicker and more automated operations, and to achieve a broader deployment potential of remote emission sensing. CARES will demonstrate these developments in three major, heavily air polluted cities in Europe identifying the best fit for the respective purpose. Finally, CARES will bring together researchers, remote emission sensing technology providers, local, regional and national authorities and many other stakeholders from Europe, China and the rest of the world, to maximize the project's exploitation potential.

Source: City Air Remote Emission Sensing - European Commission

For 30 years, Europe has been investing in transnational EU research and innovation on urban-systems-related issues, with providing financing from the Framework Programmes FP5, FP6 and FP7 of €2.8 billion and even in Horizon 2020: €3.1 billion. Horizon Europe plans to continue similarly to invest in these issues. For this, we need to take stock of where we are and what are the options we have for the future. This report capitalizes on 30 years of successful EU-funded research on sustainable urban development. It relies on the analysis of a critical mass of inspiring knowledge, ideas and best practices coming from 41 projects funded under the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) across the different thematic priorities. It showcases and provides an EU-wide evidence base of the outstanding contributions of EU funded research and innovation in meeting urban societal challenges, notably those supported by the FP7 Research Framework Programme which deploy a citizen-centric, systemic and integrated analysis of the urban ecosystem.

The report highlights the need for integrated policy research solutions to the societal challenges that generate policy benefits and co-benefits simultaneously delivering socio-economic and environmental political objectives for regional, local city authorities, civil society, political representatives, the private sector and industry. The report spreads expertise across Europe and paves the way to future European cities being climate-proof, resource-efficient, smart as well as more resilient, healthy, inclusive, prosperous, safe and sustainable and contributes to the European Green Deal to make Europe the first climate-neutral continent.

Source: Marchigiani, E., Bartolo, A., Monterescu, D., Del Mar Delgado, M., Yeroyanni, M., Ludlow, D., & Koutsomarkou, E. 2020. Innovating cities policy report for EU R&I sustainable urban development. Directorate-General for Research and Innovation (European Commission)

Source: Jacobs-Crisioni, C., Kucas, A., Lavalle, C., Lembcke, A., Ahrend, R., Ageing in regions and cities: high resolution projections for Europe in 2030, EUR 30032 EN, Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg, 2020, ISBN 978-92-76-14649-0, doi:10.2760/716609.

INHERIT is a four-year (2016-2019) Horizon 2020 research initiative funded by the European Commission, bringing together 18 partners from across Europe. It aims to stimulate effective policies, practices and innovations that simultaneously restore the environment, whilst promoting health and health equity – in other words, that enable a ‘triple-win’.

INHERIT focuses on the areas of living (green space and energy efficient housing), moving (active transport) and consuming (food consumption and production), encouraging us to modify our current lifestyles, char- acterised by a ‘take, make, consume, dispose’ model of growth. INHERIT has formulated scenarios for a more sustainable future and has designed, implemented and tested intersectoral initiatives to achieve the triple-win.

This booklet brings together the results of the four-year initiative, which are relevant to professionals across different sectors (health, environment, food, education, energy, transport, etc.), to policymakers at EU, national, regional and local level, and to individuals across generations who can be inspired to take action.

Source: INHERIT - About

The majority of Europe’s population lives in cities which have either developed along major rivers, been founded on the banks of inland lakes, or grown on the continent’s extensive coastline.

These ‘blue’ environments have played a major role in both the historical and modern evolution of our urban areas. They have been used for supplying drinking water, transportation, industry, fisheries, energy generation and sewage treatment.

Several years ago, a new body of evidence suggested that this utilitarian network of urban ‘blue infrastructure’ might also be able to provide a number of health and wellbeing benefits. However, there hadn’t been a concerted attempt to characterise and quantify these effects.

Watch this video externally on: Vimeo

To address this, BlueHealth brought together researchers from across Europe to systematically explore the impacts that urban waterways can have on health.

Between 2016 and 2020 we conducted over 20 studies in more than 18 different countries across the world.

Our team has designed and implemented interventions at several sites in Spain, Italy, Estonia, Portugal, and the UK. We have created a series of tools to assess these initiatives, and developed protocols for others to do the same.

Our researchers have been at the forefront of new technologies, using virtual reality to bring blue space experiences to those who cannot access them. We have conducted workshops in cities across Europe, and developed scenarios to plan for the future.

In the biggest study of its kind ever conducted, we surveyed over 18,000 people across Europe to uncover population-level relationships between blue spaces and health. We’ve also joined different databases to create new sources of information and analysis.

We have worked with communities, met with policy makers, and broadcast our messages across the globe.

As BlueHealth comes to end, we are still publishing peer-reviewed papers and supporting our amazing network of early career researchers.

Learn more about our research here.

Source: BlueHealth - About

More information: Rockefeller Foundation