Controller Tools and Team Organisation for the Provision of Separation in Air Traffic Management

Single European Sky – the vision is clearly described in the ATM Masterplan. Reaching the goals for the European Airspace is only possible with focused technical developments on European level. The air traffic controller is the main player in the traffic management at tactical level. This project aims at providing the air traffic controller with more automated tools, thus freeing capacity for situations where human intervention is crucial. This provides even safer service for an increasing amount of traffic and with lower costs, as required by airspace users. This project is a part of the SESAR programme and addresses separation management. It will not only improve current conflict detection tools, but also develop new tools aiding the air traffic controller with resolution advisory and monitoring of flight trajectory.  The project also addresses new ways of working together.  Air traffic controllers traditionally work in pairs and in specific airspace. Could we change this to multi-planner setup, sector less airspace and seamless cross-border operations? Our project will ensure the research is developed to a stage where it can be used in operational air traffic management systems in Europe. This ensures that anyone can fly safer, cheaper and quicker in Europe in 10 years.  Another really important issue is the integration of “Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems” – drones.  Drones are new to European Air Traffic Management, and it is urgent to address concepts and technological developments needed to handle this kind of traffic safely. The companies involved in this project are the only ones that can deliver this kind of result. Not on their own – but as the unique cooperation between air navigation service providers and air and ground industry. The capabilities to provide sustainable results usable throughout Europe by fast-time, real-time simulations and live trials ensures that developed prototypes are working in the context of future traffic and ATM systems.


In order to meet forecast traffic growth, PJ01 will develop concepts, tools and procedures to increase the capacity of Terminal Manoeuvring Areas (TMAs) in a safe, cost-effective and environmentally sustainable manner.  This will be achieved by taking advantage of the latest technological developments from both an airborne and a ground-system perspective and through the secure sharing of data. The needs of all Airspace Users will be addressed including General Aviation and Rotorcraft.   All types of European TMA environments will be considered. For low to medium density/complexity TMAs the driver will be to exploit the environmental benefits achieved from Continuous Climb Operations, Continuous Descent Operations and improved arrival sequencing.  For the capacity-constrained high-density/complexity TMAs, particularly including multiple airports, the focus will be to minimise delays and improve resilience alongside providing environmental benefits. This will be achieved by enhancing arrival and departure management by the dynamic use of precision navigation routes.  Traffic flows will be optimised by improving the integration of the management of arrivals with departures and by improving the capability to balance traffic demand and available capacity across the network and airports.   To provide increased resilience in poor weather and a reduction in go-arounds, investigations will assess the use of tools that display traffic information in the cockpit. This will help manage airborne spacing, sequencing and merging with other aircraft, under the overall control of Air Traffic Control in systemised airspace.    To ensure that the full benefits are achieved and that the expected performance improvements are realised in the context of the overall ATM network, close co-ordination will take place with other projects, particularly those addressing airport management, network management, separation management and the overall content integration within the programme.


SESAR 2020 Programme aims to modernise and harmonise the European ATM System from operational and technological perspective. It will develop and validate different ATM solutions that will contribute to achieving its high level performance objectives. In this complex context, it is crucial to have a transversal activity that generates a consolidated big picture of the future European ATM System – the SESAR 2020 Concept of Operations, the High Level Architecture options, Services and the associated performance results. In SESAR2020 this important task will be under the responsibility of PJ19 – Content Integration. The other main task of the PJ19 will be to provide steering guidance, principles and frameworks to support and facilitate the production and the integration of the content produced by SESAR2020 Solution and Enabling projects. It will enable the assessment of the overall performance of the SESAR Solutions brought together against the performance improvements expectations. It will provide the main input for the future updates of the European ATM Master Plan. PJ19 will bring together 16 partners. The broad representation of experts from the European Air Navigation Service Providers, Airports, Airborne and Ground industries and Network Manager will provide the necessary skills to successfully and efficiently carry out the project tasks and to meet the expectations of the SJU. PJ19 will produce a set of deliverables that consolidate the SESAR2020 Programme outcomes and provide an integrated reference material on a yearly basis. All these tasks will be performed in collaboration with all SESAR 2020 projects throughout an interactive, continuous and iterative process on all aspects of content integration. PJ19 deliverables will support the SJU to assess the maturity of the SESAR Solutions for delivery to the SESAR Deployment Manager, to monitor the SESAR2020 Programme execution and to support the SJU decision making.


According to EUROCONTROL’s 2013 Challenges of Growth Report, Air traffic in the ECAC region is forecast to increase by 50% between 2012-2035 (most-likely scenario). Air traffic diversity is expected to become even more complex with the emergence of Remotely Piloted aircraft Systems (RPAS) and the multi-task nature of military aerial missions. The extension of free route operations will also imply more complex and dynamic traffic patterns. Network Operations will have to become more flexible and adaptable, allowing effective balance between capacity, mission effectiveness, flight efficiency and environmental requirements on one hand, and the diversity of user requirements on the other. PJ08 Advanced Airspace Management (AAM) brings key European aviation industry partners combining the right expertise and investment to address this challenge. Aligned with the ATM Master Plan, AAM Partners focus on Dynamic Airspace Configurations (DAC) and Dynamic Mobile Areas (DMA).  Compared to today’s airspace scenarios, which by their nature are static, DAC/DMA enable flexible solutions that can be dynamically adapted to traffic demand to respond to different regional/local performance objectives, which may vary in time and place. AAM Partners will further elaborate the definition of DAC/DMA, the associated data models and operational processes, validate the operational feasibility and assess the performance impact. The readiness for integration of the DAC operational process in the DCB process will be as well addressed. Automated tools to generate optimum sector design and configurations, as well as DMA optimal location and volume to meet performance targets will be developed. AAM supports the SESAR Deployment regulation and addresses European concerns on economic (more efficient use of ATM Network resources) and environmental sustainability (reduced fuel burn and emissions) of Air Transport system giving Civil and Military Users the ability to optimise their operations.


PERSPEKTYVINIU TECHNOLOGIJU TAIKOMUJU TYRIMU INSTITUTAS

EU routes for High pEnentration of solaR PV into lOcal nEtworkS

The overall aim of the project is to enable the continued development of community-owned PV by developing viable business models that address the concerns of network operators. The project will work with communities and network operators to develop approaches that will enable subsidy-free solar PV projects that have a neutral or positive impact on network management.  The project will:   1. Identify and develop social enterprise models that enable increased deployment of solar PV in grid-constrained areas. 2. Carry out cost-benefit analysis and economic feasibility assessment and develop business models that enable community groups to store, utilise, aggregate and trade solar electricity within localities as well as simply exporting excess energy to the grid. 3. Empower citizens to have greater ownership over their energy supply, through removing key barriers to community PV, democratising energy and recycling profits from energy generation into host communities.


One of the main obstacles of reaching Single European Sky’s objectives is management of flight trajectories. Inaccuracies are difficult to spot and information given to stakeholders about the trajectory is limited, arriving late, and full of inconsistencies and wrong assumptions. Military Flights are currently not integrated in the ATM-system, so demanding special treatment.  Additionally, there is a lack of complete, updated, unique and coherent aeronautical and meteorological information at European level, which again limits the accuracy of the predicted trajectory and so difficult detecting incoming issues and designing optimum solutions.  This project addresses solutions for the above limitations. Harmonized and global trajectory information sharing, including improved negotiation mechanisms, will enable significant operational benefits on flight management. The aim is to enable a unique and integrated view of all flights trajectories (including military ones) among the stakeholders. This is improved thanks to new tools and capabilities ensuring all stakeholders are managing a single, updated and complete view of the forecasted meteorology and airspace configuration.  Both solutions above will increase safety and efficiency - a very important step towards ensuring that anyone can fly safer, cheaper and quicker in Europe in 10 years.  As so many stakeholders are involved, this issue cannot be solved at national level. All stakeholders (mainly air navigation service providers, as well as air and ground industry partners) need to be involved as all will need to perform changes to ensure successful implementation. The SESAR 2020 Programme is the only place where this can happen.  In this project we have ensured participation of the major ATM stakeholders which ensures having the knowledge and expertise to come up with the concepts, prototypes and platforms to provide sustainable results usable throughout Europe.


Safety is aviation’s top priority. To work for even safer airports, Project 03b SAFE will define, consolidate and validate additional safety bareers to mitigate the risks of runway incursion, runway excursion and more generally the risk of incidents and accidents involving aircraft at the airport. They will be declined into four Solutions:  Solution ‘Enhanced airport safety support tools for controllers’ will provide Air Traffic Controllers with means to prevent the delivery of conflicting clearances and detect non-conformance to clearances on the entire airport.  Solution ‘Conformance monitoring alerts for pilots’ will warn pilots when an inconsistency between the aircraft behaviour with either ATC Clearance or procedure is detected.   Solution ‘Traffic alerts for pilots for airport operations’ is a key feature to significantly decrease the risk of collision with any mobile on runway and taxiways, improving safety on airport surface.   Solution ‘Safety support tools for avoiding runway excursions’ will address the most frequent type of runway safety accident (22% of all accidents over the 2010-2014 period according to IATA Safety Report). The work will focus on how the risk of runway excursion can be mitigated by on-board and ground systems that could warn pilots, controllers or both when appropriate. This solution requires a better knowledge of runway braking conditions, and can improve the runway capacity and environmental aspects through a better management of decontamination operations.   Dedicated tasks to support standardization activities will be performed in each solution when appropriate. PJ03b Consortium involves key stakeholders of Airborne Industry, Ground ATM Industry, Service Providers (ATM and Airports), Aerospace Research and EUROCONTROL. Those members of the SJU will cooperate for implementing SESAR 2020 in an efficient, open and timely manner, providing a wide range of expertise and committing together to deliver high-quality results.


Controller Working Position / Human Machine Interface - CWP/HMI

PJ.16 project aims to reduce development and operating costs of Air Navigation Service Providers (ANSP). These savings will ultimately benefit airlines and their customers. It achieves this by delivering the ATM Master Plan goals (defined by the European Air Traffic Management (ATM) community) for a more efficient deployment of human resources,  a progressive increase in automation support, the implementation of virtualisation technologies and  the use of standardised and interoperable systems whilst increasing the safety level.   Within the PJ16 proposal, there are two innovative solutions: The first solution develops a concept for separating the Controller Working Position (CWP) from the datacentre where the data is produced. This lean and efficient use of ANSP infrastructure tackles the issues presented by fragmented European ATM systems and country-specific architectures, enabling Europe to move to an interoperable, cost-effective and flexible service provision infrastructure. Decoupling of the CWPs should enable a more efficient use of the most valuable and expensive resource, the human. By enabling increased flexibility the ANSPs should better manage staffing for prevailing traffic conditions and assure service continuity.   The second solution deals with new methods of controller interaction with the Human Machine Interface (HMI), applying mature technologies from other domains to ATM. This will increase controller productivity, reduce workload, stress level and enable the use of SESAR advanced tools, safely facilitating performance based operations. Furthermore, the use of modern thin client technology and the processes for developing HMI solutions are investigated, aiming at more efficient CWP development and operation.  PJ16 has expertise from most of the ANSPs in Europe, the major European industrial partners, the leaders of research domains in the previous ATM R&D phase and has an expanded knowledge pool including new participants from Eastern Europe.


Essential and Efficient Communication Navigation and Surveillance Integrated System

The PJ 14 CNS aims to specify and develop the future Technologies coming from the Communication, Navigation and Surveillance domains in order to support and manage the Operational Services, like the 4D Trajectory Management, in the future ATM System. Performance requirements for CNS systems are becoming increasingly complex and demanding and need to be considered as part of an integrated and holistic System of Systems, which includes air and ground CNS solutions considering convergence towards a common infrastructure, and a unified concept of operations, where possible. In parallel, CNS systems and infrastructure for both airborne and ground must take a more business- and performance oriented approach with efficient use of resources delivering the required capability in a cost-effective and spectrum efficient manner. All the activities performed in the PJ 14 CNS will be developed at European Level in order to avoid a fragmented approach and to ensure the interoperability as depicted in the ICAO Global Air Navigation Plan (GANP). The CNS technologies support the  GANP in terms of: • Airport Operations • Globally Interoperable System Data • Optimum capacity and flexible flights The PJ 14 aims to develop and improve solution, not already available, from the technological point of view to support the future ATM global system, according the timeframe addressed by the ATM Master Plan, mainly in: • Surface Data Sharing to let a huge data exchange for an effective and efficient airport operations and awareness • New Data Communications infrastructure to reduce the ATCo Workload avoiding misunderstandings and improve the efficiency •Collaborative Air Traffic Management to support the ATCos, pilots, airport operators to improve the situation awareness • Optimisation of Capacity, Flexible Use of Airspace and Turn-around operations to avoid congestion in ATM domain In the PJ14 all the main stakeholders are involved to ensure that all the operational needs are well considered.


Nanomedicine is the application of nanotechnology to medicine and healthcare. The field takes advantage of the physical, chemical and biological properties of materials at the nanometer scale to be used for a better understanding of the biological mechanisms of diseases at the molecular level, leading to new targets for earlier and more precise diagnostics and therapeutics. Nanomedicine, rated among the six most promising Key Enabling Technologies, is one of the most important emerging areas of health research expected to contribute to one of the strategic challenges that Europe has to face in the future: Provide effective and affordable health care and assure the wellbeing of an increasingly aged population.  EuroNanoMed III (ENM III) builds on the foundations of ENM I & II, which launched 7 successful joint calls for proposals since 2009, funded 51 transnational research projects involving 269 partners from 25 countries/regions, and allocated € 45,5 million to research projects from ENM funding agencies. ENM III consortium, reinforced with 12 new partners  from Europe, Canada and Taiwan, is committed to fostering the competiveness of European nanomedicine actors taking into account recent changes in the landscape and new stakeholders and challenges, as identified in the SRIA in nanomedicine. The first joint call for proposals will be co-funded by ENM III partners and the EC. After the co-funded call, three additional joint transnational calls will be organized and strategic activities will be accomplished in collaboration with key initiatives in the field. ENM III actions focus on translatability of project results to clinical and industry needs.

Leadership in enabling and industrial technologies (LEIT)


Cost-effectiveness, clearly described in the topic SESAR.IR-VLD.Wave1-08-2015 as the main key performance area (KPA), is the principal KPA addressed by “PJ05 Remote Tower” project. It proposes the development of a remotely provided aerodrome air traffic service by a "multiple" and/or "center" setting. Those settings help to combine ATS services from various aerodromes in a centralized control room  independent on airport location in order to make use of the valuable resource ATS provider more efficiently. “Single” remote tower settings have already been deployed in former project, but most significant impacts in cost-effectiveness are to be expected with multiple and/or center settings that was only partly covered so far and needs immediate development effort to deploy it short term. PJ05 will bring the multiple/center concept to a higher matured level. In the end, the passengers will benefit from: More cost-effective aerodrome ATS would allow rural, less frequented airports to work cost-effective and to keep them in operations or even to increase the service levels for more day hours operations or even to upgrade non-controlled to controlled airports. All this would contribute to a better passenger comfort in terms of shorter travel times and better point to point connections. The PJ05 aim attracted plenty of European organisations to participate: ANSPs, industries, R&D and airport stakeholder intends to provide their specific competences to broaden the operational needs and technological expertises. The PJ05 variety of partners and validation activities will help to adequately reflect the variety of operational needs and technical solutions which in the end of the project will consolidate into a harmonized and widely accepted SESAR2020 PJ05 solution. The complete work is structured in a very collaborative way throughout all work packages and will ensure the transfer of knowledge and know-how between all participants and external to SESAR2020 projects.


Within the Single European Sky technological pillar, the European ATM Master Plan (ATM MP) is the roadmap to the horizon 2035+ to guide and connect ATM Research and Innovation and Deployment in building the future European ATM System.  The European ATM Master Plan Edition 2015 approved by the SESAR Joint Undertaking (SJU) Administrative Board and the European Commission and recently published, sets out Performance Ambitions and a Vision for European ATM, in full alignment with ICAO Global Air Navigation Plan.  The ATM MP is composed of three Levels; it can be consulted in the ATM MP Public Portal www.atmmasterplan.eu.  By EU Regulation 409/2013, the ATM MP is the essential instrument allowing all European ATM key civil and military stakeholders - Airspace users, Air Navigation Service providers, Airports, Network Manager, Airborne and Ground industry, Standardisation bodies and Professional Staff organisations - to share and further develop this common vision for the future European ATM and setting forth the SESAR solutions which following successful research are likely to be elicited to compose future Common Projects for operationally seamless and cost effective deployment.  The ATM MP needs to be a living plan, kept abreast of evolutions of the European ATM performance, progresses of the SESAR solutions research results and of deployment.  The duty of SESAR PJ20 AMPLE (ATM Master PLan for Europe) is to ensure the maintenance, update and alignment of the ATM MP three Levels and its associated Portal as a Common Support Activity of the SESAR 2020 Programme.  Under the leadership of EUROCONTROL through facilitated access to information rich performance based civil-military ATM data, PJ20 will bring together contributions of 15 (of 19) SESAR2020 members, ensuring the broad ATM representativeness required from air navigation service providers, airports, airborne and ground industry and network manager; all having a keen interest in future ATM evolution.


The Free Routing concept enables Airspace Users (AU) to fly as close as possible to their preferred trajectory, without being constrained by fixed airspace structures or fixed route networks. Free Routing (FR) implementation represents a step towards a less fragmented European airspace foreseen by Single European Sky (SES) and provides the AUs with the possibility to fly their user preferred routes in accordance with their business needs or mission requirements.  FR will result in a seamless airspace enabling more efficient flight, a reduction in AU costs and will promote cheaper travel, increasing personal mobility and trade. In addition, implementing Free Routing Airspace (FRA) will reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that currently contribute to global warming, thereby creating a greener airspace.  FR was addressed within the SESAR 1 programme but additional R&D activities are required to support the implementation of FRA in high and very high complexity airspace (The EU Regulation No 716/2014 mandates FRA above FL 310 from 1 January 2022) and also to extend this implementation below FL310 thereby allowing other AUs to benefit (The European Air Traffic Management Master Plan version 2015 identifies the need for R&D work to support the management of performance-based Free Routing in lower airspace)  The partners in PJ06 will validate both the benefit to AUs and the impact on ATM of this extension of FRA into complex airspace and lower vertical limits through modelling and Real Time Simulations.  The results will seek to provide evidence that FRA can be implemented, cost effectively, in all the SES airspace.   The PJ06 Consortium involves key stakeholders of ground industry, Air Navigation Services Providers, universities and EUROCONTROL and includes a wide range of expertise and competence, all committed to delivering high-quality results.


Dynamics of Inequality Across the Life-Course: structures and processes

Existing and rising inequalities pose fundamental challenges to European societies and economies. Large disparities in human and social capacities are counterproductive to a sustainable and creative economy and participatory governance and inclusion. The increasing gulf between rich and poor, exacerbated by the recent financial and economic crises, is a key concern. The sources of inequalities in contemporary societies are complex and highly intertwined and they and their consequences can only be understood through comprehensive, comparative and innovative research activities.   It is for this reason that the NORFACE Network is committed to launch a transnational research programme on the topic of Dynamics of Inequality Across the Life-course: structures and processes (DIAL). The DIAL programme will contribute to understanding the dynamics of inequalities as they unfold over the life-course, causal processes and drivers in relation to these inequalities, the role of time with regard to inequalities and the impact of these inequalities on social cohesion. The specific challenge of this Call is to address the dynamics comparatively in their social, cultural, economic and political dimensions and to disentangle the impact of past events and current circumstances on later outcomes to provide solutions to reverse inequalities across the life-course.  The NORFACE DIAL programme will coordinate the research efforts of the participating European Member States by implementing a joint trans-national call with European Commission co-funding to fund innovative comparative, transnational and interdisciplinary research initiatives within this thematic field. The NORFACE Network has received core funding under the European Union’s ERA-Net scheme since 2004 and has developed a close partnership of European national agencies responsible for funding research activities in the social sciences. The DIAL programme builds on the successes of the NORFACE Network.

Europe in a changing world - inclusive, innovative and reflective Societies


Collaborative Recommendations and Adaptive Control for Personalised Energy Saving

Achieving the European environmental objectives for 2020 requires not only technological progress, but also a major change in energy consumption behaviour. The enCOMPASS project will implement and validate an integrated socio-technical approach to behavioural change for energy saving, by developing innovative user-friendly digital tools to make energy consumption data available and understandable for different stakeholders (residents, visitors, public actors, building managers, utilities and ICT-providers) in ways that empower them to achieve energy savings and manage their needs in energy efficient, cost-effective and comfortable ways. It will demonstrate how this can be achieved with a holistic approach that integrates visualisation of energy data collected from smart sensors, user-generated information and context-aware collaborative recommendations for energy saving, intelligent control and adaptive gamified incentives.   The enCOMPASS system will be realized as an open platform combining 1) context-dependent energy usage information from in-home sensors (smart meters and smart home appliances for heat and electricity), 2) user-generated information (automatic and manual activity tracking), 3) adaptive gamified energy visualisation and 4) intelligent controls and automation. The platform is developed to achieve sustainable changes in user energy consumption patterns without compromising comfort levels. The enCOMPASS system will integrate existing technology, product and service offerings of the utility and technology partners, customize and extend them to offer improved and new types of their offerings. The enCOMPASS platform is the heart of a new business ecosystem that enables players in the energy domain to develop their own white-label solutions on top of the platform, or to integrate and use individual services or platform modules. This set-up results in societal, environmental and economic impact of enCOMPASS above and beyond the reach of the pilots.


Single European Sky – the vision is clearly described in the European ATM Master Plan. Reaching the goals for the European Airspace is only possible with focused and extensive technical developments on European level. One of the major challenges is making sure every actor in ATM has the right information at the right time and in a consistent manner, as ATM information is the key to many concepts developed in SESAR. Extensive research was conducted in SESAR 1 under this topic called “System-Wide Information Management (SWIM)”.  Our project addresses the technical infrastructure of SWIM as an enabler to the other projects. It will build on the SESAR 1 research results by integrating the aircraft on the one hand and the military stakeholders on the other hand into the SWIM infrastructure. The aircraft is an essential provider of information with regard to the flight trajectory and an information user, e.g. for meteorological information, which ensures a more efficient flight progress. Integration with the military will contribute to a more complete picture of the traffic situation. Both aspects will improve trajectory based operations and thus improve the experience for the passengers. The common runtime registry will extend the capability of the SESAR 1 SWIM design-time (static) registry by acting as a real-time directory, used to dynamically discover and connect to deployed SWIM services, suited best for the current request during operation, like the internet’s Domain Name Service. This will provide the consumers with an efficient access to the SWIM services, thus facilitating cost-effective operation.  The companies involved in this project are the only ones that can deliver this kind of result. Not on their own – but as the unique cooperation between air navigation service providers and air and ground industry. This ensures the capabilities not only to come up with the concepts and develop prototypes, but also to provide sustainable results usable throughout Europe.


LIETUVOS RESPUBLIKOS ENERGETIKOS MINISTERIJOS

Concerted Action supporting the transposition and implementation of Directive 2009/28/EC on the promotion of the use of energy from renewable sources (RES Directive)

The Concerted Action will support the implementation of the renewable energy directive 2009/28/EC. As with the first and second phase, the objectives of CA-RES3 are directly linked to the transposition and implementation of the RES Directive. The third phase of the CA-RES will also provide further opportunities to explore possibilities for common approaches in specific areas of implementation of the RES Directive. The CA-RES3 will achieve the objectives stated above through a series of seven plenary meetings and a joint workshop with the CA EED and the CA EPBD for discussion on the various topics. These meetings will provide a confidential forum for structured discussions and cross-learning between participating countries. This exchange concentrates on key requirements of the RES Directive according to the needs of the participating countries as well as the European Commission. As such, it will contribute to the achievement of the national RES targets set by the Directive. The CA-RES3 will emphasize topics that require common approaches and/or benefit from good practice exchange between participating countries. The CA-RES3 Core Themes will address a number of aspects including support schemes for electricity and heat, integrating RES into electricity networks, the use of RES for heating and cooling and in buildings, disclosure/guarantees of origin, biomass mobilisation and sustainability as well as the use of RES in transport. The confidential character of the CA-RES3 allows participating countries to discuss in confidence how to best implement the RES Directive. Thus, the need for confidentiality will be emphasized towards all participating institutions, and confidentiality agreements will be signed by all participants.


Project PJ09, Digital Network Management Services is focusing on improvement of the network traffic prediction for all DCB (Demand Capacity Balancing) actors, dynamic airspace configurations, integrated network management and ATC planning (INAP) and collaborative network performance management.   This project is structured along 3 solutions:    Solution 44 Dynamic Airspace Configurations (DAC) will address the user acceptability and operational feasibility of the proposed DAC solutions and it will focus on integration of the DAC with DCB.   Solution 45 Enhanced Network Traffic Prediction and shared complexity representation aims to develop the multi-layer traffic prediction model improving the forecast in pre-tactical, early D day, tactical and execution time horizons.   Solution 49 will validate an operational states prediction algorithm to anticipate the performance degradation in identified areas within the network. It will also validate the transition from local to regional measures in critical state.


The primary outcomes of vf-OS are an: - Open Operating System (vf-OS) and Software Development Kit (OAK) for Factories of the Future that aims to be the reference system software for collaborative manufacturing and logistics processes including its associated resources and data - Open vf-OS Platform, including a Multi-sided application marketplace and development studio, that aims to become the Apps Store for Manufacturing industry The multi-sided marketplace will allow Manufacturing Users, Manufacturing Resource providers, Service Providers and Software Developers to cooperate and demand, build, select, and use vf-OS applications with the vf-OS exploiters, like classical App stores, having a business model based on taking a share of purchases of applications and services from the platform.  vf-OS is composed of a Virtual Factory System Kernel (vf-SK), a Virtual Factory Application Programming Interface (vf-API) and a Virtual Factory Middleware (vf-MW) for interoperable and secure collaboration among supply networks, enterprises, machines, data and objects. The Virtual Factory Platform (vf-P) will be a infrastructure, either in-cloud or on-premise, that supports the Manufacturing Apps Store and Virtual Machines. vf-OS especially addresses SMEs by providing a full functionality at affordable cost and with Cloud availability.  The Manufacturing Apps will be developed with an Open Applications Development Kit (vf-OAK), freely provided to software developers, for rapid and cost effective deployment of advanced industrial applications running over vf-OS, allowing fast time-to-market and world-wide base industrial clients.


PJ22:Validation and Demonstration Engineering

The aim of SESAR2020.PJ22 is to address one of the Transversal Activities, specifically Validation & Demonstration Engineering. In SESAR 1, the application of an engineering methodology defining the process for development of verification and validation platforms, was optionally mandated to the primary projects, leading to a different level of information available across the Programme. The delivery of information to SJU did not always reach the necessary consistency and quality, e.g. preventing the understanding of coverage and traceability of operational requirements vs. technical requirements. SE data were typically captured via Word templates requiring significant effort to extract the information with not homogeneous level of details thus insufficient to guarantee the usability and significance for the SESAR Community. In SESAR 2020 there is a demand to improve consistently the situation and PJ22 will provide a System Engineering Data Management Framework (SE-DMF), aiming to support all SESAR Solutions with a (web based) platform for Requirements Management to capture data in a structured way ensuring consistency, coherence and coverage at Programme level. PJ22 will develop an efficient approach based on a data-centric, data-driven rather than document-based paradigm.  SE-DMF will be set up as a service and run in a secured IaaS infrastructure to enable cost reduction, high level of ROI, ease of use and scalability. The project will support the SESAR Solution Maturity Lifecycle and Gates. Another challenge is to identify a set of strategic validation tools and interoperability solutions to improve the SESAR 2020 validation process. Maintaining and improving the development methodologies for the SESAR solution and VLSD projects together with managing the catalogue of the V&V and Demonstration Platforms and associated documentation describing their current capabilities and their planned evolution is under the scope of the project.


Smart Forwarder for sustainable and efficient forest operation and management

Forest biomass is currently one of the most important source of renewable energy and accounts for almost half of the EU’s total renewable energy consumption. In addition to raw materials, forests also provide a wide range of vital non-wood services that should be protected during wood extraction. The innovation project Forwarder2020 has the main aim of improving sustainability of wood production and delivery as well as operational forest management and planning through the development of specific modules for more efficient forwarders (wood extraction and transportation vehicles): • hydrostatic-mechanical power-split transmission  • hydro-pneumatic suspension of the forwarder  • hybrid hydraulic system for driving the crane with double recuperation of the potential energy  • bogie axle with three instead of two driven wheels at each side to be mounted under the timber load • monitoring system for transparency and documentation of process data like machine data, static and dynamic load over time and position  The combined effect of these five innovations applied to forwarders will have the following impact: • lowering of the dynamic wheel load by 25% over the same forwarder without suspension at same payload and speed.  • reduction of rut depths by 50%  • lowering fuel consumption while driving over the existing hydrostatic transmissions by 30%  • making long hauling distances more economic by the efficiency of the power-split transmission  • lowering fuel consumption while loading and unloading due to the double recuperation of the potential energy of the crane mass by 30%.  • more precise planning of the tracks and documentation of the loads carried on the specific part of the track  • supplying to the market a unique and modular system of high-end solutions above the competitors, where the customer can make his choice of equipment and bear no higher costs for the modules not chosen. • bring consortium partners and thus Europe to a strong position on markets

Food security, sustainable agriculture and forestry, marine and maritime and inland water research


NDTonAIR: Training Network in Non-Destructive Testing and Structural Health Monitoring of Aircraft structures

The “NDTonAIR” consortium involves Universities, Research Organisations and major European companies working on new Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) and Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) techniques for aerospace, of which both are key technologies. The goal is to train a new generation of scientists and engineers with a wide background of theoretical and experimental skills, capable of developing their research and entrepreneurial activities both in academy and industry and playing an active role in promoting the importance of quality inspection and structural monitoring in aerospace components.  The objective of the training programme is to provide the recruited researchers with an extensive and varied training on:  (1)  Fundamentals skills for NDT and SHM through participation in short-courses and seminars organized by the Consortium; (2) NDT and SHM Techniques for Aerospace through research training at host institutions and participation in Workshops and Conferences organized by the Consortium and major international research associations; (3) Technology Transfer and Entrepreneurship through participation in short-courses and seminars organized by the Consortium. The objective of the research programme is to consolidate and innovate current NDT and SHM techniques for Aircraft inspection by (1) investigating new physical phenomena and sensors; (2) developing analytical and numerical models to correlate the results of inspection with material properties; (3) quantifying NDT techniques through their probability of detecting reference defects; (4) developing procedures for the automatic detection and classification of defects; (5) transferring these results to industry.  The members of the Consortium will work together for realizing this training programme and scientific collaboration will be stimulated by secondment of the recruited researchers and it will be aimed at improving the integration and comparison of different NDT techniques.


PJ07 Optimised Airspace Users Operations

The SES Performance Scheme established the principles of performance-driven ATM and Network-wide Collaborative decision making including Civil and State Airspace Users. Hence, it is critical that Flight and Wings Operation Centres processes and tools be enriched for more efficient interaction with ATM Network stakeholders including Airports.  Improved performance of ATM depends on a higher certainty of the demand during the planning phase; and on improved adherence to the plan during operations. Improved Collaborative Decision Making (CDM) incorporating Airspace Users evolving business needs is key to improve ATM operations and Airspace Users performance.  PJ07-OAUO project brings together key European aviation industry partners with the right expertise to achieve a breakthrough improvement to Airspace Users collaboration with ATM. Cooperation with PJ04, PJ09 and PJ18 will assure a good integration with ATM processes.  Aligned with the ATM Masterplan, OAUO focusses on flight planning supported by improved trajectory information sharing with ATM as defined in ICAO/FF-ICE and on flight prioritisation processes in capacity constraint situations–UDPP-, and on a step-wise integration of Military operations into civil ATM collaborative processes. OAUO validates improved Airspace Users Flight/Wings Operations Centres’ processes and tools for Trajectory Definition, Fleet Prioritisation and Preferences, and Mission Trajectory. Objectives include new performance indicators reflecting AUs’ business needs in the ATM performance scheme; technology that drastically reduces the need for Airspace Users to perform labour intensive coordination; and integration of ICAO/ FF-ICE concept in the Trajectory Definition and UDPP processes.  OAUO supports the SESAR Deployment and addresses European concerns on economic sustainability of Air Transport system operators, providing access to all types of Airspace Users and flexibility to reduce costs without ATM performance deterioration.


Multimodal, Functional Bio-Photonic Imaging

FBI fosters education of ESRs on an emerging, multimodal imaging platform and its translation into clinical and biological applications. In FBI, 15 ESRs are trained at world-leading European academic institutions and companies, thus forming strong interdisciplinary relations between industry, technical sciences and clinical end-users.  Optical imaging has huge potential to address unmet clinical needs by combining non-invasive and real-time capture of biomedical information; thus enabling earlier onset of treatment, reduced therapy costs, reduced recurrence rates, and improved clinical outcomes. Up to now, optical modalities were applied as standalone techniques each targeting one biomarker. Recently it has been shown that diagnosis is significantly improved by combining different contrast mechanisms simultaneously in a multimodal approach, i.e., staging and grading of lesions is feasible.  FBI proposes to combine a selection of modalities depending on the targeted disease. Suspicious lesions are analysed with optical coherence tomography, optoacoustic tomography, multi-photon tomography, and Raman spectroscopy to provide morphological, label-free microangiography, and intrinsic biochemical information, respectively. An important issue is the need for endoscopy: combining said modalities into endoscopes is challenging due to the integration of different imaging concepts, scanning and detection methods, and laser sources. Accordingly, there is a huge need for effectively translating these technical solutions to industry and clinics, which traditionally is restricted by lack of understanding of applications or limited knowledge of new technology.  All these barriers are addressed by FBI through research and development of novel photonic components and systems, through educating ESRs in understanding clinical, biological and commercial challenges, and through developing tailored technical solutions and efficient translation of technology within a strong network.


APLINKOSAUGOS VALDYMO IR TECHNOLOGIJU CENTRAS VIESOJI ISTAIGA

Prosperity through innovation and promotion of Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans

PROSPERITY will: 1. Produce a culture shift in terms of environment for SUMPs in member states and in the organisational culture of transport planning in city authorities. 2. Get ministries and national agencies to play a national leading role on SUMPs, as in many member states these are the organisations from which cities take their main direction; where ministries are already playing this role, to support and strengthen their approach. 3. To provide mechanisms and tools for Ministries to take this lead role. 4. Analyse clearly the problems of (lack of) take-up of SUMPs – to understand from cities themselves why they are not taken up and then to help cities to address these barriers. 5. Extend the existing 25-county EU-SUMP-network with at least two more countries 6. Get more cities to take up effective high quality SUMPs – through cities’ involvement in the project and indirectly through more cities hearing about SUMPs in their country. 7. Ensure that these SUMPs contain and will lead to implementation of a broad range of innovative sustainable transport measures. 8. Build cities’ capacity to develop and implement SUMPs that genuinely reflect the spirit of the EU SUMP Guidelines, rather than being mandatory documents to fulfil a requirement linked to major transport infrastructure. 9. Deliver a measurable impact.   The core concept of PROSPERITY is bringing ministries into the project, which will significantly enhance the visibility of the project at the national level and therefore increase numbers of cities active on SUMPs. Thus PROSPERITY will ensure that more cities commit to SUMPs that are in line with the EU SUMP Guidelines and that include a broad range of innovative measures. This will generate a high leverage factor, especially in regions and cities where take up is so far low and the impacts from transport are severe – therefore the majority of PROSPERITY activities is in such regions and cities - thus in southern, central-eastern and eastern Europe.


JONAVOS RAJONO SAVIVALDYBES ADMINISTRACIJA


Port Cities can be seen as multidimensional laboratories where challenges connected with urban mobility are more complex due to the dual system of gravity centre: the city, the port, not to mention their shared hinterland.These peculiarities are at once a challenge and an opportunity, as they provide scope for planning, researching and implementing integrated mobility solutions in distinctively complex urban contexts. Civitas PORTIS designs, demonstrates and evaluates integrated sets of sustainable mobility measures in 5 major port cities located on the North Sea (Aberdeen and Antwerp), the Mediterranean Sea (Trieste), the Black Sea (Constanta), and Baltic Sea (Klaipeda). The project also involves a major international follower port city on the East China Sea (Ningbo).  Thanks to the Civitas Initiative, the partner cities expect to prove that more efficient and sustainable mobility is conducive to the establishment of vital and multi-modal hubs for urban, regional, national and International movements of passengers and goods. To do this, they establish integrated living laboratories clustering local measures according to four major aspects of sustainable urban mobility: 1. Governance: to increase port-city collaborative planning and participation, leading to enhanced forms of SUMPs. 2. People: to foster less car-dependent mobility styles, leading to modal shift in favour of collective and more active transport. 3. Transport system: to strengthen the efficiency of road traffic management to/from the port and through the city, and foster the use of clean vehicles. 4.  Goods: to enhance logistics and freight transport, improving the efficiency and coordination of city, port and regional freight movements. Working with port cities, Civitas PORTIS will generate a strong and twofold replication potential: 1) specifically to other port cities, and 2) more generally to cities presenting major transport nodes and attractors for the benefit of the whole CIVITAS Initiative.


VIESOJI ISTAIGA KLAIPEDOS KELEIVINIS TRANSPORTAS


KLAIPEDOS MIESTO SAVIVALDYBES ADMINISTRACIJA


Eat me microglia: lipid scrambling as a signal for synaptic pruning

The development of the nervous system is associated with the generation of excess neuronal synapses that is followed by their tightly controlled removal, a process known as synaptic pruning. In the primate cortex, for example, 70% of connections are selectively lost within the first six months of life. Why are so many synapses lost, what determines which synapses are eliminated, what are the molecular mechanisms involved, and what are the consequences of not getting it right? Recently, several studies have presented microglial phagocytosis as a mechanism for synapse elimination. Neural activity plays a role in synaptic pruning, but the neuronal “eat-me” signals that mediate phagocytic recognition and engulfment of synapses remain to be identified. We hypothesize that cell surface exposure of the lipid phosphatidylserine (PtdSer) is a key “eat-me” signal for synaptic pruning during development. Therefore we aim to define the role of PtdSer in synapse-microglia interaction and to assess the morphological, circuit maturation and behavioural effects of impaired PtdSer exposure in phospholipid scramblase-deficient brains. We propose to use novel custom-made tool to observe PtdSer exposure without interfering with PtdSer-dependent cellular interactions and two mouse models with disrupted PtdSer exposure to study how PtdSer contributes to circuit refinement. The identification of an “eat-me” signal will shed the light on what distinguishes synapses destined to be eliminated from those that survive and will be the first step in understanding why the majority of synapses are turned over during brain development before the final connectome emerges. As aberrant brain wiring during development is known to be defective in a wide range of neurodevelopmental disorders, understanding how circuits are formed and refined during developmental period will be critical to understand their aetiology and initiate the development of the therapy targeting molecular mechanisms of disease.


Baltic Consortium on Promoting Gender Equality in Marine Research Organisations

Baltic Gender is a consortium of research organisations and higher education institutions from the Baltic Sea Region aiming at reducing gender segregation and gender inequalities in Marine Science and Technology. The diversity of the consortium members (from Nordic, Continental and Eastern countries) with regard to gender equality policies and practices as well as gatekeeping provides an excellent basis for exchange, comparison, collaborative learning and transfer of knowledge. The action will work toward the establishment and implementation of Gender Equality Plans (GEPs) as instruments that can catalyse institutional change. Collection, standardisation and evaluation of gender-segregated data will facilitate the establishment of gender-sensitive indicators and enable the consortium to develop concrete targets and measures for reaching the set goals of the GEPs and to monitor the progress of their implementation. GEP implementation activities will be supported by established approaches and innovative strategies developed in the four core work packages on (i) career advancement, (ii) work and family, (iii) structural changes, and (iv) gender dimension in marine research. Cross-cutting work packages will support action’s progress via giving trainings, strengthening networks, raising awareness, disseminating results and reaching out to a wider scientific community and public in general. The outputs are designed to maximize impact and, due to the inter-disciplinary nature of marine sciences, to have a broader impact in the field of natural science and technology. The deliverables include blogs, brochures, best-practice handbooks, recommendations, training-materials, synthesis reports. Schemes and good practices established during the action (e.g., grass-root networks, work-family balance, transparency in decision making, modernised recruitment processes, mentoring) are foreseen to pave the way for long-lasting institutional practices.

Promote gender equality in research and innovation


European Network of Research Ethics and Research Integrity (ENERI)

The “European Network of Research Ethics and Research Integrity” (ENERI) establishes an operable platform of actors in the fields of research ethics and research integrity.  The reliability and credibility of research and science do not depend only on its excellence and productivity but also on the players’ awareness of highest standards of ethics in research and commitment to a responsible conduct of research. Research ethics addresses the application of ethical principles to the various fields of research. This includes ethical aspects of the design and conduct of research, the way human participants or animals within research projects are treated, and aspects of scientific misconduct. Research integrity is recognized as the attitude and habit of the researchers to conduct research according to appropriate ethical, legal and professional frameworks and standards. The fields of research ethics and research integrity combine general ethical reflections, ethics and law as academic disciplines addressing research activities, moral attitudes of researchers, normative policies of stakeholders like sponsors or funding organizations, and various ethical expectations of the civil society.  ENERI is based on existing networks, projects and infrastructures that already initiated and developed important steps in sharing information, training and capacity building. Research ethics committees, review boards, ombudspersons’ offices, research integrity offices and supporting structures are the established bodies monitoring, accompanying and assisting the process of responsible and justifiable research. Therefore the European Network of Research Integrity Offices (ENRIO) and the European Network of Research Ethics Committees (EUREC) mutually initiated ENERI in collaborations with experts in academic research ethics (RE) and responsible research and innovation (RRI), practitioners in training and education in research ethics, and specialists in e-communication and database design.

Develop the governance for the advancement of responsible research and innovation


CONDUCTING A FEASIBILITY STUDY ON THE VIABILITY OF AN INNOVATIVE BUSINESS MODEL FOR BRINGING SOLAR ENERGY TO REMOTE COMMUNITIES AND DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

PROBLEM: 1.1 billion people, most of whom live in developing regions of Asia and Africa, lack access to electricity. The primary light source for them are kerosene lamps, which are not only costly, but also has negative impact on human health, resulting in illness and even mortalities. Existing solar-powered products are too expensive for households with a $20 monthly income. Booming trends of mobile subscriptions and smartphone adoption in developing countries mean there is also a growing need to charge the phones. SOLUTION: Solet Technics has developed a prototype of a mobile solar power generator, PAWAME which offers a cheap and reliable access to electricity for off-grid households. The company is planning to distribute PAWAME solution using local agents, and infrastructure, payment system and brand recognition of Telcos, which enables fast market uptake and scaling of the product. It will also be easy and convenient for the user to pay for electricity via phone. The ‘rent-to-own’ model makes the product accessible to low income households: no upfront investments needed. User-friendly and unique product design enables simple usage for the end-user. Customer can login to see his payment plan information, usage data, etc. Unique product features also include theft protection – PAWAME sends its location and if somebody tries to force to open it, it is remotely notified and can be tracked and traced all the time. The device has been tailored to fit to the needs of both end-user and Telcos. NEXT STEPS: Thorough market analysis and an elaboration of a business plan is needed in order to define strategic commercialization. This feasibility study will be a crucial step towards commercialization of Solarize. Further in the future, Solet Technics plans to bring PAWAME to industrial readiness and maturity for introduction to the global market, providing solar electricity to more than 200 thousand households and generating profit of 3 million euros by the year 2020


Market Opportunity Validation and Business Plan Development for horticulture research LED solution - HORTILED

Global food system will experience a food security crisis over the next 40 years. Global food production will need to increase by 70% to feed the planet. LEDs have tremendous potential to increase plant and food production, Determining how wavelengths, light level, position and time influence each single plant at the same given moment, can increase yields, quality of products and give better control of plant growth, however, such research in Europe is limited to only several research labs. To address the problem, Energenas, a Lithuanian SME, run by experienced horticulture experts for more than a decade, has launched a novel solution – HORTILED, the most flexible and versatile integrated system of light emitting diodes for plant growth research in controlled environments. The technology is unique in its compact size and ability to be adapted and controlled individually on a small scale. By combining extremely light frame with a control protocol, LED sensors and state-of-the-art software, the Company can offer any researcher the ability to test plant growth and collect data, specifying the ideal growing conditions for plants. Main benefits of HORTILED for researchers: 1) Suitable for various research spaces (growth chambers, phytotrons, laboratories, greenhouses), 2) unique software solution gives possibility to program each spectral component separately and manage their composition during the experiment, and 3) consumes significantly less energy than traditional lighting solutions. HORTILED is currently at TRL6. The next step is moving on to TRL7 - system prototype demonstration in operational environment. For this reason horticulture research market will be analysed and market players identified who will participate in the user needs identification study together with HORTILED’s early access partners, one of which is Wageningen University - the most visible and leading university of agriculture on a global scale.


Feasibility Study for HUTI – the Human Traffic Assistance System

Currently passenger flow in airports is managed through a combination of advanced IT software solutions (data analysis, passenger flow analysis) and the use of physical barriers (wall-mounted retractable belts, post and panel barricades, swing gates, or portable stanchions). The deployment and management of physical barriers is a costly and time-consuming procedure that is slow to react to people flow changes and, relies on expensive and inefficient manual human labor. Staff needs to deploy and reposition the barriers at least a few times each day. Currently there are no commercially available crowd management solutions on the market that could replace the use of expensive and outdated physical barriers.   Huti (TRL 6), developed by Blue Ocean Robotics (BOR), is an intelligent swarm of robots that will replace the physical barriers and barrier management personnel by providing a better flow of people, enhancing experience for travelers and decreasing costs for airports. This solution reduces labour costs needed to manage large crowds, provides better experience for the traveller and allows to quickly address changes in passenger flow or temporary closures.  Huti was developed in collaboration with Vilnius International Airport, which showed interest and demand for such a solution. Blue Ocean Robotics is further working closely with the airport, which intends to be the first launching customer. The robot is the first innovative physical barrier that can work with minimal human intervention, providing queue management, guidance and entertainment functions. Huti robots creates a new market for robotic crowd management solutions.  To ensure successful commercialization, in Phase 1 of SME Instrument, Blue Ocean Robotics intends to develop an elaborate feasibility study for Huti robot commercialization  that would include: a thorough analysis of market and user needs, redesign of the product, and a business plan with an extensive financial, pricing, and IPR strategy.


VIESOJI ISTAIGA VIESOSIOS POLITIKOSIR VADYBOS INSTITUTAS

OPENing UP new methods, indicators and tools for peer review, impact measurement and dissemination of research results

Open Access and Open Scholarship have revolutionized the way scholarly artefacts are evaluated and published, while the introduction of new technologies and media in scientific workflows has changed the “how and to whom” science is communicated, and how stakeholders interact with the scientific community. OpenUP addresses key aspects and challenges of the currently transforming science landscape and aspires to come up with a cohesive framework for the review-disseminate-assess phases of the research life cycle that is fit to support and promote Open Science.   Its main objectives are to a) identify and determine ground-breaking mechanisms, processes and tools for peer-review for all types of research results (publications, data, software), b) explore, identify and classify innovative dissemination mechanisms with an outreach aim towards businesses and industry, education, and society as a whole, and c) analyse a set of novel indicators that assess the impact of research results and correlate them of channels of dissemination. It will do so by following a user-centred, evidence-based approach, engaging all stakeholders (researchers, publishers, funders, institutions, industry, public) in an open dialogue through a series of workshops, conferences and training, and validating all interim results via a set of seven pilots involving communities from four research disciplines: life sciences, social sciences, arts & humanities, energy. It will finally produce a set of concrete, practical, validated policy recommendations & guidelines for national and European stakeholders, including EU institutions, a valuable tool in advancing a more open and gender-sensitive science system. OpenUP partners bring expertise and capacity for evaluating and promoting new approaches in support of open science with decade-long experiences in establishing OA e-Infrastructures, excellent skills and innovative approaches for dissemination, impact indicators and policy design and implementation.


VIESOJI ISTAIGA SOCIALINIU INOVACIJU INSTITUTAS

Researchers' Night: It's Your Friday to Discover!

The LT2016 Researchers’ Night projects for 2016 and 2017 will take place in major Lithuanian cities, i.e. Vilnius, Kaunas, Klaipeda, Siauliai and Moletai, as well as in rural areas. The project aims to enhance public recognition of researchers and their work through bringing scientists and public closer to one another and thus increasing an understanding of the impact of researchers' work on citizen's daily life as well as encouraging young people to choose careers in science and research. Both events will offer a broad range of varied activities addressing all categories of the public at large, regardless of age and scientific background, i.e. notably: Meetings and activities together with researchers; Lectures, discussions; Visits to open laboratories; Real life observations and experiments; European corners; Various contests, games, exhibitions, movie and online broadcast watching. All the activities planned will actively involve researchers and will offer a balanced combination of "serious" activities and funny ones to be attractive for the general public. Activities will be hosted in labs, lecture halls, meeting places, cafes, while in the rural areas they will take place in schools or public spaces. Some activities conducted in the main sites will be broadcasted online. Common concept for the Night in 2016 and 2017 will be Learning about Technology Futures. Therefore activities of Researchers’ Night projects in 2016 will be organised with focus on Virtual Reality thus building foundations for the Night in 2017 which will focus of "science futurity" or Futures of technologies. Both events will be finalised with the grand event unifying different fields - music, science and cinema. We expect at least 500.000 people made aware of the Researchers' Night and its objectives through the awareness campaign and 11.500 direct attendees to the various events planned in 2016 as well as in 2017.


VILNIAUS GEDIMINO TECHNIKOS UNIVERSITETAS


When dealing with emergency, two issues with fully different time requirements and operational objectives, and thus different methods and tools, have to be considered: emergency preparedness and emergency response. This project will address both issues by combining the efforts of organizations active in these two areas to make already identified deterministic reference tools and methods a decisive step toward. In particular capabilities of these methods and tools will be extended to tackle main categories of accident scenarios in main types of operating or foreseen water-cooled NPPs in Europe, including Spent Fuel Pools. A first task will be the identification of these categories of scenario, the proposition of a methodology for their description and the development of a database of scenarios. Building this database will constitute a first important step in the harmonisation goal defended in this project. Promising probabilistic approaches based on Bayesian Belief Networks (BBN) are currently developed to complement operational deterministic methodologies and tools by contributing to diagnosis accidental situations. The development of the methodologies will be pursued in this project with the extension of the existing deterministic ones to European reactors. Both approaches will be assessed against the above mentioned database of scenarios. Finally a comprehensive set of emergency exercises will be developed and proposed to be run by a large set of partners. A first series of exercises will address source term evaluations that will be compared to the reference source terms from the scenarios database. Then a second series of exercises will be proposed on the same scenarios that will be used for the first series but accounting for the main emergency objective : to protect the populations. Progresses made by the methods and tools developed within this project will be notably assessed by comparing the results obtained in these two series of exercises.


BALTIJOS PAZANGIU TECHNOLOGIJU INSTITUTAS


TM Academy - intelligent transport control and monitoring system

It is already for 8 years that UAB Medium Group has been successful in the field of design and development transport control and monitoring systems. The needs newly arising on the European transport market prompted it to invest in new product-the intelligent TM Academy software designed for the analysis of a driver’s performance and automated transmission of necessary information concerning different areas (working time and rest period; safe and economical driving; road traffic accidents; regulations on carriage of goods; TIR and CMR Conventions; customs procedures; prevention of carriage of illegal goods, etc.), also subsequent evaluation of the driver for the purpose of achieving better performance. The database of the application will consist of the requirements of the legislation relevant to the this sector. The system will have direct interfaces with vehicle systems and the CAN bus, so it will receive necessary information about the performance of a driver and, in this regard, will automatically select details required for its improvement. It will educate employees and will contribute not only to the better performance and operating results of a given employee and the company as a whole, but also to the handling of global issues, such as reduction of pollution, enhancing effectiveness of the transport system, decreasing the number of road traffic accidents, etc., as a result, benefiting drivers, transport and recruitment companies and country concerned. This software has no parallel in Europe or other countries, since similar products excludes any automated operation involving a driver and intended to improve his performance. Outcomes of the feasibility study: identification of the scope of the database and required integrations with vehicle systems; prepared project implementation and commercialisation plans and the necessary budget.Being financially incapable of implementing the project of this scope without any support, the company will be engaged in Phase2.


Gender Equality Plans for Information Sciences and Technology Research Institutions

EQUAL-IST aims at introducing structural changes to enhance gender equality within Information Systems and Technology Research institutions, which have been demonstrated to be among the research sectors most affected by gender inequalities at all levels. The project aims at supporting seven RPOs from Northern, Southern and Central European countries plus a CSI country, in developing and implementing Gender Equality Action Plans. All the 7 RPOs of the EQUAL-IST consortium are at a starting stage in the setting up of GEPs and they have also ensured the support of the highest management levels both from their faculties and university as whole.  The project will combine gender mainstreaming and positive actions on 3 main levels: HR practices and management processes, research design and delivery, student services and institutional communication. For addressing and solving issues of horizontal and vertical segregation in research and administrative careers, work life balance, gender neutral-blind approaches to IST research, gender gaps in students’ enrollment, EQUAL-IST will try to operate at the same time on organizational structures, discourses and behaviors. In addition, EQUAL-IST will promote a participatory approach towards Gender Equality Policies based on co-design and at the same time ensuring the active dialogue with and involvement of top decision makers at the partner RPOs. By setting up a dedicated crowdsourcing- online collaborative platform the project will support both the initial internal assessment of the RPOs and the GEPs design process. EQUAL-IST toolkits and guidelines, lessons learned and used methodologies will be disseminated broadly in Europe and other CSI countries with a communication strategy focused on IST Research Institutions and RFOs and through collaboration with the EURAXESS network, in order to support ERA objectives in relation to gender equality in research.


Personalised public services in support of the implementation of the CAP

Public administrations responsible for the implementation of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) need to monitor farmers’ compliance to standards. Monitoring is performed by in-field visits and through remote sensing. Due to the high complexity and diversity of the obligations that need to be monitored, both methods have limitations, and entail a high cost for public administrations.  RECAP proposes a methodology for improving the efficiency and transparency of the compliance monitoring procedure through a cloud-based Software as a Service (SaaS) platform which will make use of large volumes of publicly available data provided by satellite remote sensing, and user-generated data provided by farmers through mobile devices (geo-referenced and time-stamped photos). The RECAP platform will extract useful features from Earth Observation open data, correlate them with user-generated and geo-information data available to public organisations, and model this information for enabling the identification of potential breaches of compliance by public authorities and inspectors.  RECAP will offer farmers a tool supporting them to comply with regulations imposed by the CAP, providing personalised information for simplifying the interpretation of complex regulations, and early alerts on potential breaches. RECAP will allow agricultural consultants and developers to create add-ons to the main application that extend its functionality and exploit the data collected through an Application Programming Interface (API), and a Software Development Kit (SDK). Consultants will be able to access data available in the platform, subject to security and privacy policies, and to develop their own services within the platform using design tools, libraries, and communication with the database under an open approach.  The RECAP services will be tested and validated in an operational environment in 5 countries with the participation of public authorities, farmers, and agricultural consultants.


VIESOJI ISTAIGA LIETUVOS ZEMES UKIO KONSULTAVIMO TARNYBA


EU-STRAT - The EU and Eastern Partnership Countries: An Inside-Out Analysis and Strategic Assessment

Ten years after its inception, the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) has fallen short of accomplishing its mission. The war in Ukraine and the rising tensions with Russia have made a re-assessment of the ENP both more urgent and more challenging. EU-STRAT will address two questions: First, why has the EU fallen short of creating peace, prosperity and stability in its Eastern neighbourhood? Second, what can be done to strengthen the EU’s transformative power in supporting political and economic change in the six Eastern Partnership (EaP) countries?  Adopting an inside-out perspective on the challenges of transformation the EaP countries and the EU face, EU-STRAT will • develop a conceptual framework for the varieties of social orders in EaP countries to explain the propensity of domestic actors to engage in change; • investigate how bilateral, regional and global interdependencies shape the scope of action and the preferences of domestic actors in the EaP countries; • de-centre the EU by studying the role of selected member states and other external actors active in the region; • evaluate the effectiveness of the Association Agreements and alternative EU instruments, including scientific cooperation, in supporting change in the EaP countries; • analyse normative discourses used by the EU and Russia to enhance their influence over the shared neighbourhood. • formulate policy recommendations to strengthen the EU’s capacity to support change in the EaP countries by advancing different scenarios for developmental pathways. EU-STRAT features an eleven-partner consortium including six universities, three think-tanks, one civil society organization and one consultancy. This consortium will achieve the research and policy relevant objectives of the project by bringing together various disciplinary perspectives and methodologies and strengthening links with academics and policy makers across six EU member states, Switzerland and three of the EaP countries.


EUROPOS SOCIALINIAI TEISINIAI IR EKONOMINIAI PROJEKTAI


GN4-2 Research and Education Networking - GÉANT

GN4-2 is the proposed project for the second Specific Grant Agreement under the 68-month Framework Partnership Agreement (FPA) established between the GÉANT Consortium and the European Commission in April 2015.This second phase of implementing the FPA will raise European research to the next level by promoting scientific excellence, access and re-use of research data. It will also drive European-wide cost efficiencies in scientific infrastructure by promoting interoperability with other e-infrastructures on an unprecedented scale. The FPA objective for the GÉANT Partnership is to contribute to effective European research by making Europe the best-connected region in the world. GÉANT must offer European researchers the network, communications facilities and application access that ensure the digital continuum necessary to conduct world-class research in collaboration with their peers, regardless of geographical location. GÉANT will maintain the operational excellence of the established GÉANT services, while achieving economies on the costs of the backbone network. The reliable, secure and state-of-the-art network services offered to researchers and other network users across Europe will remain exceptional. Massive data-transfer capacities required by extreme-scale instruments and by the penetration of big data in many areas of science will be prototyped with due consideration to the specific security and deployment challenges.  Trust and identity is also prioritised with the introduction of a scalable operational model and with user requirements addressed in close concertation with the AARC and proposed AARC2 projects. GN4-2 developments are also guided by the vision of a future where a set of coherent and integrated European e-infrastructure services will offer convenient, seamless access for end-users through a common service catalogue, and facilitating the adoption of services offered by new e-infrastructure developments, such as the European Open Science Cloud.


Alternative models and robust decision-making for future forest management

European forests are expected to provide a broad range of ecosystem services (ES). This capacity is however threatened by the uncertainties of climate change, the complex dynamics of evolving global markets and the pressures for increased use of bioenergy. Such challenges cannot be effectively addressed with an uncritical regional or national commitment to traditional forest management models (FMMs), as these are unlikely to ensure the sustained long-term provisioning of desired ES, let alone their optimised delivery. ALTERFOR’s goal is thus to facilitate the implementation of FMMs better suited to meeting the challenges of the 21st century by: (1) Identifying and developing FMMs robust in their capacity to deliver ES and overcome projected socio-ecological risks and uncertainties; (2) Assessing the impact of different FMM combinations in terms of resultant ES baskets on the European and landscape level, and (3) Facilitating the implementation of desired FMMs and improving cross-national knowledge transfer regarding their benefits, costs, management, and utilization. The project will involve a consortium of 19 organisations from nine countries chosen due to their possession of the transdisciplinary expertise necessary to achieve these objectives, and for ensuring an encompassing representation of Europe’s socio-economic conditions and prevailing forest management paradigms. Based on carefully designed case studies, the consortium will make sure realistic models of forest owner behaviour are employed; guarantee the involvement of forest stakeholders throughout the project; anchor the desired FMMs to relevant forest actors; and help disseminate project findings to local, national and European stakeholders. The main long-term impact of ALTERFOR is the implementation of FMMs that secure the capacity of Europe’s forests to continue providing a balanced ES basket that societies will depend upon over the coming century.


VALSTYBES IMONES VALSTYBINIU MISKU UREDIJOS


Transforming Intangible Folkloric Performing Arts into Tangible Choreographic Digital Objects

Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) content means "the practices, representations, expressions, knowledge, skills – as well as the instruments, objects, artefacts and cultural spaces associated therewith". Although, ICH content, especially traditional folklore performing arts, is commonly deemed worthy of preservation by UNESCO (Convention for the Safeguarding of ICH) and the EU Treaty, most of the current research efforts are on the focus is on tangible cultural assets, while the ICH content has been overlooked. The primary difficulty stems by the complex structure of ICH, its dynamic nature, the interaction among the objects and the environment, as well as emotional elements (e.g., the way of expression and dancers' style). TERPSICHORE aims to study, analyse, design, research, train, implement and validate an innovative framework for affordable digitization, modelling, archiving, e-preservation and presentation of ICH content related to folk dances, in a wide range of users (dance professionals, dance teachers, creative industries and general public) . The project targets at integrating the latest innovative results of photogrammetry, computer vision, semantic technologies, time evolved modeling, combined with the story telling and folklore choreography. An important output of the project will be a Web based cultural server/viewer with the purpose to allow user’s interaction, visualization, interface with existing cultural libraries (EUROPEANA) and enrichment functionalities to result in virtual surrogates and media application scenarios that release the potential economic impact of the ICH. The final product will support a set of services such as virtual/augmented reality, social media, interactive maps, presentation and learning of European Folk dances with tremendous impact on the European society, culture and tourism


Towards Autonomous Large Area Mass Production Sputtering Plants

Problem: Although manufacturing is moving towards full automation, some industries, such as thin film manufacturing industry, are still heavily reliant on inefficient human labor. There are no commercially available solutions on the market enabling full automation of thin film production plants. That explains low production rates, waste of materials & energy, high operating costs, and increased overall inefficiency of thin film industry, which also has a direct negative impact on other industries dependent on using thin film components for goods they produce, such as smartphones, tablets, computers, cameras, watches, jewellery, various medical instruments, and many more. Solution: Nova Fabrica has already successfully developed and tested a prototype of a plant-wide intelligent Supervisory Process Control System (iSPCS) – the only holistic control system, enabling real-time production/process monitoring for thin film plants, thus fully automating the process side of thin film manufacturing. Initial investigations performed by the biggest thin film plant in the Baltics “Groglass” estimated that the iSPCS at its current state could provide their plant a 30% increase in thin film production volumes and up to 10% decrease in electricity consumption (by 1 GWh) leading to an increase in net profits by 54%. In conclusion, if iSPCS was adopted by thin film manufacturers it would produce a profound impact on many industries reliant on thin films on a European and global level. Next steps: Thorough market analysis and an elaboration of a business plan is needed in order to define strategic commercialization. This feasability study will be a crucial step towards commercialisation of iSPCS and needs to be completed urgently due to current conditions of Nova Fabrica being the first company that offers such product and thus having an opportunity to expand quickly and establish in the market, in addition to contributing to the uptake of advanced manufacturing technologies by SMEs.


VIESOJI ISTAIGA LIETUVOS INOVACIJU CENTRAS

INtegrated Support of oPen Innovation pRofessionalization initiative

Current research and practice on Open Innovation (OI) has not given emphasis on the ability of SMEs to develop and implement OI strategies - the lessons learned from large firms are not readily transferable to their context. INSPIRE aims to thoroughly investigate how OI is managed and organised in SMEs in order to leverage and expand the existing scattered initiatives and professionalize their services. The project seeks to understand in depth good practices of OI in SMEs across Europe, including the barriers they experience, the critical success factors and the open innovation ‘pathways’ they follow. Good practices will be identified in all varieties of SMEs in terms of economic context, innovation trajectory (e.g. both high-tech and low-tech SMEs) and stage of lifetime. The understanding of good practices will allow the design, development and validation of an Integrated Toolbox for OI in SMEs to enable the professional management of OI by SMEs in various kinds of open innovation initiatives (e.g. facilitated by large corporations, private-public partnerships). The Toolbox will include good practices, indicators and management modules to support the internal innovation activities of an SME and their interaction with OI partners. The Toolbox will be modular and it will include three prototypical scenarios of usage that can be flexibly adjusted to individual needs of SMEs. The Integrated Toolbox will be developed as a web platform and it will be validated through a series of pilots in real life OI projects carried out by SMEs across Europe. Moreover, the project will develop a deployment plan for the Open Innovation System to initiate an EU-wide strategic engagement of innovation stakeholders and spread the practices of OI. The consortium includes a variety of competencies to access the whole Open Innovation chain across a range of geographical, economic and SMEs’ contexts and includes academics, practitioners and intermediaries working with SMEs on Open Innovation.


Delivering next generation Transport Management System to European transport SMEs

State-of-the-art Transport Management Systems conceived in modular approaches do not provide an all-in-one solution to answer SME business-related needs more broadly. To own a holistic TMS requires a long and expensive integration and customization process which makes TMSs not affordable by SMEs who generally lack resources for it. Additionally, none of the current solutions are able to gather real time data to support real time optimization decisions. At Ruptela we are committed to developing a new, highly competitive and integrated platform providing all the necessary information to transport SMEs and representing an affordable solution for them: INTRANSYS. INTRANSYS will use our award-winning fleet tracking and management platform TrustTrack as a foundation to integrate continuously updated traffic data, tracking services, rich communication with driver and eco-driving tools into a single cloud-based application. This real-time integration will allow transport companies to optimize operations on the go 24/7. As we will offer the system as an “all-inclusive” solution, we will drastically reduce the customization and set-up process both in terms of time and costs. We will achieve this goals by providing a SaaS based pricing model adapted to SME size and usage. INTRANSYS’ ease of use, combined with our extremely competitive pricing strategy opens the door for the widespread commercial adoption by SME transport companies who dominates the European transport market. Note that we will allow massive savings on European transport SMEs (up to 19% of all transportation processes) while contributing to the EC’s goal of forcing the reduction of CO2 emissions of the transport industry.


Energy Efficiency with Performance Guarantees in Private and Public Sector

Energy Performance Contracting (EPC) is a proven model for modernizing mostly public buildings by ESCOs with guaranteed energy and cost savings. Nevertheless, a broad roll-out of EPC is being prevented mainly because of two unresolved issues: the split incentives dilemma and the lack of adequately flexible contract models. The guarantEE project will address prevailing barriers to EPC in a team of 14 experienced partners, covering large parts of Europe in a mix of advanced and emerging ESCO markets. Based on a concise market analysis, guarantEE will develop innovative business and financing models addressing and overcoming the split incentives dilemma in performance based ESCO projects. This will be done by adequately sharing costs and benefits between user, building owner and ESCO (triple-win approach), thus opening up new project opportunities. Furthermore, EPC contract variants will be elaborated and tested, addressing the need for enhanced flexibility (e.g. exit clauses, simplified M&V, future energy market needs, storage). The target groups are public and – especially in advanced EPC markets – private sector clients. The developed models will be applied in 33 pilot projects involving private and public building owners. The project will achieve 78 GWh PE and 18000 tCO2 savings per year and will trigger investments of >11 M€. Particularly in emerging EPC markets, guarantEE will support market development by providing standards, an online EPC pre-check, good practice examples, EPC information and project facilitation for mainly municipal clients. Broad dissemination activities, including the European Energy Service Award, will maximise the project visibility. The project will address or consult at least 1000 building owners and EPC facilitators and will inform at least 2000 energy sector stakeholders on EPC. The guarantEE project will unlock additional EPC project opportunities, contribute to standardisation, and provide political advice and steps towards a common energy service market in Europe.


High throughput screening of single-cells using droplet microfluidics

Tackling heterogeneous cell populations at single-cell resolution is becoming increasingly important in different branches of biology and biomedicine. Many useful techniques have been developed to profile and even selectively purify single-cells, however, the demand for techniques with better analytical performance and improved high-throughput capabilities, remains very high. Droplet microfluidics can fulfill this demand by bringing higher throughput, scalability and single molecule resolution that are hard to achieve with conventional technologies. In this project, a droplet microfluidics platform will be developed and applied for ultra-high-throughput single-cell screening and sequencing. The project will be focused on B-cells that produce therapeutic antibodies or biomolecules of industrial interest. Cell compartmentalization into microfluidic droplets together with capture beads and barcoded DNA primers will enable a direct establishment of the linkage between the genotype (genes or mRNA) and phenotype (binding, regulatory or activity of secreted proteins). The proposed work will allow the quantitative high-throughput antibody phenotyping without loosing the original heavy-light chain pairing, a significant advantage over other technologies. Like no other system available to-date this the technological approach outlined in this proposal will provide a unique way to identify the primary sequence of heavy and light IgG genes encoding functional monoclonal antibodies directly from single-cells, without a need to perform gene cloning or cell immortalization. The results of this work are likely to bring a significant impact not only in applied biological sciences but also in biotechnology and biomedicine.


Optimising the management and sustainable use of forest genetic resources in Europe

The goal of GenTree is to provide the European forestry sector with better knowledge, methods and tools for optimising the management and sustainable use of forest genetic resources (FGR) in Europe in the context of climate change and continuously evolving demands for forest products and services. To reach its goal, GenTree will make scientific, technological and implementation breakthroughs in: (i) designing innovative strategies for dynamic conservation of FGR in European forests, (ii) broadening the range of FGR used by European breeding programmes, and (iii) preparing new forest management scenarios and policy frameworks fully integrating genetic conservation and breeding aspects, to adapt forests and forestry to changing environmental conditions and societal demands. GenTree focuses on economically and ecologically important tree species in Europe, growing in a wide range of habitats and covering different societal uses and values. The major outputs of GenTree will include: (i) much needed new scientific knowledge on phenotypic and genotypic diversity across environmental gradients in Europe, (ii) improved genotyping and phenotyping monitoring tools for practitioners, (iii) updated and refined data for information systems of in-situ and ex-situ FGR collections, (iv) innovative strategies for conservation, breeding and exchanging and using diversified forest reproductive material, (v) novel outreach and science-policy support tools to better integrate FGR concerns into forest management and better implement relevant international commitments in Europe. GenTree will improve the status and use of European in-situ and ex-situ FGR collections, support acquisition, conservation, characterisation, evaluation and use of relevant FGR in breeding and forestry practice and policy, will seek to harmonise, rationalise and improve management of existing collections and databases, and will strengthen the EU strategy for cooperation on FGR research and innovation.


ERA-NET for materials research and innovation

M-ERA.NET 2 aims at coordinating the research efforts of the participating EU Member States, Associated States and Regions as well as of selected global partners in materials research and innovation, including materials for low carbon energy technologies and related production technologies. A large network of 43 national and regional funding organisations from 23 EU Members States and Associated States and 5 countries outside Europe will implement joint calls to fund excellent innovative transnational RTD cooperation, including one call for proposals with EU co-funding and additional non-cofunded calls.  Continuing the activities started under the predecessor project M-ERA.NET (2/2012-1/2016), the M-ERA.NET 2 consortium will support relevant thematic areas, such as -for example- surfaces, coatings, composites, additive manufacturing or computational materials engineering. Research on materials enabling low carbon energy technologies will be particularly highlighted as a main target of the cofunded call (Call 2016) with a view to implementing relevant parts of the Materials Roadmap Enabling Low Carbon Energy Technologies (SEC(2011)1609), and relevant objectives of the SET-Plan (COM (2009)519). The appropriate scope of the cofunded call and the additional joint calls will be defined in cooperation with relevant stakeholders including national and regional RTD communities, the EC and the EMIRI (Energy Materials Industrial Research Initiative) as well as an external Strategic Experts Group. M-ERA.NET 2 will support the whole innovation chain, clarifying for each topic the appropriate Technology Readiness Levels (TRLs) to be addressed through the transnational RTD projects. The consortium will be aware of the TRLs which are covered by the EC through Horizon 2020 topics as well as by other schemes. Gaps will be identified and M-ERA.NET 2 will aim at offering a complementary support scheme.


Mass-customization of implants: the business model

The key objectives of the innovation project are: 1. Develop software systems for the technology platform managing and control to enable transition from the singular CMI & PSI production to their mass customization to make design, production and validation processes much more efficient in terms of production costs and lead terms. 2. Develop a technology platform for the cardinal new implant supply chain, based on direct communication between surgeons and personalized implant manufacturers. It includes development of instrumental 3D software tools supporting participation of surgeons in product configuration workflow, design and validation processes and software systems for all the processes management and control. Specific objectives for the feasibility study are: 1. Analysis of technological viability of mass customization of medical implants business model concept; 2. Analysis of economic viability of the business model concept; 3. Freedom to operate analysis; 4. Market and competition environment analysis; 5. Analysis of the product supply and distribution systems (include hidden interests analysis); 6. Preparation of the elaborated business plan.