Monitoring of Environmental Practices for Sustainable Agriculture Supported by Earth Observation

ENVISION aims to fulfil the need for continuous and systematic monitoring of agricultural land, shifting the focus from fragmented monitoring limited to specific fields and dates to territory-wide and all-year-round monitoring.  It will make use of heterogeneous types of available data (EO-based, in situ, open data, and historical on-field check data) and state-of-the-art technologies and methodologies (automatic pixel/texture/object oriented change detection and classification methods, machine learning, data fusion, multi-source and multi-temporal data management) for providing a fully-automated and scalable toolbox of services, built in close interaction with its future customers. ENVISION will fully exploit the wealth of data made available through GEOSS and Copernicus and its synergetic use with other data to develop data products such as: Cultivated crop type maps; Soil Organic Carbon; Vegetation status; Crop growth (distinction of organic – conventional farming); Grassland mowing/ploughing; Soil erosion. The ENVISION toolbox will be comprised of: a monitoring service of sustainable agricultural practices, tools that PAs & CBs can provide to farmers for adhering to environmentally friendly agricultural practices, an Add-on Development Tool. The project will be tested and validated in a pre-operational environment by potential future customers of its products and services. ENVISION will have three categories of business cases (Monitoring of: multiple environmental and climate requirements of CAP, soil condition, organic farming requirements) and will also be tested by a group of Lighthouse Customers. A market analysis, business model experimentation techniques and appropriate decision-making tools will determine the commercially viable business models for the services and products of ENVISION, and define alternative business models, understand their implications and identify those that will create the greatest value.


Scaling up entrepreneurial hubs to Europe

The aim of the innovation action STARTUP SCALEUP is to build a European ecosystem around four consolidated entrepreneurial ecosystems in Spain (Cloud Incubator HUB), the Netherlands (Crosspring Lab), Lithuania (Open Coffee Club) and Ireland (The Ryan Academy) and the largest social network for startups in the European Union (F6S), in order to provide a greater range and quality of services to ambitious entrepreneurs who want to launch and grow companies focused on the Internet of Things and Services (IoTS). These four ecosystems, who have a track record and complementary strengths, will be able to support startups by enhancing the basic business skills of the entrepreneurs to strengthen the business sense of their startups,testing the soundness of technological concept and its uniqueness in the market, providing early exposure to EU market access, enabling talent matching and providing Venture Capital groups and other financiers with access to a critical mass of startups.  To achieve this aim under the call topic (ICT-13-2014, web entrepreneurship), the STARTUP SCALEUP will: • Analyse which of their current services are best-in-class, assess which of these can be offered on a non-local scale and then design and implement a new service model to their entrepreneurs.  • Set up an online platform for mentoring, networking and training through which the ecosystem members can share knowledge, experience, and contacts to support the startups, transcending geographical, cultural and resouce-related barriers.  • Generate awareness and interest in STARTUP SCALEUP by developing a specific communication strategy that enables us to to attract the most talented startups to the ecosystem, pull in resources and  publicize the activities of the ecosystem • Run two sequential acceleration programmes in order to create IoTS-based companies and the validate and readjust the STARTUP SCALEUP ecosystem and services.  • Set up a dissemination plan to maximize the expected project impact.

Leadership in enabling and industrial technologies (LEIT)


Trustable architectures with acceptable residual risk for the electric, connected and automated cars

Independent validation is fundamental to emphasise the capability and safety of any solution in the electric, connected and automated (ECA) vehicles space. It is vital that appropriate and audited testing takes place in a controlled environment before any deployment takes place. As the software and hardware components come from multiple vendors and integrate in numerous ways, the various levels of validation required must be fully understood and integration with primary and secondary parts must be considered.    The key targets of ArchitectECA2030 are the robust mission-validated traceable design of electronic components and systems (ECS), the quantification of an accepted residual risk of ECS for ECA vehicles to enable type approval, and an increased end-user acceptance due to more reliable and robust ECS. The proposed methods include automatic built-in safety measures in the electronic circuit design, accelerated testing, residual risk quantification, virtual validation, and multi-physical and stochastic simulations.    The project will implement a unique in-vehicle monitoring device able to measure the health status and degradation of the functional electronics empowering model-based safety prediction, fault diagnosis, and anomaly detection. A validation framework comprised of harmonized methods and tools able to handle quantification of residual risks using data different sources (e.g. monitoring devices, sensor/actuators, fleet observations) is provided to ultimately design safe, secure, and reliable ECA vehicles with a well-defined, quantified, and acceptable residual risk across all ECS levels. The project brings together stakeholders from ECS industry, standardization and certification bodies (e.g. ISO, NIST, TUEV), test field operators, insurance companies, and academia closely interacting with ECSEL lighthouse initiative Mobility.E to align and influence emerging standards and validation procedures for ECA vehicles.


Horizon 2020: H2020-SGA-INFRA-GEANT-2018 (Topic [a] Research and Education Networking)

The GN4-3 is the proposed project for the third Specific Grant Agreement under the 68-month Framework Partnership Agreement (FPA) established between the GÉANT Consortium and the European Commission in April 2015. This third phase of implementing the FPA is proposed to last 48 months and is a natural continuation of the work in GN4-2, building on the results and maintaining the overall objective of helping to raise European research to the next level, promoting scientific excellence, access and re-use of research data.  GÉANT’s world-class, high-speed backbone provides seamless and secure connectivity with 42 National Research and Education Networks (NRENs), reaching over 50 million users in 10,000 institutions across Europe, and more than 100 countries worldwide through links with other regions. The core backbone is capable of multiple 100 Gbps transmission over each fibre link, and Terabit connectivity can be achieved by a single node. The safe and rapid connection of users to each other, to the increasing amounts of data generated by research, and to the high-performance computing capacity required by collaborative research form the foundation of the GÉANT partnership. GÉANT services offer convenient, fast and reliable access to European High Performance Computing facilities, cloud services for the research and education community, access to scientific data and publications and other services from the European e-infrastructure providers, whenever and wherever needed.  The structure of the present proposal emphasises updating existing services in line with requirements of the user community. This complements the proposed companion project GN4-3N, an ambitious programme increasing the footprint of the backbone network at the same time as improving its capacity, resilience and flexibility with the aim of offering 100Gbps network access to many more GÉANT partners and significantly diminish the digital divide.


Perovskite Thin-film Photovoltaics (PERTPV)

Solid state lead halide perovskites have recently emerged as the latest thin-film photovoltaic device class. High power conversion efficiencies (22 %) and stabilities (> 1000 hours at 80 ˚C under 1 sun illumination) have been obtained using lab scale processes and small area cells (<1cm2). The building blocks of the perovskite materials are very low cost and the processing into the final perovskite thin-film can be achieved with low temperature fast processes. This makes these materials very cost efficient, and promises to deliver a future PV technology with a levelled cost of electricity (LCOE) below that of existing mainstream PV. There has been much advancement with combining perovskite with silicon cells, to deliver a “tandem” junction cell with much higher efficiency than either sub-cell. Although this perovskite-on-silicon  approach is likely to deliver the first perovskite PV products, it restricts the manufacturing and module format to wafer based, and hence misses out on the real promise of ultimate high volume manufacturing via large area sheet-to-sheet or reel-to-reel coating. Within PERTPV we will advance the perovskite thin-film PV technology to the next level by undertaking a “double pronged” drive on both performance (efficiency and stability) and the development of scalable device and module fabrication methodologies, compatible with high volume manufacturing. Our consortium consists of the leading academic groups in perovskite PV research, in addition to research companies, and 3 commercial partners at appropriately complementary stages in the value chain (Technology driver, materials supplier and equipment supplier). In addition to our ambitions target of surpassing 30% power conversion efficiency in a thin film all-perovskite tandem cell, and delivering a certifiably stable module technology, we will also perform full life cycle analysis and ensure a safe means to undertake mass deployment and recycling of the Perovskite PV modules.


VIESOJI ISTAIGA VIESOSIOS POLITIKOSIR VADYBOS INSTITUTAS

Big DATA approaches FOR improved monitoring of research and innovation performance and assessment of the societal IMPACT in the Health, Demographic Change and Wellbeing Societal Challenge

Recent technological developments in data mining, data treatment and data analysis have been rapid and far reaching, offering new dimensions and opportunities for performance analytics in various domains. The introduction of new technologies and initiatives, including open access mechanisms and social media/online media, has been generating increasing volumes of new data on the research domain. Data4Impact aims to capitalise on these developments and utilise big data approaches to improve the monitoring of research and innovation performance and assessment of the societal impact in the Health, Demographic Change and Wellbeing Societal Challenge. The project has he following main objectives: a) define, develop, analyse and disseminate new indicators for assessing the performance of EU and national research and innovation systems; b) explore and collect “big” data on health-related societal challenges at input, throughput, output/result and impact levels; c) employ big data approaches to yield more data on the societal impact of national and EU funding on tackling health-related societal challenges; d) engage stakeholders in the project activities, validate the project results and develop new indicators and tools using a hands-on approach. It will do so by developing a robust conceptual model addressing all key stages of the innovation process; mining large volumes of data on research results and impacts; and analysis of these data using topic modelling, machine learning and other techniques aimed at natural language processing. The Data4Impact consortium possesses specialist knowledge of the health domain & indicator systems, and is uniquely placed to mine data and apply big data approaches thanks to the partner’s long-standing involvement in OA e-infrastructures and big data analytics. Through these objectives, activities and competences Data4Impact addresses both key issues described in the specific CO-CREATION-08-2016-2017 call.

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


BALTIJOS PAZANGIU TECHNOLOGIJU 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.


Sentinels-based Agriculture Information Service Component

The current project will focus on development of an open-source Sentinels-based Agriculture Information Service (SAGRIS) software component integrated into operational open-source Farmos.org agricultural record keeping software powering a commercial FARMIER service (http://www.farmier.com). SAGRIS module will provide FARMIER service (and potentially other open-source projects) with operational monitoring updates on dynamics of solar irradiation and surface temperature, development of grassland and crops biomass, soil and vegetation wetness, vegetation age and stress indications, geo-location and mapping of “problematic” patches, assessment of drainage systems and operational, delivery of status updates. Our service is targeting small-to-medium-size traditional farms offering a low cost complex decision support service with on-line tools for record-keeping and analysis, planning of farming activities, measurements of physical conditions with inexpensive ground sensors, observation and conditioning of crops by satellite imagery and simple solutions for adapt standard hardware for smart-farming practices. FARMIER and SAGRIS open-source projects will offer benefits of freely available modern Earth observation data products to a large number of traditional farms in a simple and affordable, but appealing and practically useful form to support sustainable “smart farming” practices not only with statistical and geo-spatial information, but also best practice examples along with simple and affordable hardware solutions (sensors, extensions, etc.) to increase efficiency and profitability without investing into sophisticated precision farming solutions and raise competitiveness of many sustainable and ecological farms facing global challenges caused by industrial food production, turbulent markets and climate change. The service will be initially distributed in Europe and the US.


PJ32-W3-01 Virtual Centre - Complement of PJ10-W2-93 Delegation of airspace amongst Air Traffic Service Units (ATSUs). While PJ10 W2-93 addresses the ATC aspects of airspace delegation amongst ATSUs, this solution will further investigate the Air Traffic Flow and Capacity Management (ATFCM) aspects of such airspace delegation amongst ATSUs.  This proposal addresses also the need to develop the technical infrastructure to support the validation activities planned by SESAR2020 Wave 2 solution PJ10-W2-93 on the ATC aspects of airspace delegation amongst ATSUs and the validation activities required on the ATFCM aspects of airspace delegation amongst ATSUs.


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.


Supporting and Implementing Plans for Gender Equality in Academia and Research

SPEAR will initiate institutional change in nine European research performing organizations (RPOs) by implementing gender equality plans. Despite numerous EU-wide projects aimed at improving gender equality (GE) in academia, challenges persist, and GE practitioners and change agents experience fatigue and lack of support structures. SPEAR offers supportive structures through its interconnected Community of Learning (CoL) and Community of Practice (CoP). CoL will provide learning platforms while CoP provides an arena for experience exchanges. Both are crucial to successful and sustainable implementation of gender equality plans (GEPs), a key instrument to improving GE. SPEAR’s central objective is to support and implement GEPs, based on a step-by-step guide to GEP implementation devised by the European Institute for Gender Equality, through following a methodological path committed to creative, open, mitigating, processual, accountable, SMART and sustainable changes (SPEAR’s COMPASS). Integral to SPEAR’s project design is an enhanced impartial evaluation scheme to boost the feedback and learning of participants throughout the project. SPEAR employs strategic dissemination to boost its central sustainability commitment during and after SPEAR.  SPEAR’s consortium numbers eleven partners, three of which have some experience with GE work while six have little or no experience. The first three will coordinate sessions during CoL and provide crucial support and best-practice guidance during structured interactions in CoP. Two task partners handle evaluation and dissemination. An advisory group representing key GE-stakeholders is affiliated.  SPEAR aims to foster sustainability in GE-practices in academia through a range of measures and outcomes, including ties to other EU-based GE projects, network and community building within and beyond SPEAR, and formulation of practicable policy recommendations.

Promote gender equality in research and innovation


A fundamental challenge in design research today is to define the design programs that suggest how we can turn our days scientific knowledge and technical development into design for new forms of living that will provide foundations for a more sustainable way of life. Through a cross-disciplinary and cross-national network in architecture, textiles and interaction design the consortium will build and train a new research community to take on this challenge in practice based design research from a broader perspective, in collaboration between academia and the private sector, combining areas of design where Europe by tradition have a very strong  position. The proposed ArcInTex ETN aims to strengthen the foundations of design for new forms of more sustainable ways of living by connecting architecture, textiles and interaction design in a training network for Early stage researchers. Deepening connections between textile,  architectural and interaction design will open up for new reflective foundations of the design for living in an age of technological innovations, designing for adaptive and responsive environments connecting the scales of the body, the interior and the building. By a combination of in depth specialization, collaborative project work training and company internship, the ESRs of the network will form a highly trained avant-garde ready to take on fundamental challenges both in academia and in the private sector building their work practice on new ideas of material thinking and design thinking with emphasis on sensitive design expressions for reflective living. By strong focus on practice based design research the ETN will contribute to further establish design research at a level similar to that of engineering science in areas of special importance for the design of our future ways of living, which is crusial for academia and private sector collaboration in the given areas of design research.


KLAIPEDOS MIESTO 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.


Law, Science and Technology Joint Doctorate: Rights of the Internet of Everything

Internet of Everything (IoE) is one of the major technological trends, going beyond the ongoing Internet of Things era focused only on connecting devices. IoE looks at the connection of devices, persons and data via processes: “IoE connects the unconnected with ever-smarter technology. It brings people together with process, data, and things.” If on the one hand it is considered as a huge opportunity estimated at 19b$ it presents new complexities and risks for our life and economy. The big data is an essential pillar of the IoE . Thus, including more explicitly persons and data concerning them, IoE cannot be limited to engineering and computer science, but is a topic that needs to be investigated with scientific interdisciplinary researches under different perspectives: technical, legal, economical, ethical, philosophical point of view: it “involves a complex and evolving set of technological, social, and policy considerations across a diverse set of stakeholders.” Privacy, Intellectual Proprietary Rights, Data Ownership, Super-control of people behavior, Fundamental Rights, Ethical principles are critical issues that could determine the success of IoE in the market . Algorithms which are at the core of the devices all around us, expected to be tens of billions in 2020, must be governed. IoE is already entering the H2020 work programme even if only the IoT is mentioned in the calls. The attention to nontechnological aspects is reflected in the H2020 objectives ICT-35-2016 of LEIT and REV-INEQUAL-09-2017 of SC5 focus on the need of including SSH sciences for a critical analysis of the problems raised by pervasive technologies. However, if research projects are a way to face these problems, the needed competences are lacking, since they are highly interdisciplinary and, from the legal point of view, they require an international perspective. For these reasons we present a MSCA-ITN European Joint Doctorate proposal.


VALSTYBINIS MOKSLINIU TYRIMU INSTITUTAS FIZINIU IR TECHNOLOGIJOS MOKSLU CENTRAS

Energy losses in nitride light-emitting diodes

Light-emitting diodes (LEDs) are the future of lighting for general-purpose and industrial applications because of their potentially superior efficiencies. Group-III nitrides are the principal materials used to manufacture blue and green LEDs. However, they are still rather inefficient, despite a lot of research efforts. Increasing the efficiency and reducing the cost of LEDs is currently the question of paramount importance.  Nonradiative recombination at lattice defects is one of the main causes of reduced efficiencies. Direct experiments to determine the cause of nonradiative recombination are nearly impossible. This clearly calls for accurate theoretical modelling of nonradiative recombination in group-III nitride devices. A first-principles model will not only yield new knowledge about energy losses in nitride LEDs, but will also provide new insights into ways to improve device efficiencies. This is the main goal of the current Marie Skłodowska-Curie project.  The researcher, dr. Audrius Alkauskas, will be returning to Europe after 3.5 years in the USA. He will be employed in the Centre for Physical Sciences and Technology (FTMC), under the supervision of prof. Gintaras Valušis. During the project the researcher will become an independent group leader, and grow as a specialist in semiconductor physics via a close collaboration with his colleagues in Lithuania and abroad.


VIESOJI ISTAIGA FIZIKOS INSTITUTO MOKSLO IR TECHNOLOGIJU PARKAS

One-Stop-Shop Open Access to  Photonics Innovation Support for a Digital Europe

PhotonHub Europe will establish a single pan-EU Photonics Innovation Hub which integrates the best-in-class photonics technologies, facilities, expertise and experience of 53 partners from all over Europe, including the coordinators of EU pilot lines and local photonics hubs representing 18 regions, as a one-stop-shop solution offering a comprehensive range of supports to industry for the accelerated uptake and deployment of photonics. PhotonHub will provide European companies, in particular “non-photonics” SMEs and mid-caps that are first users and early adopters of photonics, with open access and guided orienteering to the following key support services: training and upskilling opportunities within PhotonHub’s Demo and Experience Centres throughout Europe and enhanced by digital tools for online learning; “test before invest” innovation support capabilities to engage with companies on highly collaborative Innovation Projects aimed at TRL acceleration from prototyping (TRL3-4) to upscaling (TRL5-6) to manufacturing (TRL7-8), and complemented by targeted business and IP advisory supports; and support to find investment through investment-readiness coaching and investor match-making organised in collaboration with major regional and European venture fora and deep tech Investor Days. PhotonHub will uniquely support cross-border innovation activities of European companies, while simultaneously working closely with the local photonics hubs to develop and roll out best practices of the “lighthouse” regions for ongoing regional financial support of SME innovation activities and to support the creation of new innovation hubs covering most regions of Europe. Finally, PhotonHub will fine-tune and implement its business plan for long-term sustainability in the form of the PhotonHub Europe Association as a durable entity which is deeply rooted within the wider ecosystem of local, regional and EU-DIHs for maximum leverage and impact on European competitiveness and sovereignty.


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.

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


For a completely working Digital Single Market, effectively enabling the cross-border exercise by citizens and businesses of their Single Market rights, Member States must address several challenges on delivering better services. DE4A is a Member State-driven pilot, aligned with strategic eGovernment Action Plan 2016-2020 and EIF Implementation Strategy and with full regulatory compliance (SDGR, GDPR, eIDAS, Services Directive…), establishing a culture of co-creation, transparency, accountability and trustworthiness. Its goal is facilitating migration towards European Digital Public Services co-delivered across borders, across sectors and with different participants, reinforcing trust in public institution, and unleashing multiple measurable positive impacts on efficiency gains and reduction of administrative burden and costs. Starting from needs and capacities of Member States, DE4A’s scalable, holistic, flexible approach focuses on high-quality fully online procedures accessible through the SDG by building on an extended interoperability Toolbox and on state-of-the-art. It enables an open and comprehensive environment and platform for collaboration and innovation, leveraging common eGov baseline patterns for secure, privacy-preserving and trustworthy realisation of essential Once-Only and Relevant-Only principles, and with re-use of existing and new building blocks and Digital Service Infrastructures at national and EU-wide levels. Innovative technologies like blockchain, machine learning, self-emerging ontologies and zero-knowledge proofs will be addressed for effective sharing of common services. Pilots involving secure access to key administrative procedures of real life and business events, shall highlight aspects of the technical ecosystem available for the SDG implementation, prove their technical viability and gauge the performance and degree in which non-functional requirements can be accommodated. DE4A includes 27 partners and has a duration of three year


Main idea is to allow individual users and urban communities in remote (isolated) areas to benefit from a local low carbon economy. The project will enable the communities and individual users to participate in the smart grid context, it will develop an intelligent storage solution optimizing the communities demand and supply. The solution will be scalable towards size of the community (30-10.000 households) and their capacity of renewable energy generation and available storage capacity (i.e. number of EV´s). It will:  Scale up of cheap and more environmental friendly storage solution for medium/ low voltages  It will mitigate on electricity poverty related to the intermittent generation of renewable electricity  Development of the business model between community and local and national renewable energy generation.   Flatten the peak demands to Distribution System Operators (DSO´s)/ Energy Service Companies (ESCo´s) network  Development of the local smart charging model (for the EV´s) for the community to reduce peak demands  (optional) Research on new needs of communication protocols between end users (smart meters, EV) with storage solution and / or retailer in line with Expert Group of the SMGT


VILNIAUS MIESTO SAVIVALDYBES ADMINISTRACIJA

Citizens Acting on Mitigation Pathways through Active Implementation of a Goal-setting Network

Climate change is a human problem, caused by humans, affecting humans, and requiring a human-centric solution. CAMPAIGNers aims to make low-carbon lifestyles a major part of the solution by identifying lifestyle transformation potential, and associated barriers and enablers across 5 continents and 16 major cities with over 20 mil. residents. Feasible pathways to GHG mitigation are developed to include the empirically validated lifestyle changes, and are applied to the principal integrated modelling tools used in the EU to provide robust insights into the system-level impacts of large-scale lifestyle transformation.  CAMPAIGNers builds on previous consortium-led projects that substantially improved the understanding of societal structures and interventions that encourage lifestyle shifts, and identified limitations to the existing evidence-base. Namely, current lifestyle transformation research is either limited to narrow, specific contexts or groups, or deals in hypothetical behaviours where most citizens do not have real experiences to draw on.  CAMPAIGNers’ ground-breaking approach overcomes these drawbacks by implementing a ‘goal-setting network’, where over 100,000 citizens receive and create challenges to try out tailored adaptations to their daily routines via an engaging app. Their responses to these challenges, associated treatments, and short questionnaires will deliver unprecedented data of behavioural processes, (local) barriers to change, and motivators, allowing for empirically-based scientific support of cities in crafting policies to encourage low-carbon lifestyles.   Together with local, national and EU policy makers insights are analysed regarding the ‘right-level-to-act’ and policy-ready recommendations are jointly derived. A workshop in the EU Parliament, hosted by First-Vice President Ms. McGuinness, and supported by 9 more MEPs from 6 countries and 4 political parties, will ensure high-level feedback and contribute to consensus building.

Climate action, environment, resource efficiency and raw materials


Advancing Tools for Human Early Lifecourse Exposome Research and Translation

ATHLETE aims to develop a toolbox of advanced, next-generation, exposome tools and a prospective exposome cohort, which will be used to systematically quantify the effects of a wide range of community-level and individual-level environmental risk factors on mental, cardiometabolic, and respiratory health outcomes and associated biological pathways during the first 2 decades of life, to implement acceptable and feasible exposome interventions, and to translate the resulting evidence to policy recommendations and prevention strategies. ATHLETE will establish a prospective exposome cohort, including FAIR data infrastructure, building on Europe’s most comprehensive already existing exposome data (15 cohorts in 10 European countries). ATHLETE will systematically characterise the effects of the exposome on early organ development, health trajectories, and biological pathways (metagenomic, metabolomic, epigenetic, ageing, and stress pathways), longitudinally from early pregnancy through adolescence. Innovative tool development will focus on: 1) complete and accurate measurement of multiple environmental risk factors (external/urban, chemical, physical, behavioural, social) through new targeted and untargeted exposure science approaches, 2) development of advanced statistical and toxicological strategies to analyse complex multi-dimensional exposome data, 3) development of interventions to reduce personal exposures, co-produced with the community, and 4) estimation of the societal impact of the exposome by calculating costs and child health impacts. ATHLETE’s strong focus on the vulnerable early stages of the life course, widespread general population exposures and common non-communicable diseases, its use of a large body of existing exposome data and expertise, its strong emphasis on knowledge translation, its development of an open online toolbox and its close collaboration in the European Human Exposome Network ensure that the objectives are achievable and highly relevant for future research and policy. ATHLETE is part of the European Human Exposome Network comprised of 9 projects selected from this same call.

Health, demographic change and wellbeing


Robotics with and for Society – Boosting Widespread Adoption of Robotics in Europe

The aim of Robotics4EU is to ensure a more widespread adoption of (AI-based) robots in healthcare, inspection and maintenance of infrastructure, agri-food, and agile production. It will be reached through the implementation of the responsible robotics principles among the robotics community that results in societal acceptance of the robotics solutions in application areas. Robotics4EU will create and empower the EU-wide responsible robotics community representing robotics innovators from companies and academia in the fields of healthcare, inspection and maintenance of infrastructure, agri-food, and agile production as well as citizens/users and policy/decision makers by rising awareness about non-technological aspects of robotics (ethics, legal, socioeconomic, data, privacy, gender) by organising community building and co-creation events bringing together robotics community and citizens, advocating for the responsible robotics among all stakeholder groups, incl. policy makers, developing a responsible robotics maturity assessment model and bringing the project results to the standardization bodies. Robotics4EU will implement the following set of activities: 1) assessing the needs and developing a responsible robotics maturity assessment model that is a practical tool for the robotics developers and helps them to strategically plan and the uptake of the legal, societal and ethical aspects of robotics; 2) empowering the robotics community by organising capacity building events in healthcare, agri-food, agile production and infrastructure; 3) assessing robotics ideas and applications provided by the industry with end-users (via online consultation and co-creation workshops); 4) reaching out to the policy makers by compiling a responsible robotics advocacy report, organising a high-level policy debate and transferring the results to the standardization bodies.


PERSPEKTYVINIU TECHNOLOGIJU TAIKOMUJU TYRIMU INSTITUTAS

CoSt redUction and enhanced PERformance of PV systems

SUPER PV is pursuing an ambitious bus realistic goal for innovative PV system cost reduction and consequently significant LCOE reduction (26%-37%) by adopting hybrid approach combining technological innovations and Data Management methods along the PV value chain. To achieve that, key actions will be implemented at three main levels within the PV value chain: PV module innovation level, power electronics innovation level and system integration level. To ensure fast uptake of the project results by industry, state of the art modules (c-Si and flexible CIGS) and power electronics products were utilised for adopting innovations developed by research centres. For cost reduction in system integration and operation, Digitalization and Data Management solutions based on Industry 4.0 approach will be adopted following successful utilization of Building Information Modelling approach in the construction sector. Selected for uptake innovations will be compatible with existing manufacturing technological processes thus reducing impact on Cost of Ownership and ensuring attractiveness of proposed technologies for PV manufacturers.  Prototype SUPER PV systems will be produced in industrial environments and tested in different (including harsh) climate conditions to evaluate cost efficiency and demonstrate competitiveness of the proposed solutions. On the basis of test results, business cases for technologies under consideration will be performed, plans for production and market replication will be prepared. Project activities will be complemented by wide training and dissemination campaign ensuring highest visibility and social impact of the project activities.  By delivering to the market SUPERior PV products, the project will have twofold impact on EU PV sector:  1. Will create conditions for accelerated large scale deployment of PV in Europe for both utility (non-urban) and residential (urban) scenarios and  2. Will help EU PV businesses to regain leadership on world market.


Methodologies for Researcher Led INnovations

MERLIN aims to support ICT researchers, SMEs and startups across to realise the full potential and impact of their research and development outputs by crafting them into innovations and achieving market validation using modern needs-first, market-led methodologies like Business Model Canvas, Customer Discovery, Lean Hardware, etc. The project will provide training, networking and follow-on support through 43 practical workshops, 4 webinars (on SME growth and PPP business models), 5 international conference workshops and 8 meetups with potential customers and commercial partners. MERLIN will have over 1250 attendees at in-person workshops and meetups across the four principal nodes of Madrid (ES), Vilnius (LT), Poznań (PL) and Cambridge (UK) and the secondary nodes of Berlin (DE), Warsaw (PL), Tallinn (EE), Bucharest (RO), international webinars and international ICT conferences in Europe. For sustainability, and to increase the participants’ success in bringing to market their innovation, MERLIN will integrate participants with existing national (e.g. Innovate UK, Enterprise Ireland, CDTI) and European initiatives (Startup Europe, ERDF, EFSI, etc.) designed to support early entrepreneurship, product development, market access, seed financing and microfinancing for continued support on their journey to market validation and company growth. The project will also identify and promote high-potential innovators through attendance at Startup Europe events to access other European startup ecosystems, entrepreneurs, investors and accelerators. These activities will see over 160 new business model canvases developed, 1040 individual 1-on-1s with potential commercial customers, serial entrepreneurs and business angels, 250 applications to regional, national and international support actions and the creation of 30 new ventures in the lifetime of the project with an anticipated further 60-100 in the following 3 years’ post project, creating over 1200 jobs in the medium-term.


VALSTYBES SIENOS APSAUGOS TARNYBA PRIE VIDAUS REIKALU MINISTERIJOS

aN Enhanced pre-frontier intelligence picture to Safeguard The EurOpean boRders

For the past few years, Europe has experienced some major changes at its surrounding territories and in adjacent countries which provoked serious issues at different levels. The European Community faces a number of challenges both at a political and at a tactical level. Irregular migration flows exerting significant pressure to the relevant authorities and agencies that operate at border territories. Armed conflicts, climate pressure and unpredictable factors occurring at the EU external borders, have increased the number of the reported transnational crimes. Smuggling activity is a major concern for Eastern EU Borders particularly, as monitoring the routes used by smugglers is being hindered by mountainous, densely forested areas and rough lands aside with sea or river areas. Due to the severity and the abrupt emergence of events, the relevant authorities operate for a long-time interval, under harsh conditions, 24 hours a day. NESTOR aims to demonstrate a fully functional next generation holistic border surveillance system providing pre-frontier situational awareness beyond maritime and land border areas following the concept of the European Integrated Border Management. NESTOR long-range and wide area surveillance capabilities for detection, recognition classification and tracking of moving targets (e.g. persons, vessels, vehicles, drones etc.) is based on optical, thermal imaging and Radio Frequency (RF) spectrum analysis technologies fed by an interoperable sensors network including stationary installations and mobile manned or unmanned vehicles (aerial, ground, water, underwater) capable of functioning both as standalone, tethered and in swarms. NESTOR BC3i system will fuse in real-time border surveillance data combined with web and social media information, creating and sharing a pre-frontier intelligent picture to local, regional and national command centers in AR environment being interoperable with CISE and EUROSUR.

Secure societies - Protecting freedom and security of Europe and its citizens


The Integrated Initiative of European Laser Research Infrastructures

LASERLAB-EUROPE is the European consortium of major national laser research infrastructures, covering advanced laser science and applications in most domains of research and technology, with particular emphasis on areas with high industrial and social impact, such as bio- and nanophotonics, material analyses, biology and medicine.  Recently the field of advanced lasers has experienced remarkable advances and breakthroughs in laser technologies and novel applications. Laser technology is a key innovation driver for highly varied applications and products in many areas of modern society, thereby substantially contributing to economic growth. Through its strategic approach, LASERLAB-EUROPE aims to strengthen Europe’s leading position and competitiveness in this key area. It facilitates the coordination of laser research activities within the European Research Area by integrating major facilities in most European member states with a long-term perspective and providing concerted and efficient services to researchers in science and industry. The main objectives of LASERLAB-EUROPE are to: •	promote, in a coordinated way and on a European scale, the use of advanced lasers and laser-based technologies for research and innovation,  •	serve a cross-disciplinary user community, from academia as well as from industry, by providing access to a comprehensive set of advanced key laser research installations, •	increase the European basis of human resources in the field of lasers by training new users, including users in new domains of science and technology and from geographical regions of Europe where laser user communities are still less developed,   •	improve human and technical resources through technology exchange and sharing of expertise among laser experts and operators across Europe, and through coordinated Joint Research Activities enabling world-class research, innovations and applications beyond the present state-of-the-art.


Innovative diagnostic and eHealth monitoring system for diabetic foot complications

In 2014 422 million adults in the world suffered from diabetes, and the increasingly sedentary ways of life will contribute to the “growth” of this disease. Diabetic foot ulcers (DFUs) are one of the most common complications of diabetes, accounting for most of diabetic patients’ hospitalization, and being the direct cause for 50% of all non-traumatic amputations. This also implies substantial healthcare costs: compared with “healthy” diabetic patients, the cost of care for patients with a foot ulcer is 5.4 times higher, and across the EU, ulcer complications’ care adds 7- 10 € billion to direct yearly costs.  Early diagnosis can have a significant impact on decreasing the impact of DFUs. However, this is not a simple task, as current methods for the diagnosis of DFUs rely only on foot inspection by doctors and decades-old microbiological techniques. Therefore, there is an urgent need for technologies that enable early diagnosis of DFUs so as to minimise their consequences.  FeetWell™ is the response to this need: a user-friendly device based on the merging of different monitoring technologies (IR Thermography, Ultrasonography and Dermatoscopy) to facilitate early detection of microvascular and macrovascular foot complications. Moreover, as it is a simple to use device, it will empower patients, making them less reliant on doctor visits and increasing their engagement into their self-care.  Feetwell is a strategic project for our company, Metis Baltic, as it will enable us to bridge the gap between previous R&D projects and launch ourselves into the medical diagnostic tools’ market as the developers of the 1st automated diabetic foot inspection device on the market, by 2020 reaching revenues of €16.5 million by 2022, with a ROI of 2.2, and multiplying by 10 our staff. But Feetwell will not only benefit our company, but it will also contribute to reducing the impact of DFUs on EU healthcare systems.


YOUCOUNT - EMPOWERING YOUTH AND COCREATING SOCIAL INNOVATIONS AND POLICYMAKING THROUGH YOUTH-FOCUSED CITIZEN SOCIAL SCIENCE

In Europe, and globally, substantial numbers of young people are at risk of social exclusion, and there is therefore a pressing need to develop more knowledge and innovation to create more inclusive and youth-friendly societies. Citizen social science might contribute to these needs, but the actual outcomes of citizen social science and its innovative potential is uncertain.    YOUCOUNT will therefore, through cocreative youth citizen social science (Y-CSS) including youths in the age of 15- 29 years as citizen scientists, produce new knowledge of positive drivers for social inclusion of youth at risk of exclusion, and cocreate innovations and policy-making. Moreover, to provide evidence of the actual outcomes of Y-CSS through hands on citizen science activities.   The project includes four substudies: 1) Development of a framework for Y-CSS together with a transdisciplinary consortium and multilevel platform of key experts and stakeholders in a European and international setting. 2) Implementation of a multiple case study of Y-CSS projects in nine countries across Europe where over 900 young citizen scientists and nine local living labs will cocreate innovations together. 3) Mixed-methods evaluation of the outcomes and impact of the Y-CSS activities, and a multi-criteria assessment of the costs and benefits of Y-CSS, and 4) Creation of social and scientific impact through widespread scaling up and continuity. These activities will lead to robust knowledge and scientifically reasoned measures to promote Y-CSS and social change. The project will support dissemination and education in Y- CSS, and make synergies with other CS related projects and initiatives, in particularly with citizen social science.

Science with and for Society - Cross-theme


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.


FLAG-ERA, the Flagship ERA-NET, gathers national and regional funding organisation with the goal of supporting, together with the European Commission, the FET Flagship initiatives and more generally the FET Flagship programme. Most funding organisations in Europe participate, either directly or as associated members. FLAG-ERA contributes to the construction of the two Flagship initiatives on Graphene and Human Brain research, through a range of activities such as the launch of joint calls supporting transnational projects in synergy with the Flagships, contribution to the Flagship partnering framework, identification of potential partnering projects, information on funding opportunities for the Flagships, and networking events. The activities in FLAG-ERA are organised around periodic events gathering all stakeholders and structured in sessions dedicated to the various objectives and related tasks of the project. FLAG-ERA II is the second ERA-NET project, implemented as an ERA-NET Cofund, starting in December 2016 for a period of 6 years, following the first FLA-ERA ERA-NET project which lasted from October 2013 to November 2016.


The Platform for Sharing, Initiating, and Learning Citizen Science in Europe

Citizen Science is a rapidly expanding and diversifying field of innovation with significant implications for, and potential benefits to, society, policy, and various academic research areas. This heterogeneity leads currently to a fragmented and not fully coordinated European Citizen Science landscape.  The ambition of EU-Citizen.Science is to build, fill, and promote a sustainable platform and mutual learning space providing different tools, best practice examples and relevant scientific outcomes that are collected, curated, and made accessible to different stakeholders, ranging from interested citizens over scientific institutions up to politicians and public media in order to mainstream Citizen Science in Europe. This breakthrough will be pursued through three interconnected lines of activity: (i) coordination of citizen science actions and leveraging of existing resources in the presently fragmented landscape of Citizen Science in Europe, (ii) engagement of quadruple helix stakeholders at all levels (local, national and European), and (iii) creation of a mutual learning space and a set of comprehensive co-designed training modules for the different target audiences. Moreover, following a transparent, open and inclusive approach, EU-Citizen.Science will promote interdisciplinary, cross-border, cross-sector collaboration, and give rise to significant social innovation and new business models through the creation of new partnerships and the provision of novel sustainability-supporting tools.  The EU.Citizen.Science project involves 14 partners and 9 third parties, representing 14 European Member States and a variety of stakeholders ranging from universities, NGOs, local authorities, CSOs and natural history museums, along with several other project supporters. Many of the partners are already engaged in other SwafS projects related to RRI, co-creation and citizen science, as well as numerous initiatives at national or local level.

Integrate society in science and innovation


Programmable Systems for Intelligence in Automobiles

The ambition of PRYSTINE is to strengthen and to extend traditional core competencies of the European industry, research and universities in smart mobility and in particular the electronic component and systems and cyber-physical systems domains. PRYSTINE's target is to realize Fail-operational Urban Surround perceptION (FUSION) which is based on robust Radar and LiDAR sensor fusion and control functions in order to enable safe automated driving in urban and rural environments. Therefore, PRYSTINE's high-level goals are:  1. Enhanced reliability and performance, reduced cost and power of FUSION components 2. Dependable embedded control by co-integration of signal processing and AI approaches for FUSION 3. Optimized E/E architecture enabling FUSION-based automated vehicles 4. Fail-operational systems for urban and rural environments based on FUSION  PRYSTINE will deliver (a) fail-operational sensor-fusion framework on component level, (b) dependable embedded E/E architectures, and (c) safety compliant integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) approaches for object recognition, scene understanding, and decision making within automotive applications. The resulting reference FUSION hardware/software architectures and reliable components for autonomous systems will be validated in in 22 industrial demonstrators, such as:  1. Fail-operational autonomous driving platform 2. An electrical and highly automated commercial truck equipped with new FUSION components (such as LiDAR, Radar, camera systems, safety controllers) for advanced perception 3. Highly connected passenger car anticipating traffic situations 4. Sensor fusion in human-machine interfaces for fail-operational control transition in highly automated vehicles  PRYSTINE’s well-balanced, value chain oriented consortium, is composed of 60 project partners from 14 different European and non-European countries, including leading automotive OEMs, semiconductor companies, technology partners, and research institutes.


Facilitating Multi-level governance for energy efficiency

MultEE aims to improve the ease and quality of energy efficiency (EE) policy planning and implementation in the project’s partner countries and beyond, addressing the challenges of evidence-based policy-making in a multi-level governance setting. It contributes to making EE and sustainable energy planning vertically consistent between the national, regional and local level, to facilitating horizontal coordination between policy levels and to improving the quality of monitoring energy efficiency.  The project pursues a two-faceted, yet integrated, approach in order to reach this objective: (1) building on a mapping of European best practices and experience from a pilot project carried out by the lead partner, country-specific solutions for effective monitoring and verification (M&V) based on bottom-up data will be developed and their implementation supported; (2) the implementation of innovative M&V schemes will be facilitated via coordination mechanisms developed and introduced together with the partners, aimed at spurring on exchange and cooperation between policy levels. The project pays particular attention to providing opportunities for peer learning between old and new EU Members States and neighbouring countries from Southeast Europe to partner countries from the EU and its South-Eastern neighbourhood as well as to disseminating results beyond partner countries and to other policy areas. One of the specificities of multEE is that its activities target the interplay between administrative levels rather than focusing on a single one of them.  Particular focus will be put on capacity-building for the entities and officials involved with EE planning in the partner countries. MultEE will be put in practice by experienced partners within a strong consortium led by GIZ, drawing upon solid experience and a well-established network of contacts to ensure dissemination and high impacts within and beyond the project.


VARTOTOJU ALJANSAS LITHUANIAN CONSUMERS ALLIANCE

Solutions to Tackle Energy Poverty (S.T.E.P) is an ambitious, innovative and replicable model based on proven approaches to addressing energy poverty. STEP, by focussing on countries with the highest incidences of energy poverty, will use existing channels to reach energy poor consumers. Synthesising experience and knowledge of consumer organisations on energy and consumer issues, strengthening partnerships with frontline organisations in daily contact with energy poor consumers, and consolidating best practices from past projects on energy poverty, the project will implement appropriate schemes to alleviate energy poverty in the 9 target countries (Lithuania, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Poland, Latvia, Czech Republic, Portugal, Cyprus and the UK).  The general objective of STEP is to alleviate energy poverty by facilitating behavioural change through trusted, tailored advice provided directly to consumers in or at risk of energy poverty and by implementing low-cost energy efficiency solutions in energy poor households. The specific objectives are:   - to develop well-functioning and well-trained national networks of advisors from consumer and frontline organisations who are in direct contact with consumers in or at risk of energy poverty - to improve living conditions of consumers in or at risk of energy poverty through behaviour change and implementation of no- or low-cost energy efficiency measures - to create schemes contributing to the alleviation of energy poverty, promote their replication and draw policy recommendations  Through low cost energy efficiency measures - such as information campaigns and tips, demonstrations of cost savings, installation of no- and low-cost energy efficiency measures – STEP has the potential to reduce consumer energy bills and provide relief to energy poor households. Furthermore, through the institutionalisation of energy efficiency advice in sustainable consumer networks, we anticipate long term impacts and sustainability of STEP.


Airborne data collection on resilient system architectures

ADACORSA targets to strengthen the European drone industry and increase public and regulatory acceptance of BVLOS (beyond visual line-of-sight) drones, by demonstrating technologies for safe, reliable and secure drone operation in all situations and flight phases. The project will drive research and development of components and systems for sensing, telecommunication and data processing along the electronics value-chain.  Additionally, drone lead smart industries with high visibility and place for improvement will be developed which will pave the way for a higher public / industry acceptance of the drone technologies.  In particular, ADACORSA will deliver: a) On the component level, functionally redundant and fail-operational radar and LiDAR sensors as well as 3D cameras. In order to reduce risk, time and costs, the project aims to adapt technologies from the automotive sector to the drone market for these components. b) On the system level, hardware and software for reliable sensor fusion and data analytics as well as technologies for secure and reliable drone communication using multipath TCP and registration and identification by developing platforms based on eUICCs/eSIM. c) On an architecture level, fail-operational drone control and investigation a pre-operational Flight Information Management System  (FIMS) the integration with CoTS components for Unmanned Air Vehicle Traffic Management System (UTM).  Within the project, 35 physical as well as virtual demonstrators of BLVOS, long-range drone flight shall pave the way toward certifiable  systems for future integration of drone operations.  ADACORSA's innovations will leverage the expertise of a very strong consortium, comprising world renowned industrial (OEMs, Tier-1, Tier-2 and technology providers) and research partners along the complete aviation, semiconductor and also automotive value chains, providing Europe with a competitive edge in a growing drone and drone technologies market.


FINANSINIU NUSIKALTIMU TYRIMO TARNYBA PRIE VIDAUS REIKALU MINISTERIJOS

Prediction and Visual Intelligence for Security Information

The mission of PREVISION is to empower the analysts and investigators of LEAs with tools and solutions not commercially available today, to handle and capitalize on the massive heterogeneous data streams that must be processed during complex crime investigations and threat risk assessments. With criminals being ever more determined to use new and advanced technology for their cause, the aim is to establish PREVISION as an open and future-proof platform for providing cutting-edge practical support to LEAs in their fight against terrorism, organised crime and cybercrime, which represent three major cross-border security challenges that are often interlinked. PREVISION provides advanced near-real-time analytical support for multiple big data streams (coming from online social networks, the open web, the Darknet, CCTV and video surveillance systems, traffic and financial data sources, and many more), subsequently allowing their semantic integration into dynamic and self-learning knowledge graphs that capture the structure, interrelations and trends of terrorist groups and individuals, cybercriminal organisations and organised crime groups, giving rise to enhanced situational awareness in these fields.  PREVISION has a pan-European engagement and support agenda for LEAs: ten (10) different LEAs and practitioners take part in its consortium, while additional ones (including Europol) have joined its external advisory board. A strong inter-disciplinary dimension, combining technological expertise with sociological, psychological, linguistic and data science models, will lead to a common strategic approach for predicting abnormal and deviant behaviour, radicalisation potential, threat risks for soft targets, and cybercrime trends at different timescales. PREVISION will conduct demonstrations on five representative and complementary use cases, under real-life operational conditions, in full compliance with fundamental rights and applicable legislation.


A FINancial supervision and TECHnology compliance training programme

Financial Technology (Fin Tech) means "Technology enabled financial innovations". There is a strong need to improve the competitiveness of the European Fin Tech sector, creating a common regulatory field across all countries which, while encouraging innovations in Big Data analytics, Artificial  Intelligence, and Blockchain technologies, can correctly measure their risks. Europe is a broad mosaic of regulatory landscapes. Policy makers and regulators must move quickly to establish a new regulatory framework for emerging fintechs, without stifling their economic potential.  The FIN-TECH project, under the EU's Horizon2020 funding scheme, aims to create a European training programme, aimed at providing shared risk management solutions that automatize compliance of Fintech companies (RegTech) and, at the same time, increases the efficiency of supervisory activities (SupTech). In other words, we aim at connecting FINancial supervision with TECHnological compliance, from which the acronym of the project: FIN-TECH.  The project  programme will be built jointly by 24 university and fntech partners that are established experts in fintech risk management,  that will share knowledge with with  regulators, supervisors and fintech associations and hubs from all 28 European Union countries, plus Switzerland.   The  goals of the project will be achieved through research activity in risk management models for Big data analytics, AI and Blockchain applications to finance, discussed in three different research workshops; two levels of knowledge exchange sessions: a training level, run at the location of the involved supervisor in each of the 29 countries, to achieve uniformity across Europe; a coding level,  centralised at the location of six different fintech hubs. The project will be simultaneously disseminated and validated through a dedicated web site, social network activity, users feedback and validation by established bank, insurance and investment funds.


DIVERSITY OF LOCAL PIG BREEDS AND PRODUCTION SYSTEMS FOR HIGH QUALITY TRADITIONAL PRODUCTS AND SUSTAINABLE PORK CHAINS

Research and development activities are proposed for the benefit of sustainable pork chains based on European local pig breeds and their production systems. Workprogramme is planned to respond to consumer demands for quality and healthiness of pork products with regional identity and societal demands for environment preservation and development of local agro-economy. Description and evaluation of local pig breeds, with an emphasis on untapped ones will be performed using novel genomic tools. Performance of local pig breeds will be evaluated in contrasted agro-geo-climatic conditions and production systems (indoor, outdoor, organic). Focus will be on pig feeding and management strategies and on the use of locally available feeding resources. Intrinsic quality of traditional and new regional high quality pork products and attitudes of consumers from various market areas will be assessed; in particular the motives for the choice and willingness to pay such products. Marketing strategies will be adressed in particular short chain distribution channels. All activities will be driven from the perspective of sustainability (environmental impact, animal welfare, product quality, consumer acceptability and market potential). The activities will engage innovative approaches to answer socio-economic demands of regional pork chains involving partners from different sectors. The ambition is to enhance existing and create new networks between academia and non-academia partners, within and between regions and to tackle the value chain for regional high quality pork products, focusing on diverse and so far untapped pig breeds, their production systems and pork products. Cross-fertilising interactions between research, local agriculture, businesses and end-users will be achieved with partners from these complementary sectors in all research and development activities.


LIETUVOS KIBERNETINIU NUSIKALTIMU KOMPETENCIJU IR TYRIMU CENTRAS

New industrial value chain for Safe, sECure and Resilient cIties and Territories

The security sector is considerably evolving, by adapting the offer to the risk and threats and by permanently aggregating emerging innovations. The digital is disrupting this industry, by adding new capacities and new threats. The security sector is very fragmented. SecurIT aims to create a new global competitive security industrial (product & service) value chain by supporting a better integration of innovative security systems, with a cross-sectoral and European approach, to support the time to market optimization, the integration of privacy and security by design at all steps of maturity, with a cross-border collaboration between SMEs and other RDI actors.   This vision is supported by a 4 step-approach:  #1: : Analysis of the demand-side, mobilizing 40 integrators/end-users to identify their needs and 42 potential demonstrators including major actors as large industry, cities, critical infrastructures operators that will join SecurIT as user group, experiment hosting or supportive partners (26 support letters in annex - AIRBUS, THALES, ATOS, COESS, ECSO, cities, EEN etc.).  #2&3: Involving supply sides (SMEs), aiming to get 300 EoI to participate in SecurIT and attracting +1000 SMEs to get part through outreach actions (15 letters of SMEs in annex).  #4: Select and Support 63 innovation projects involving 126 SMEs with over 3,5M€ of FSTP through 2 Instruments of support from TRL5 to TRL9 (Prototyping and Demonstration/Pilot), and +700K€ in services provided by partners. Highquality experts will be involved in the SMEs selection process.  The consortium is as a whole, with 7 Security and complementary Clusters from France, Belgium, Lithuania, The Netherlands and Denmark, coming from most relevant security / cybersecurity Regional Innovation Hubs in Europe, and the SecurIT partners have experience in open call management at national and european level.


ISM VADYBOS IR EKONOMIKOS UNIVERSITETAS UAB

Social Protection Innovative Investment in Long Term Care

SPRINT project intends to give meaning to the concept of social investment as applied to long-term care provision.  Its objective is to articulate in more detail the aspirations of the Social Investment Programme, to provide a means for assessing the social costs and benefits of various ways of providing long-term care for the frail elderly, and to present examples of approaches that do indeed, facilitate provision in a way that social benefits are achieved. More specifically, SPRINT will: identify the current landscape of organisation and resourcing of LTC in Europe in order to understand the place in the discussion that social investment currently has and how the principles of social investment used to improve provision in a fashion that is welfare enhancing; investigate how the different resourcing and delivery forms of LTC create social and economic returns, outcomes and social impact and to determine their success factors; evaluate the fiscal and social costs and benefits of various national approaches to LTC delivery; establish a common vocabulary for social investing and for the financing mechanisms of long-term care; identify the most appropriate frameworks for the definition and analysis of social impact of LTC programmes; define the principles for incorporating social considerations in funding decisions of LTC policies and to analyse their relationship with the social innovations addressing the challenges of demographic ageing and of inequities in access to care; develop appropriate instruments, such as the Feasibility Framework Tool, the assessment scales, thresholds and the Impact Map, which will ensure successful implementation of investment in LTC by public authorities, social insurance funds and private investors; create a model of investment in the care sector, emphasizing in social innovations that will be correlated with the broad economic policies;  and propose reforms at policy levels.


The Future of European Social Citizenship

EUSOCIALCIT will provide scientific analysis and examine policy scenarios to strengthen European social citizenship. It focuses on three domains that mirror the building blocks of the European Pillar of Social Rights (the empowerment of citizens, fair working conditions and social inclusion) and pursues five objectives:  1.	Bring together long-standing rival approaches to European social citizenship, and develop a resource-based, multi-level concept of social rights (recognizing that the resources supporting social rights can be located at EU, national and local levels). 2.	Understand the current state of social rights and their relationship to outcomes (social and gender inequality, poverty and precariousness). 3.	Diagnose the shortcomings of the institutions that generate undesirable outcomes. 4.	Understand attitudes, preferences and the demand for change among citizens, and the constraints and opportunities these create for the EU social agenda.  5.	Develop alternative policy scenarios to strengthen European social rights, in particular to implement the European Pillar of Social Rights. This promises a more encompassing understanding of European social citizenship than existing literature now offers. We will provide new indicators and implementation studies on social investment, working conditions, minimum income protection and housing. The project is deliberately ambitious in terms of both science and policy because effective policies require in-depth analysis of current realities and alternative policy options, both empirically and conceptually. The consortium has been formed to realise that ambition, by combining academic expertise – in political science, law, sociology, social policy and economics – with practical policy experience. Our emphasis on the plurality of possible policy scenarios, on listening to citizens and co-creation testifies to our conviction that an academic and policy-oriented research project should serve the public debate, not replace it.


VILNIAUS GEDIMINO TECHNIKOS UNIVERSITETAS

Centre of Excellence in IT Science and Technology

To address and promote growth in several technological sectors in Lithuania and encourage EU teaming in ICT-related research and innovation, the overall objective of the project is to create a new Centre of Excellence (CoE) in IT Science and Technology for the Internet of Things and Smart Living Systems, which will be referred to as “InnoITeam”.  The long-term vision for InnoITeam is to: ● Become the leading provider of innovative technologies for IoT and Big Data for the improvement of the growing technological personal and industry needs in Europe; ● Consolidate research and development, education and training, and networking and promotion resources activities in Information and Communications Technology (ICT);  ● Coordinate, integrate and support research excellence and innovation development in Lithuania, the Baltic Sea region, and Europe; ● Support researchers, academics, industry partners and entrepreneurs in the field of ICT, particularly in IoT, to produce innovations beneficial for the society and economy of Lithuania and beyond. To achieve this long-term vision, the CoE will leverage the knowledge, experience and resources of three Lithuanian institutions – KTU, VGTU and SECR- with the support of two advanced EU partners from Sweden – LiU and TII – in four strategic research and innovation (R&D) topics:  R&D Topic 1: User interfacing and interaction design approaches for Smart Environments based on IoT; R&D Topic 2: Cybersecurity aspects in the Smart Environments based on IoT; R&D Topic 3: Data analysis and visualization approaches for data intensive IoT environments; R&D Topic 4: Cognitive IoT technologies for Smart Home Environments. This project has the full support of the Lithuanian Government because it fits perfectly with several of the national priorities within the SMART Specialisation Strategy approved by the Government, and, will allow an enhanced usage and further growth of the recently upgraded infrastructure for ICT research in Lithuania.

Teaming of excellent research institutions and low performing RDI regions


VIESOJI ISTAIGA VILNIAUS UNIVERSITETO LIGONINE SANTAROS KLINIKOS

European Joint Programme on Rare Diseases

As recognized by the Council Recommendation 2009/C 151/02, rare diseases (RD) are a prime example of a research area that can strongly profit from coordination on a European and international scale. RD research should be improved to overcome fragmentation, leading to efficacious use of data and resources, faster scientific progress and competitiveness, and most importantly to decrease unnecessary hardship and prolonged suffering of RD patients. In the specific context of the massive generation, need for reuse and efficient interpretation of data, introduction of omics into care practice and the structuration of RD care centers in European Reference Networks, it appears crucial and timely to maximize the potential of already funded tools and programmes by supporting them further, scaling up, linking, and most importantly, adapting them to the needs of end-users through implementation tests in real settings. Such a concerted effort is necessary to develop a sustainable ecosystem allowing a virtuous circle between RD care, research and medical innovation. To achieve this goal, the European Joint Programme on RD (EJP RD) has two major objectives: (i) To improve the integration, the efficacy, the production and the social impact of research on RD through the development, demonstration and promotion of Europe/world-wide sharing of research and clinical data, materials, processes, knowledge and know-how; (ii) To implement and further develop an efficient model of financial support for all types of research on RD (fundamental, clinical, epidemiological, social, economic, health service) coupled with accelerated exploitation of research results for benefit of patients. To this end, the EJP RD actions will be organized within four major Pillars assisted by the central coordination: (P1): Funding of research; (P2): Coordinated access to data and services; (P3) Capacity building; (P4): Accelerated translation of research projects and improvement outcomes of clinical studies.


WEB OF INNOVATION AND VALUE CHAINS OF ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING UNDER CONSIDERATION OF RRI

Additive manufacturing (AM) is a key enabling technology in high value manufacturing. The global AM market is on the rise and in 2016 the industry was valued at $6 billion with 93% being attributed to industrial applications. Evolving novel innovation networks, perfectly represented by the emerging, rather complex and highly dynamic AM industry sector, are frequently characterised by entirely new business models, high development and adaption rates, as well as strong technology diffusion within the economy. I AM RRI will investigate the AM innovation network in order to facilitate a better understanding and the modelling of the dynamics of its complex web of innovation value chains including openings for responsible research and innovation (RRI).  In-depth investigation of the AM innovation network, accompanied by open stakeholder and foresight processes, will establish a comprehensive knowledge base and thorough understanding of the network’s components, processes and interconnections, forming the foundation for building a dynamic model. The model will allow deepening the understanding of the AM innovation system even further, and to simulate/govern rapidly developing and complex future changes of the network and its crisscrossing value chains. As core component of I AM RRI, use cases for automotive and medical AM application will be conducted in order to refine the model and to showcase its applicability and adaptability. The I AM RRI outcomes developed in the course of I AM RRI will be made available to the broad open science community and to stakeholders/policy makers, strengthening research and business, and fostering the evolvement of other novel innovation networks. Strategic guidelines will be defined to initiate institutional change. Identified RRI openings within the AM innovation network will support smart, sustainable and inclusive growth in Europe. I AM RRI will promote AM in Europe as a globally competitive, innovative and world leading key technology.

Develop the governance for the advancement of responsible research and innovation


L4MS (Logistics For Manufacturing SMEs) will spark incremental (productivity increase of new users by a factor of 4 and system setup time reduction by a factor of 10) and disruptive innovation (batch size one & consumerization) for over 100,000 European Manufacturing SMEs & Mid-Caps, building on their intra-factory logistics challenge (50% of the production cost of an item) unleashing their digitalization potential by powering new robot systems that are more cost effective at lower lot sizes.  L4MS relies upon: • An open industrial IoT platform with enablers for rapid and efficient deployment of customized logistics solutions. • A suite of "Smartization services" including business modelling, technical support, mentoring, access to skills and to finance. • The L4MS Marketplace, a one-stop-shop, where European Manufacturing SMEs & Mid-Caps will access the L4MS services. • A portfolio of 23 cross-border Application Experiments by 50 SMEs selected through 2 competitive Open Calls, that will test more than 40 services & apps leveraging 10M€ of public funding across 12 established and emerging Digital Innovation Hubs. • A growing ecosystem that will foster Smart Specialization in each single region linked to L4MS.  L4MS will transform a pan-European ecosystem into a self-sustainable start-up operating an Open Platform for Innovations in Logistics (OPIL) and L4MS marketplace consisting of 21 members. Comprising 6 Competence Centres, 5 technology providers, 4 industry associations, 3 end-users and 3 business developers -currently engaged in I4MS (XS2I4MS, HORSE and BEinCPPS) and FIWARE- plus 6 Satellites Nodes. L4MS covers 14 EU countries, 15 regions with 8 of them from East Europe.  L4MS will help demonstrate that public funded research with a “Smartization” approach (accelerating Industry 4.0) can help manufacturing SMEs & Mid-Caps achieve digital excellence and global competitiveness through logistics automation become “entrepreneurial states and digital industries”.


A MULTI-SPECTROSCOPIC APPROACH TO PROBE  AMYLOID AGGREGATION AT BIOLOGICAL SURFACES

Treatment of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s syndrome, is one of the biggest challenges of nowadays medicine. The success of the curing strongly depends on our understanding of chemical processes involved in developing these diseases. From a chemical point of view, these diseases are determined by uncontrolled neuropathological alterations such as aggregation of proteins and formation of insoluble fibrils, called amyloids. It is of paramount importance to fully understand the fibril formation on a molecular level in order to find ways how to inhibit the protein aggregation.  In the proposed research we focus on the aggregation of Aβ peptide, which is associated with Alzheimer’s disease. Although substantial knowledge on the aggregation process of Aβ peptide in the bulk solution exists, the influence of the cell membrane on this process is poorly understood due to the lack of surface specific techniques. Here we propose to study the aggregation of Aβ peptide at the surface of model lipid membranes with advanced surface specific spectroscopic methods: vibrational sum-frequency generation (VSFG) and shell-isolated nanoparticles-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SHINERS). Such combined spectroscopic approach will enable to determine the molecular structure of the aggregates at every step of the fibril formation and to reveal the role of the membrane. Altogether the proposed research will give relevant insights by which membrane and various co-solutes promote the aggregation process.  The candidate, Dr. S. Strazdaitė has returned to her home country after PhD studies in the Netherlands. She is currently employed as a senior research fellow in the Centre for Physical Sciences and Technology (FTMC) at Prof. Gediminas Niaura group. The researcher will bring a valuable experience of surface specific spectroscopy to FTMC and during the proposed project she will acquire new knowledge and will reach an independent scientific maturity.


Promoting and implementing joint programming at the international level to reinforce research on the development of scenarios of biodiversity and ecosystem services

Current knowledge and conventional awareness-raising have largely proven insufficient to tackle the issue of biodiversity and ecosystems degradation. In this context, scenarios of biodiversity and ecosystem services (ESS) can play a key role both in informing policy makers and practitioners and raising awareness on biodiversity issues for the general public, as it has been the case for climate change. By networking 27 funding agencies from 24 countries from Europe and other continents, BiodivScen aims to promote and support coordinated international research on scenarios of biodiversity and ecosystem services. It will strengthen research and research programmes coordination with the ultimate aim to provide policy makers and other stakeholders with adequate knowledge, tools and practical solutions to improve the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity and ecosystems. The BiodivScen objectives are to: - coordinate the research agendas of major European and interantional research funders to agree on shared research priorities related to scenarios of biodiversity & ESS - design and implement an ambitious joint call for research proposals focussed on the development of scenarios of biodiversity & ESS - promote and support research collaboration across national borders and across disciplinary boundaries, in order to build capacity, overcome fragmentation and have a lasting effect on the international research community and landscape - encourage and support dialogue and collaboration between academia and research stakeholders, and more particularly stakeholder engagement in the funded research projects, in order to increase the impact of research on policy and practice - ease rapid and efficient uptake of funded research results by the IPBES for its future assessments, and by other relevant initiatives - reinforce open access to data and data sharing - prepare a longer term collaboration between all BiodivScen partners in close relation to BiodivERsA and the Belmo


Advancing fail-aware, fail-safe, and fail-operational electronic components, systems, and architectures for fully automated driving to make future mobility safer, affordable, and end-user acceptable.

Automated driving is a disruptive technology which opens the door to future multi-billion markets providing business opportunities to value chains in automotive and semiconductor industry.The European industry has leading competitive strength in the development and manufacturing of highly reliable electro-mechanical systems. In order to preserve this capability Europe needs to setup European standards for high level control such as real-time computing or big data processing. In order to respond on the global challenge AutoDrive has gathered Europe’s leading semiconductor companies, suppliers, OEMs, and research institutes committed to create a pan-European eco-system, which has the critical mass to initiate standards and provides the components and subsystems for automated driving. Currently, even the most sophisticated vehicle automation technology on the road is not able to surpass human driving capabilities – especially considering context awareness in any situation. Moreover, there is no common agreement on quantifiable dependability measures which hardware and embedded software have to achieve to allow safe automated driving for SAE Levels 3-5. AutoDrive aims for the design of (i) fail-aware (self-diagnostics), (ii) fail-safe, (iii) fail-operational (HW and SW redundancy) electronic components and systems architecture that enable the introduction of automated driving in all car categories. AutoDrive results will significantly contribute to safer and more efficient mobility. It will raise end-user acceptance and comfort by supporting drivers in highly challenging situations (active safety) as well as in regular driving situations. Combining both will reduce the number of road fatalities especially in rural scenarios and under adverse weather conditions. AutoDrive will contribute to Europe’s Vision Zero and to improved efficiency. This will sustain Leadership and even grow the market position of all AutoDrive partners.


Heavy metal free emitters for new-generation light sources

Organic heavy metal free fluorescent materials show exceptional potential for use in new-generation light sources, such as organic light-emitting devices (OLEDs) and organic lasers. It is anticipated that these new materials will enable organic electronic devices to be constructed with higher efficiency, simpler device structures, lower fabrication costs, and reduced environmental impact.  Amongst the different types of materials currently being investigated, two show particular promise:  • Fluorescence materials exhibiting thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) for use in OLEDs in displays and  lighting devices . • Fluorescent materials with low thresholds for amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) for use in organic lasers in spectroscopy and telecommunication .  However, in order to develop these materials for commercial industrial use, several challenges still remain to be overcome, including:  • Theories explaining TADF and ASE are still in their infancy. • Organic material samples need to be extremely pure (>99.5%). Consequently, new synthesis routes need to be developed. • TADF emitters for OLEDs have lifetimes that fall well short of industry requirements. • Fluorescence emitters for lasers need high available optical gain, solution processability and narrow emission spectra with high efficiency. • Properties of TADF and lasing materials are very sensitive to structural changes.  Thus, the overall goal of the MEGA project is to help develop organic heavy metal free fluorescent materials for commercial use by tackling these challenges. In order to develop the new materials, the following S&T objectives will be targeted:  • Objective 1: Screen compounds with TADF or lasing properties by means of molecular modelling • Objective 2: Synthesise most promising compounds with TADF or lasing properties • Objective 3: Characterise most promising compounds with TADF or lasing properties • Objective 4: Test materials in device structures to meet industry requirement


Solar PV on the Distribution Grid: Smart Integrated Solutions of Distributed Generation based on Solar PV, Energy Storage Devices and Active Demand Management

iDistributedPV´s aim is developing affordable integrated solutions to enhance the penetration of distributed solar PV (buildings) based on the effective integration of solar PV equipment, energy storage, monitoring and controlling strategies and procedures, active demand management, smart technologies and the integration of procedures in the power distribution system according to market criteria.  The project will develop the concept of “prosumer”: a player that consumes and produces electricity in his facilities (solar PV).  iDistributedPV will be the EU common place for enhancing the distributed solar PV: promoters, equipment manufacturers, DSOs, energy policy experts and R&D players will work together to develop affordable solutions, and produce business and management models for these solutions.  The most promising solutions will be validated according to technical and economic criteria (for every solution a cost-benefit analysis will be elaborated) in five different European real distribution grids (Greece, Lithuania, Spain, Poland and Germany) considering different climatic, regulatory and technical frameworks.  The validation process will be a relevant argument to convince the power stakeholders (DSOs, equipment manufacturers, energy authorities, policy makers, etc.) about the suitability of the most effective distributed solar PV solutions such as smart electricity supply. iDistributedPV will provide technical and regulatory recommendations, mainly focused on enhancing an effective and active renewable energy contribution and effective demand management to the security and reliability of the electricity networks: evolution from a power system with a centralized electricity generation to a new one that also includes production/demand units (prosumers) based on renewable energy and smart technologies.