WATERGRID’s objective is to develop and demonstrate the Smart Water Grid (SWG) concept for more climate resilient water management, particularly targeting extreme drought, but framed within Integrated Catchment Management, addressing the whole catchment in a holistic approach. The resource efficiency of Nature Based Solutions (NBS) previously established in eight sites will be analysed alongside the academic literature, forming an Evidence portfolio (Project Result 1 - PR1). Of these eight sites, five will be demonstrators, spread across the Atlantic, Continental, Mountain and Mediterranean biogeographical areas, with specific water scarcity challenges, NBS types and scales, in which 58 additional innovative and locally attuned NBS will be implemented to slow, move and actively store water for reuse as part of locally designed SWGs. Three validation sites will mainstream potential of the SWG approach and demonstrate replicability of the Project Results (PRs) that have been co-created and co-deployed with 138 stakeholders in a participatory approach. Protocols and standards will be developed, providing a step-by-step guide for the design, maintenance and operation of the SWG (PR2). A digital Platform (PR3) will display models of the catchment and a Design App will provide guidance to users on designing NBS into their SWGs. This Platform will be linked to a Monitoring programme (PR4) to display real time information via a Digital Twin to support long term maintenance of SWGs. An Operationalising toolkit (PR5) will create enabling social, governance and economic environments for sustainable SWGs. Finally, at least three Policy briefs (PR6) will display SWG benefits to various policies, from the EU to the local scale. By 2035, WATERGRID expects to increase by 20% the water available for usage to compensate scarcity, decreasing 7 types of water pollutants and saving 10.6M €/year through 37 SWGs across Europe.

3D semantics modeling through business-oriented CAD tools facilitates the achievement of design tasks in Architecture and Construction Engineering. Practices and usages of BIM "Building Information Modelling" allow an enrichment of 3D semantic models with information useful for implementation, evaluation and design and construction processes. The usage of 4D modeling (ie 3D + time), integrating 3D modeling semantic phases and temporal enrichment, simulates the stages of construction of a building by merging construction tasks of building elements with their 3D visualization. However, the construction industry has not really integrated all these new practices into its work processes. It is recognized by the scientific community that the usage of 4D technologies provides support to decision-making during the pre-construction phase and in construction monitoring. However this technology is little known. Many research papers assert that 4D simulation improves the quality of collaborations between actors before and during the construction phase. But this is demonstrated by few empirical analyses. Moreover collaboration is difficult when the 4D simulation is used by a group of actors using laptops: the screens are small, the type of interactions keyboard / mouse with 4D models are delicates in synchronous collaborative sessions. The adding value to business practices provided by the integration of 4D modeling (3D and time) to establish the schedule of construction tasks needs to be further demonstrated. The research project "4DCollab" has the objective of analyzing collaborative practices and usages of 4D technics during the pre-construction phase and evaluating its contribution to construction projects. The first objective is to identify and understand emerging practices for collaboration using both 3D semantic modeling and time during the pre-construction phase and to measure the contribution in terms of value and quality of projects. Secondly it plans to identify and define innovative usages and interactions with 4D models through suitable devices (touch table and wall) in a prospective ergonomics approach. Third, these new interactions dedicated to uses of 4D will be specified and integrated to the synchronous collaborative platform "Shariiing" of Immersion company. Iterative development of this prototype will implement these new interaction techniques oriented to collective and synchronous handling of 4D models. Two experiments of this system in pre-building phase of a real construction project are envisaged: the first one with our French industrial partner and the second one with our Luxembourgish industrial partner. After these two experiments, we will evaluate the usability of the innovative interaction technics implemented but also the added value of these usages and practices of the 4D in a construction project. They will allow us to question the articulation of user centered methods in a prospective ergonomics approach. Scientific publications are expected to disseminate the scientific results to AEC and HCI research communities. Sectorial communications are planned with professional publications and conferences. Our industrial partner specializing in design of collaborative and immersive 3D technologies will ensure sectorial communications of technical results of this project.

A key question for modern quantum technology is: can isolated demonstrator experiments be united to implement real-world applications? Theory shows that by connecting quantum memories and processors, e.g., on a chip, surprisingly small systems can immediately achieve a quantum advantage. But the experimental implementation remains a grand challenge. Today, optically active spins in solids (colour centres) already implement quantum communication, computing, and memories – albeit individually. Pioneering efforts (including mine) focused on nitrogen-vacancy centres in diamond, but low material availability and difficulties in diamond fabrication hinder quantum chip developments. This project will realise a Quantum System-on-Chip with colour centres in an industrial semiconductor material: silicon carbide. Like a classical System-on-Chip, it will integrate separated processing and memory units, which are connected via photonic quantum communication lines. My mission goals are a) Entangling a quantum processor with a quantum memory; and b) Quantum processing based on instructions from the memory. To achieve these ambitious goals, I capitalise on two recent breakthroughs, which I spearheaded. My team developed the first quantum-grade fabrication of silicon carbide – and successfully integrated colour centres into nanophotonic quantum communication lines. Further, we recently investigated a new colour centre (the stacking-fault divacancy), which is the semiconductor twin of the nitrogen-vacancy in diamond. The similarity permits us to build upon established techniques and will ultimately allow demonstrating the long-proposed increased coherence times of nuclear spin qubits in silicon carbide. The successful project will initiate a transformative change towards reliable, cost-effective, and widely available quantum technologies – with Europe at the forefront of these developments considering that its silicon carbide industry is the global leader with >70% market share.

MASAUTO is a research and training program for 10 early stage researchers (ESRs), focusing on developing a new generation of materials that will overcome the current bottlenecks in the capability and capacity of autonomous sensors. The design of materials for remote sensing applications, such as real-time information on climate changes or for intelligent transportation systems, still represents an enormous challenge. The ongoing exponential growth of the internet of things (IoT) ecosystem - which could reach a trillion devices in the near future - poses a serious challenge in terms of powering and interconnecting the underlying devices. The full potential of the IoT will only be achievable if devices i) have a reliable and sustainable autonomous power supply, and ii) are capable of processing information with reduced power requirements. A promising approach to address the first challenge is the use of an energy harvester-supercapacitor combination, while for the second challenge a promising strategy is the use of non-volatile random access memories. It's, therefore, crucial to develop materials for energy harvesting and storage, as well as low loss electronics. Through MASAUTO, we will create a highly trained cohort of scientists and technologists, enabling rapid and broad commercialization and implementation of technology in public and private research centers and in industrial institutions. The ESRs will acquire a solid multidisciplinary scientific training, from basic science to industrial applications, which will enable them to generate new scientific knowledge of the highest impact. MASAUTO will also deliver practical training on transferable skills in order to increase employability prospects and to provide the researchers with access to highly skilled employment opportunities in the private and public sectors. The overarching aim of the network is to position Europe as a leader in autonomous sensors for smart healthcare, automotives, industry and agriculture.