SPROUT provides a new city-led innovative and data driven policy response to address the impacts of the emerging mobility patterns, digitally-enabled operating & business models, and transport users’ needs. Previously tested and implemented policy responses employing access restrictions, congestion charging or infrastructure provision, seem today, unable to adequately address the changes underway in the urban mobility scene. Furthermore, any policy responses should take into all stages of the policy lifecycle and should have an eye not only to the present but also to the future. Therefore, starting from an understanding of the transition taking place in urban mobility, SPROUT will define the resultant impacts at the sustainability and policy level, will harness these through a city-led innovative policy response, will build cities’ data-driven capacity to identify, track and deploy innovative urban mobility solutions, and will navigate future policy by channelling project results at local, regional, national and EU level. To achieve its goals, SPROUT will employ 6 city pilots (including China) with real-life policy challenges faced as a result of urban mobility transition in both passenger & freight, covering urban and peri-urban areas, different emerging mobility solutions, and context requirements. The project pays special attention to the needs of vulnerable groups and users with different cultural backgrounds, taking also into account gender issues. SPROUT ensures an active participation of numerous representatives from authorities of small & medium-sized cities through a 3-layer structure of cities’ engagement approach, and through the creation of an Open Innovation Community on Urban Mobility Policy.

DISCO will develop and demonstrate - in real-life conditions - a federated European urban freight (UF) data space as one stop shop of data sharing on digital urban logistics solutions and smart tools for ambitious decision making. It will be a continental Ten-T – oriented and distributed real-life ecosystem to prove its value via demonstrated and replicable Use Cases (UCs), build upon innovation drivers to code concrete transformation of urban planning and land use by an open and collaborative UF Data Space with a smart governance model. The DISCO UF Data Space is voluntary based (incentivized), co-created and open framework to achieve a radical transformation and alliance in purpose-oriented data sharing, enabling smart access, fast and resource efficient acquisition, and focused provision, improving knowledge and capacity of city authorities and planners guaranteeing future data availability for dynamic (and predictive) integrated urban logistics planning, synchronizing real-time demand for transport & warehousing with logistics supply, (e.g., as Uber matches the demand for private car transport service with its road drivers’ fleet). DISCO will support European urban logistics players in reducing economic, societal and technical dependence from private digital platforms owned by large global providers, magnifying the scope of a Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMPs) converging to data-driven Sustainable Urban Logistics Planning (SULPs), expanding them beyond traditional urban boundaries (e.g., rural areas, towns and suburbs, cities, and urban areas according to World Urbanization Prospects ) and beyond Covid-19, to optimally manage, monitor and dynamically predict city freight flows, changing urban nodes accessibility by properly serving Functional Urban Area - FUA on a larger, mixed-use, and flexible scale , and deliver advanced and well-informed planning and purpose oriented, optimised land use within a TEN-T and global dimension.

Urban areas represent the greatest challenges for freight transport and service trips, both in terms of goods distribution and service allocation performance, and environmental impacts (air emission, traffic congestion, road safety, accidents and noise). The salient scope of the proposal is the enabling of knowledge and understanding of freight distribution and service trips by providing guidance for implementing effective and sustainable policies and measures. This guidance will support the choice of the most optimal and applicable solutions for urban freight and service transport, and will facilitate stakeholder collaboration and the development, field testing and transfer of best governance and business models. This shall be achieved through: - the targeted understanding of urban freight and service trips, fostered by data collection on city logistics, - field testing and implementation of representative city logistics measures, - the development and application of a modular, integrated, evaluation framework for the assessment of these measures - the development of a typology between cities and potential city logistics components, and - the provision of guidance to cities, shaping consistent implementation channels for successful solutions, all according to the local needs and constraints. These activities will be accompanied by the production of practical tools that could support the take-up impact of NOVELOG project to wider international city and industrial networks and beyond the project's lifetime. NOVELOG will contribute to the European Commission's research and policy agenda through the generation of sound knowledge that introduces a new approach to guidance strategies that supports a more sustainable urban environment.

Science Communication (SciCom) plays a key role in addressing today’s societal challenges. To be effective, it must be conceived as multi-directional communication, involving scientists, policy-makers, journalists, other communications actors and citizens. On one side, scientists produce research results but are not always equipped to communicate efficiently to the public and to policy-makers. On the other, journalists and other communications actors act as the interface between science, citizens and other audiences, although they may face challenges in fully comprehending the scientific message. Citizens will have a varied perception of the information received but limited knowledge and tools impeding a qualitative assessment. The variety of means of communication existing today makes communications faster and easier, but that increases the complexity of these interactions and the challenge to communicate “sound” science. We also need to consider that much of today SciCom passes through the digital sphere, as the advent of digitalization has changed the way in which information flows and opinions are shaped, also regarding science. Social media are one of the key representatives of these modern means of communication, deserving a special focus. In this context, the challenge faced by SciCom is in finding effective, non-hierarchical ways to exchange these diverse forms of knowledge, by making SciCom stakeholders interact in a constructive way through the different media. QUEST aims at facing this challenge with a multi-step approach that will: (1) understand the dynamics of today SciCom (2) design tools to evaluate SciCom quality (3) experiment best practices and proposing innovative ways for SciCom (4) promote SciCom training (5) build an engaging SciCom community. The focus will be on (a) journalism (b) Social media (c) Museums, recognized as having the highest impact in this context. Climate change, Vaccines and Artificial Intelligence are used as case studies.

More sustainable pest management methods are needed in order to reduce the negative effects of pesticides on human health and the environment. The overall goal of EUCLID is to contribute to secure the production of food for the increasing worldwide population while developing sustainable production approaches to be used in the European and Chinese agriculture. The choice of the crops of interest in EUCLID, i.e. fresh tomatoes, table and wine grapes, and leafy vegetables (lettuces, cabbages, etc.), is based on their economic importance for both European and Chinese fruit and vegetable production, but also for their exemplarity in representing different production systems (field + greenhouse vegetables and ligneous perennial). This means that the solutions of the project could be used models for developing similar actions for other crops. The project is structured in 3 R&D work packages (WP), one WP dedicated to demonstration in field, one for dissemination and a WP devoted to project management. The project will exploit the thorough knowledge developed in the last years on IPM to adapt and optimize those tools and approaches which did not reach the field/market (yet). In addition, the consortium will work on the further development of high potential innovation pest management solutions. The consortium has been selected in order to integrate in the research process, from the very beginning, the main end-users of the project’s results: farmers associations, SMEs, economists, experts in policy. The consortium also has a good coverage of both European and Chinese experts, in order to take advantage of the experience of each region and to more efficiently adapt the pest management solutions to the specific problems of European and Chinese farmers.