The SLICE3D project is dedicated to the preparation of a scientific and innovation strategy together with a robust business plan for the realization of the Centre of Excellence on geospatial data in Slovenia. Since most of human decisions are directly or indirectly related to the location, geospatial data are nowadays a foundation for sustainable planning and development, territorial and disaster management, risk assessment, other societal benefits. The main idea is to strengthen the research and innovation capacities of Slovenia in the acquisition, processing and modelling of geospatial data. This will be realized – in the long-term – through education programs and R&D projects, resulting in tangible results supplied to market players, thereby enabling them to obtain and maintain a competitive advantage. The objectives of SLICE3D are in accordance with the national strategies, including the Slovenia’s Smart Specialization Strategy, Research and Innovation Strategy of Slovenia, Information Society Development Strategy to 2020 and Public Administration Development Strategy 2015–2020. The consortium, coordinated by the University of Ljubljana, includes governmental institutions, leading scientific institutions and business SMEs. Within the 1-year project, a formal and strong cooperation will be developed between the involved partners to provide the platform for knowledge transfer and strengthening of the research and innovation capacities in the widening country (Slovenia) and neighbourhood regions. The ambition is thus to create a Centre of Excellence which will achieve a strong long-term scientific presence at international level. Moreover, SLICE3D will be an important technology bridge for the industrial use of geospatial research results, offering scientific achievements and problem-oriented innovations to the market through different technology transfer measures. All this will ensure scientific excellence of Slovenia and its long-term development opportunities.

SENERGY NETS aims at demonstrating the technical and economic capability of multi-energy systems to decarbonize the heating and cooling, power and gas sectors through renewable energy sources produced locally as well as sector integration, by primarily focusing on promising infrastructure and business models. To do so, SENERGY-NETS will develop a set of tools and platforms (up to TRL7/8) aimed to optimise the planning of District Heating and Cooling as well as distribution grids with sector coupling consideration and allow the provision of flexibility services to Distribution and Transmission System Operators. These solutions will be implemented on three pilot sites located in Milan (IT), Ljubljana (SI) and Paris (FR) and their replicability will be tested in two additional real case studies presenting alternative climatic, economic and geographic conditions in Västerås (SW) and Cordoba (ES). The SENERGY NETS solutions will be adapted to the main stakeholders at the different phases of the projects development involving sector coupling: long term planning, design and simulation, operational planning, valorisation, evaluation and replication. The project will evaluate the benefits through a consolidated methodology developed to estimate the overall value created by sector integration, relying on the current economic, regulation and market rules and assess the impacts on the European power system. SENERGY NETS relies on a strong trans-disciplinary consortium involving 17 organisations located in 7 European countries, involving renowned experts from public authorities, infrastructure providers, research institutions, entrepreneurs and consumers associations. Altogether, they will provide the necessary knowledge, expertise and capacities to develop, demonstrate and evaluate developed tools and services enabling the integration of multi-energy systems to provide flexibility to the power system, and ultimately enable the decarbonisation of the energy system.

<< Background >>Mapping and Organizing Research on Dictatorship: Open Access Repository (M.O.R.D.O.R.)Global Democracy is in decline since 2010 and has proceedingly been rolled back, bringing the current level of democracies (and their share of the world population) back to levels last measured in 1990. In response, the connected environments of scholarship and policy-analysis have both been mustering resources to explain why this is happening. Nonetheless, democracies around the world will not be able to roll back this authoritarian creep unless they increase their understanding of how dictatorships work, learn to differentiate better among various autocratic contexts and most of all, how to frame foreign policies that can sustain, support or promote democracy. This consortium of 11 partner organizations: 7 EU higher education institutions, 1 in the UK (Univ. Of Essex) and 1 in the USA (Michigan State University), as well as 1 German Think Tank and 1 Belgium NGO, the latter two specialized in EU foreign policy-analysis - will collaborate to address this global challenges by strengthening education on ‘Dictatorship and Democracy Research’ (abbreviated as: D&DR); and by creating specialized recommendations for EU policy-makers and -analysts working on democracy-support. Also, M.O.R.D.O.R. has 12 associated partners that have the crucial role of quality control during the development phase of its outputs.Regarding EDUCATION, our needs analysis survey with 103 respondents confirmed that teaching of D&DR has several issues that can be addressed. Currently, there is an ABUNDANCE of specialized literature. While this trend is encouraging, it has become more difficult for researchers to keep up with this growing literature, and the mere task of getting into the field (as a young scholar) and covering the basic literature presents a real challenge for newcomers and graduate students. A resulting problem is that scholars end up doing research that has been done (in a related subfield) but were not aware of because of the growing fragmentation of sub-specializations. In addition, many innovations to the study of dictatorship are made within the locked focus of specific Area Studies (on Eurasia, Africa, Latin America, etc.). The fragmentation of area studies and their separation from autocracy studies hampers progress in both fields, since new insights (also from non-English literature) do not migrate back into the mainstream literature on dictatorship, and area studies use outdated theoretical models when doing cutting-edge and necessary fieldwork, making their finding less relevant.M.O.R.D.O.R plans to MAP current knowledge on dictatorship research and (EU) democracy-promotion and ORGANIZE and transform this into two outputs: One ENCYCLOPEDIA that will present a review the existing literature on D&DR from the last 3 to 5 decades, but add pedagogic element it can be used by educators, students and scholars alike to foster change and innovation in how these groups teach, learn and do research. The second output, a WHITE PAPER is for dem.-practitioners. Several top EU policy-makers have stated repeatedly that a better understanding of authoritarian contexts is a necessary condition to increase EU policy effectiveness. EU documents, like the latest February 2021 EU Parliament briefing: “Support for Democracy through EU External Policy: New Tools for Growing challenges” DOES NOT EVEN DISTINGUISH BETWEEN AUTHORITARIAN CONTEXTS but treats all non-democratic regimes as one group. The relevance of democratization strategies is not under dispute here, neither is the need to improve and adjust them, or to increase collaboration between scholars, policy-makers and -analysts. By offering RECOMMENDATIONS to such stakeholders with a long-needed new approach, assessing the multi-vector EU democratization policy from the point of view of dictatorships, we can offer new insights to these target groups, who, in consequence, can create better EU policies.<< Objectives >>The 1st objective of M.O.R.D.O.R. to be achieved with the Encyclopedia is to make education on authoritarian regimes better and easier and more inclusive (open access). Due to the scope of the ENCYCLOPEDIA and its especially designed didactic foundation, this work will become the go-to book for scholars, and thesis-writing students (as a reference), while educators can fall back on this book additional pedagogic aspects (lesson plans and a (self-)teaching user guide) when preparing classes and develop course curricula. The Encyclopedia will be unique in size and scope because it combines all the following elements: (1) global coverage (no region understudied, no partial comparisons), (2) dictatorship-oriented, (3) non-Western input (both from reviews from non-Western Area experts, and insights from non-English literature), (4) basic & advanced reviews of topics (targeting undergraduate students up to advanced readers and scholars), (5) learner-centered approach (with clear guidelines for educators and students - and self-study). This output will foster change for teachers by making the creation of courses on D&DR easier, and its impact for the development of the field will be visible by new research based on the “future avenues for research” we plan highlight; better coverage of understudied world regions; more interest for niche topics (by pointing readers to available literature); the introduction and development of non-Western concepts in the English mainstream; less mistakes or blind spots (in classifications, biases, methodology, research design) in the works of starting scholars or newcomers to the field, as well as less repeating of existing research (because of the extensive literature review per topic/region the encyclopedia offers). The 2nd major objective of M.O.R.D.O.R. is to bring change to EU policy-making regarding democracy-support by providing them with top-notch, innovative and thoroughly-prepared and consulted RECOMMENDATIONS - in the form of a White Paper. The project aims to make an impact regarding a shift in perspective for policy-makers on how authoritarian contexts matter for policy, and more differentiation in EU democracy-promoting strategies per target region. The goal is to inform leading EU policy-makers on how to make EU democracy-support policies more effective from the perspective of how authoritarian regimes function and react, instead of extrapolating normative frameworks that are biased by Western-centric worldviews and expectations about democracy. This in turn should lead to an updated and improved EU-policy regarding EU democracy-support and EU democracy-promotion, as well as a systemic, lasting contribution of the insights of the White Paper within the environment of policy-analysis. In other words, M.O.R.D.O.R. has a mission to illustrate the importance of collaboration between Area Studies and Comparative Politics, and show their practical (combined) benefits for policy-makers.<< Implementation >>Both PROJECT OBJECTIVES are to be realized by combining consortium expertise and individual experts’ complementary profiles and area specializations. In order to guarantee top levels of quality (control) and avoid Western biases, non-European experts have to be involved at different stages, in the form of guest lectures during master classes, to grassroots experts (democracy practitioners from EU democracy-support target regions), to region experts from the Associated Partners, hosting fieldwork delegations.The ENCYCLOPEDIA will be prepared in several phases: after preparatory work, scholars and area experts will map the literature on topics and various world regions respectively, sharing insights with one-another in the next phase, in order to complete the systemic overview with targeted research and surveys of non-English specialized literatures. In the meantime five fieldwork delegations will be organized to connect with region experts in South Africa, Kyrgyzstan & Georgia (representing Eurasia), the United Arab Emirates, Argentina, and the Philippines & Malaysia (representing the Indo-Pacific) to solicit local knowledge on topics like regional development patterns, the evolution of civil-military relations, political regime survival, the regional impact of great power rivalry/cooperation, etc. The resulting insights will be integrated in the final work, while its content will be also internally peer-reviewed, and its didactic elements tested with a student-audience during the planned Master class.This Master Class on Advanced Dictatorship Research (Ostrava - September 2022) is aimed foremost at consortium students and will host over 21 learners and offer them an unique teaching program with over 20 lectures and workshops The editorial team is made up by Adam Mickiewicz University and the University of Essex, with authors and area experts from Charles University, the University of Ostrava, the University of Coimbra, the University of Catania, Ljubljana University and Michigan State University, together with all 12 associated partners. The WHITE PAPER will be developed as follows: M.O.R.D.O.R. enables cooperation by a unique team of analysts: (1) EU foreign policy analysts working with (2) scholars of dictatorships to identify blind spots and propose theory-driven approaches, and in the next stage this team will collaborate with (3) Area Studies Experts (ASEs) to verify findings and formulate practical recommendations. Once a CONCEPT PAPER is ready, carefully selected “democracy practitioners” (4 - Grassroots experts) will revise and comment, providing input for the final WHITE PAPER. These Consultation Sessions with Grassroots experts will take place during the Master Class on Policy-Analysis and EU Democracy-Promotion, which by itself will boost over 21 (consortium) students’ competences on these topics with over 26 lectures and workshops . (Ljubljana - July 2023)The University of Ghent is the task leader, working with the German Development Institute (DIE), the European Partnership for Democracy, the University of Coimbra, the University of Catania and Ljubljana University.<< Results >>The M.O.R.D.O.R. project will work toward the following OUTCOMES and OUTPUTS. Within WORK PACKAGE 1 the coordinating team, team leaders and local coordinators will collaborate to logistically manage the other work packages, 16 transnational project meetings, the prepared COMMUNICATION and DISSEMINATION plan and its related activities, like the organization of the 2 planned MASTER CLASSES, and events like the White Paper launch in Brussels (March 2024), the international conference on authoritarian research in Ostrava (May 2024) and the live broadcasted “Democracy Day Discussion’ in Ghent (September 2024). WORK PACKAGE 2 is designed to strengthen and innovate teaching and research on Dictatorship and Democracy (D&DR). To this purpose project activities consist of the editorial management of the ENCYCLOPEDIA (Open Access, 800 pages, with over 200 entries) and the writing, reviewing and updating its entries, as well as coordinating targeted research to make its contents complete and comprehensive, equally covering all relevant world regions. This work package has some additional activities: Michigan State University will lead the team working on the didactic dimensions, like the compilation of a relevant list of intended learning outcomes to benchmark the pedagogic aspirations of the publication. There is also the development of an online, basic glossary (jargon-free) to popularize knowledge about D&DR for the larger public, to be published on the project website. WORK PACKAGE 3 focuses solely on the creation on the WHITE PAPER recommendations for EU stakeholders and policy-analysts. This smaller team will develop several smaller outputs along the way, some of which that will be available in Open Access for exploitation by third partners: like policy briefs, blog posts, poster, info-graphics about EU democratization, a detailed map of EU democracy projects per world region, a set of survey results from local perspectives (from target regions of EU-democracy support), etc. Final WORK PACKAGE 4, is a supporting set of actions with EXTERNAL EXPERTS, aimed at planning, organizing and implementing the quality control of the main project outputs (the encyclopedia and the White Paper). The main work will be the planned 5 fieldwork delegations to Associated Partners (and preparing 5 reports), and the ‘roundtable’ consultations with grassroots experts or other consultants during the master classes.