The 5+ Bn km of currently installed data communications optical fibre cable provides an opportunity to create a globe-spanning network of fibre sensors, without laying any new fibres. These traverse the seas and oceans, where conventional sensors are practically non-extent, and major infrastructures, offering potential for smart structural health monitoring. ECSTATIC will develop novel interferometry and polarisation-based sensing approaches for vibration and acoustic fibre-optic sensing technologies. New possibilities will be defined for sensitivity, distance range and localization, offering a range of solutions for different use cases, while ensuring the coexistence of the sensing signal with live data traffic. A new compact photonic chip-based dual-microcomb engine will enable enhanced range, resolution, and bandwidth of distributed acoustic sensing together with fundamental new knowledge on the physics of physical stimuli in relation to state-of-polarisation sensing. Simultaneous interrogation of multiple transmitted comb lines in the microwave domain with multi-wavelength interferometry and novel state-of-polarisation millisecond field programmable gate array-based transceivers will be developed and characterised to improve the sensitivity, spatial resolution, and dynamic range of distributed fiber sensors. To address the limited data storage and processing capabilities of communication networks new digital signal processing algorithms based on edge devices and artificial intelligence/machine learning will be developed and used to extract information via data-compression techniques. Solutions will aim to minimise algorithm complexity while realising real-time sensing of events and network condition with high classification accuracy. These technologies and algorithms will be tested in real-world submarine, metropolitan and infrastructure networks to validate their potential for early warning of seismic events, predictive maintenance, and network integrity.

Green transition is the behavioral intention of health and care providers (HCPs) even in presence of growing healthcare request after COVID-19. However, it requires operational tools to be carried out rapidly with optimal processes and low service costs. CARING NATURE’s (CN) 5 HCP, 5 innovation SMEs, 1 SDO, 2 industries and 5 Universities will construct and implement 10 healthcare specific solutions for carbon emissions and pollution (CEP) reduction demonstrated in 33 use cases. The 10 CEP-reduction solutions tackle main production sources on which HCP have exclusive control and were they act as principal actors of transition: building energy demand will be addressed through: reduction of environmental impact of construction and renovation, and utilizing AI-powered energy management; reduction and valorization of medical, food and water waste through a HCP tailored pyrolysis plant prototype and an on-site waste food digestion and drying system; reduction of patient/visitors travel through next generation telemedicine. Sustainability transitions require transversal staff and Governance commitment: Staff engagement through participatory methods for Communities of Practice will be explored and systematized. Governance capability of HCPs, policy makers and investors urgently needs an operative framework since to evaluate interventions no simple measuring system of HCP environmental impact exists. CN framework consists of a decision support system based on information sharing, HCP specific social life cycle assessment and life cycle cost and sustainable finance evaluation models together with a reporting model compliant with EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). Governance bodies and other stakeholders will benefit from an HCP specific eco-friendly approach to reengineering of processes for enforcing sustainability based on the Green Lean Six Sigma methodology. Opportunities for standardization will be identified and reported.

EUNOMIA is a fully decentralised, intermediary-free and open-source solution for addressing three key challenges: which social media user is the original source of a piece of information; how this information has spread and been modified in an information cascade; and how likely it is to be trustworthy. Although its innovations are applicable across any social network, its design philosophy makes it ideal for evaluation on similarly open, decentralised and federated new social media networks, thus contributing against accumulation of power in the large social media intermediaries located outside Europe. EUNOMIA actively encourages democratic citizen participation in content verification by allowing voting on content trustworthiness and influencing the reputation of content generators and sharers. It combines information cascade verification with information trustworthiness scoring, benefitting from blockchain technology to ensure transparency of the scoring process and that information has not been modified in a cascade. It also places emphasis on ensuring that trustworthiness information is communicated transparently and accessibly. A General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliant and ethically responsible digital companion running as a local app on the user’s device encourages the involvement of each user, while also carrying out the background processing for scoring and verifying content, and crucially for visualizing to the user. EUNOMIA uses social-science based co-design methodologies acknowledging and integrating users’ experiences of social media, specifically in how they use and trust the information they interact with. EUNOMIA’s versatility will be evaluated with large communities in social journalism and traditional media, as well as the largest user community of the most popular decentralised social media networks.

TILOS aims to demonstrate the optimal integration of local scale energy storage in a fully-operated, smart island microgrid that will also communicate with a main electricity grid. The main objective of the project will be the development and operation of a prototype battery storage system, based on NaNiCl2 batteries, provided with an optimum, real-environment smart grid control system and coping with the challenge of supporting multiple tasks, ranging from microgrid energy management, maximization of RES penetration and grid stability, to export of guaranteed energy amounts and provision of ancillary services to the main grid. The battery system will support both stand-alone and grid-connected operation, while proving its interoperability with the rest of microgrid components, including demand side management aspects and distributed, residential heat storage in the form of domestic hot water. At the same time, TILOS project addresses the high-priority area of the specific call concerning island regions. In doing so, apart from Tilos island, TILOS also engages the islands of Pellworm, La Graciosa and Corsica, aiming to create an island platform that will enable transfer of technological experience by making use of the smart grid system of Pellworm on the one hand, and by offering new case studies for the development of similar projects on the other. Elaboration of new case studies will be enabled by the development of an advanced microgrid simulating tool, i.e. the Extended Microgrid Simulator, offering the potential for the detailed examination of different battery technologies and microgrid configurations (stand-alone, grid connected and power market-dependent systems). Finally, by also addressing social issues, through public engagement, and by developing novel business models and policy instruments, TILOS puts emphasis on the market diffusion of the developed battery storage system and the integrated energy solution implemented on the island of Tilos.