WIRE is promoted by all eight HEIs currently members or soon to be members in the FilmEU Alliance. FilmEU fully represents Europe’s geographical, cultural, and linguistic differences, combined with the diversity and richness of its European Higher Education Area (EHEA) and its Research Area (ERA). WIRE integrates five out of eight academic partners each coming from widening countries, a majority of less research-intensive institutions and is led by an institution from a widening country. All WIRE activities are centered in widening countries, and it is these countries and less research-intensive HEIs that are beneficiaries of the of the project. WIRE’s main objective is to catalyse a step change in the excellence and innovation of the science and value creation activities carried out by and across the FilmEU Alliance via its capacity building and the promotion of several reforms across the HEIs in widening countries participating in the Alliance. WIRE will capacitate the FilmEU Alliance Research and Innovation R&I dimensions, notably by focusing on management and administrative competencies, for the benefit of its members in widening countries, and through that increase the overall competitiveness of the Alliance. WIRE will achieve this through deeper and more geographically inclusive cooperation between all members of the Alliance. WIRE will contribute significantly to the expected outcomes of the call via the consolidation of an inclusive Alliance of HEIs which mostly (5 of 8) come from widening countries. Through collaboration between themselves and with other actors in local ecosystems, they will promote institutional and country-level reforms and upgrades, facilitate an embedded culture of excellence and value creation driven by artistic research, and focus on the cultural and creative industries, in view of increased competitiveness and accelerated institutional reforms in their R&I dimension.

The world is losing its wild species and ecosystems at an alarming rate, and Europe is no exception. Yet, biodiversity is the basis for functioning ecosystems, which provide essential goods and services for humans and all other life forms on Earth. We must therefore reverse the trend of BD loss in the foreseeable future, especially by addressing underlying, indirect drivers of biodiversity loss such as consumption patterns, norms and values to achieve double decoupling (of consumption from excessive natural resource use, of satisfaction from consumption). Such transformative change requires social innovation and improved, systemic governance approaches. Additionally, digitalisation and emerging technologies offer potential to support the conservation of biodiversity, increase society well-being and economic prosperity which should be harnessed while reducing their equally existing negative impacts. GoDigiBios aims to support biodiversity-relevant transformative change towards a nature-positive economy and society that will use new digital and other emerging technologies in ways that assist in reversing BD loss. Specifically, GoDigiBioS will deliver i) comprehensive understanding complemented by new insights and operational knowledge of the interactions between biodiversity, social and economic well-being, and technological development, ii) tools to support biodiversity-relevant decision-making, iii) improved, systemic policy mixes and governance approaches. To co-produce these knowledge, tools, and governance approaches, GoDigiBioS will bring together and leverage the knowledge and experience of both researchers and stakeholders from four peri-urban transformation lab regions across Europe and use specific approaches to ensure scalability and replicability of its solutions.

CRAFT-IT4SD CRAFT-IT4SD (Craft Revitalization Action for Future-proofing the Transition to Innovative Technologies for Sustainable Development) aims to activate the CCSI towards the green transition by building on the rich cultural heritage and strong creative traditions which underpin the European CCSI. It is the ambition of CRAFT-IT4SD to revitalize knowledge, practices and traditional techniques as shared cultural resources for sustainability as well as spillovers into a new, customer driven and sustainable creative economy, allowing for born-sustainable small and micro-sized enterprises to share climate impact data and flourish via an open source and open data platform. CRAFT-IT4SD explores cross-sectoral CCSI innovation through a new ecosystem approach and with four pilot clusters (DK, ES, FI, RO), where regional governance, public private partnerships, entrepreneurial living labs, learning communities, and consumer-engagement approaches support shared experimentation towards the green transition. CRAFT-IT4SD goes beyond the state of art by merging otherwise often siloed CCI sectors, to further articulate a holistic approach, bridging past, present and future design and production opportunities, in the sense that CRAFT-IT4SD - combines techniques, skills and materials associated with traditional crafts with emerging possibilities for integration with new digital technologies and data analytics processes and services; and - adopts a new ecosystem approach to facilitate co-creation between traditional craft stakeholders, the fashion industry, SMEs by designers, artisans, artists through immersive media technologies. CRAFT-IT4SD holds the ambition to replicate insights, learnings and tangible results leading to a CCSI driven green transition – informed by the EIT CLIMATE KIC and inspired by the New European Bauhaus – in other CCSI ecosystems and thus to contribute to the EIT Culture and Creativity KIC, across its Co-location Centers.

RESIST will strengthen the resilience and accelerate the transformation and increase adaptive capacity of 12 climate-vulnerable EU regions, implementing 4 large-scale demonstrators of resilient innovations for Climate Change Adaptation (CCA) with quintuple-helix partnerships (including 1 in a less developed region) and promote transfer of know-how and innovative solutions to 8 twin regions (of which 4 less developed regions) through both physical mutual-learning activities and innovative immersive digital twins. The consortium will engage EU associations, CCA research groups, scientific experts, social engagement and communication institutions, innovation agencies and 1 Venture Capital Fund to co-create and validate innovative solutions, raise awareness, leverage citizens participation and promote sustainable exploitation of results towards the markets. RESIST will contribute to the EU agenda on CCA, through intervention in 3 main areas: Promote and demonstrate an innovative, more participative approach to resilience and CC adaptation in 4 demonstrator and 8 twinning regions (including 5 less developed regions in total) demonstrating >12 new solution lines, accelerating regional resilience and helping reach the adaptation-mission objectives of ‘building resilience and upscaling solutions through 100 demonstrators and accelerating the transition in 200 pilot regions and communities by 2030’ reaching already 4% and 6% of these aims by 2027, with 4 demonstrators and involvement of 12 regions Co-design and contribute to the development of new regional measures, policy instruments and social and technological solutions in 12 regions involving 22m citizens, increasing awareness/resilience by 10% and levels of green investments by 20%, reducing economic losses due to natural hazards such as floods by 14% and climate protection gap by 50%; Reduce time-to-market/risk for >100 new CCA Solutions from providers across Europe, offering them scale-up for their products.

Heating and cooling in buildings and industry accounts for half of the EU’s energy consumption, making it the biggest energy end-use sector ahead of both, transport and electricity. Approximately 75% of heating and cooling is still generated from fossil fuels while only 22% is generated from renewable energy. District heating and cooling networks supplied by renewable energy sources can be a solution to all these issues, offering a clean, energy-efficient, and cost-effective alternative to individual fossil-fuel heating systems. Geothermal energy has the potential to play a vital role inside heating and cooling networks by offering zero emission stable base load supply and heat storage in the subsurface. Still, geothermal energy supplied heating and cooling networks (‘geoHC networks’) cover a small niche of around 1% inside the European heating and cooling sector, which is a result of primarily non-technological market barriers. SAPHEA addresses the uptake of multivalent heating and cooling networks supplied by geothermal energy by creating a durable digital market uptake hub. The hub contains toolboxes and guidelines to support stakeholders in early stage investment decisions and strategy planning activities and addresses market actors in districts or municipalities all across Europe. SAPHEA will therefore combine, adapt and expand existing tools (e.g., Hotmaps or EnerMaps) considering a set of market ready and emerging technological concepts linked to geoHC networks. The users of the hub, represented by local authorities, community services and energy suppliers will be empowered by targeted trainings to draft development scenarios and roadmaps taking into consideration the specific geological and socio-economic boundary conditions in their respective region. Dedicated communication activities will lead to the establishment to a lively network around the market uptake hub of public and private market actors as well as researchers beyond the lifetime of SAPHEA.