GrowSmarter aims to: • Improve the quality of life for European citizens by better mobility, housing and the quality of urban infrastructure while improving the citizens economy by lower energy costs and creating as much as 1500 new jobs (on the demonstration level). • Reduce the environmental impact by lower energy needs by 60 % and increased use of renewable energy thus reducing GHG emissions even more. • Create sustainable economic development by demonstrating and preparing a wider rollout of smart solutions. GrowSmarter will demonstrate at 3 lighthouse cities 12 smart, integrated solutions as a way of preparing for a wider market rollout. These solutions are integrated in specially chosen sites making demonstration easy to reach and take part of for the 5 follower cities and other European and international study groups. All the smart solutions are fit into the Lighthouse-cities strategic development plans and the follower cities replication plans. The solutions solve common urban challenges such as: • Renewal of existing buildings. GrowSmarter demonstrates the cost efficient renewal of 100.000 square meters of Nearly Zero or low energy districts reducing energy demand by 70-90%, • Integrated infrastructures for ICT, street lighting, smart grids district heating and smarter waste handling • Sustainable urban mobility for both passenger and gods integrated in smart grids, biofuels from household waste thus reducing local air quality emissions by 60%. The integration of Cities, strong group of industrial partners together and quality research organisations guarantee that the solutions will be both validated by independent research organisations and transformed into Smart Business Solutions by industry for the wider rollout to Europe. Growsmarter builds on integrated, close to the market solutions, to form business models for their wider deployment by the industrial partners. The project will help Europe GrowSmarter!

The main objective of this Project is the development of a methodology and ICT tools which will allow an advanced simulation of intermodal railway logistics platforms models in order to support tasks related to both design and planning phases. Using the combination of demand/economic/capacity models as main inputs, an evaluation of scenarios will be possible by means of the comparison of an underlying Building Information Modeling output composed of different data sets such as CAPEX, OPEX or energy efficiency. Moreover, using these new design tool an improvement of the QOS and boost transhipment operations between rail and road transport will be achieved. Above BIM2Operate translate and demonstrate the benefits of BIM during the operational phase, the tools can be extended with a specific simulator to get other indicators about the performance of the operations. The scope of this proposal addresses two of a maximum of five aspects expected by the European Commission: - Development of whole system planning environments (based e.g. on virtual design concepts such as BIM - Building Information Modeling) to support the streamlined delivery of infrastructure projects from concept to deployment. In this respect, the rail sector deserves particular attention. - Solutions for advanced infrastructure capacity planning and modeling for all transport modes.

The overall aim of ELIPTIC is to develop new use concepts and business cases to optimise existing electric infrastructure and rolling stock, saving both money and energy. ELIPTIC will advocate electric public transport sector at the political level and help develop political support for the electrification of public transport across Europe. ELIPTIC looks at three thematic pillars: • Safe integration of ebuses into existing electric PT infrastructure through (re)charging ebuses “en route”, upgrading trolleybus networks with battery buses or trolleyhybrids and automatic wiring/de-wiring technology • upgrading and/or regenerating electric public transport systems (flywheel, reversible substations) • Multi-purpose use of electric public transport infrastructure: safe (re)charging of non-public transport vehicles (pedelecs, electric cars/ taxis, utility trucks) With a strong focus on end users, ELIPTIC will analyse 23 use cases within the three thematic pillars. The project will support uptake and exploitation of results by developing guidelines and tools for implementation schemes for upgrading and/or regenerating electric public transport systems. Option generator and decision-making support tools, strategies and policy recommendations will be created to foster Europe-wide take up and rollout of various development schemes. Partners and other cities will benefit from ELIPTIC's stakeholder and user forum approach. ELIPTIC addresses the challenge of “transforming the use of conventionally fuelled vehicles in urban areas” by focusing on increasing the capacity of electric public transport, reducing the need for individual travel in urban areas and by expanding electric intermodal options (e.g. linking e-cars charging to tram infrastructure) for long-distance commuters. The project will strengthen the role of electric public transport, leading to both a significant reduction in fossil fuel consumption and to an improvement in air quality through reduced local emissions.

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.