The project's overall concept is centred on the scaling up of novel, mass-production nano-manufacturing techniques invented by FAST-SMART partners for synthesis of nano-structured smart materials and component manufacturing for energy harvesting applications to significantly improve the material quality and structural reliability (>50%~100% improvement) and reduce overall materials and processing costs (by 30%) through shortening the process chains and improving material processing efficiency, being focused on less and free rare-element dependence materials (such as lead-free piezoelectric and Hf-free half-Heusler thermoelectric materials) as well as on new energy harvester designs considering environmental strategy, thus to bring about positive, environment-related impacts to Europe (greenhouse gas emission down by 50%, waste reduction by 50%), increased EU’s market share worthy hundreds million Euros initially, and to promote wide implementation of Internet of Things (IoT) and Digital Single Market (DSM) in Europe, due to introduction of the new energy harvesting products, design and manufacturing services created through the FAST-SMART’s partnership. Current obstacles to the large-scale introduction of energy harvesters that use materials with less rare-element dependence and/or that are toxicity-free are associated largely with inadequate material performance and reliability, high manufacturing cost, and inadequately developed product design strategy addressing needs for sustainable developments. The main driver of the proposal lies in a need to meet challenges particularly for the development and applications of Piezoelectric (PE) and Thermoelectric (TE) materials, associated structures and systems for new-generation energy harvesters, and for dealing with energy generation, storage and uses related issues with a systematic approach, and hence, to help to meet EU’s targets on the social, economic and environmental developments.

The modern world is fast-evolving, interconnected and highly mobile, thus posing a significant challenge in harmonizing risk mitigation measures against emerging biological hazards. For many years the risk of emerging infectious diseases with pandemic potential was declared a major threat to global health security and addressed by many stakeholders around the world. The delay in imposing risk mitigation measures is crucial and can make the difference between a local outbreak with few cases to a pandemic with countless sick and deceased citizens, as severely demonstrated by the recent outbreak of Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). It is of paramount importance that appropriate and proportionate measures to each phase of the pandemic (e.g. from situations with no reported cases, sporadic, local clusters of cases, to widespread sustained transmission) are immediately implemented to interrupt human-to-human transmission chains, prevent further spread and reduce the intensity of COVID-19 outbreak. Immediate activation of national emergency response mechanisms and pandemic preparedness plans to ensure containment and mitigation of COVID-19 with non-pharmaceutical public health measures is critical for delaying transmission or decreasing the peak of the outbreak, in order to allow healthcare systems to prepare and cope with an increased influx of patients. However, shortages and other gaps in the global medical supply chain represent a mismatch of supply and demand when supply is low and/or demand is high for particular items. With healthcare workers and other first responders feeling the impact of supply chains disrupted by unprecedented challenges, many large and small businesses from outside the traditional healthcare procurement system are reconfiguring to mass produce critical medical consumables. In order to address supply shortages, particularly in medical supplies and protective equipment, some countries have employed less traditional instruments.