The societal challenges affecting European societies require responsive socio-economic policy solutions. The European Social Survey is an unparalleled resource enabling stability and change in Europeans’ social attitudes to be charted. Its value for science and public policy has been recognised. However, despite such recognition and the clear success and impact of the European Social Survey research infrastructure, culminating in the award of ERIC status in 2013, there remain significant challenges to ensuring its long-term sustainability. ESS-SUSTAIN represents a comprehensive response to the different challenges and it will be instrumental in securing the sustainable future of ESS ERIC. A key challenge is ensuring the appropriate number of European countries are included, representing the different areas of geographic Europe. This is a critical requirement for meaningful analyses beyond the national level, as well as for the financial viability of the infrastructure. The most important activities in this proposal are therefore those which aim (i) to enhance the long-term commitment of existing Members and Observers of ESS ERIC, (2) effect the transfer of the current guest status of some countries to more stable memberships and (3) expand the coverage of the ESS to countries not yet affiliated. Based upon the current number of just over twenty countries participating in the ESS ERIC, a further increase of its membership will translate into lower costs of participation for all, whilst also strengthening the analytical power of its datasets.

Europe is facing huge socio-economic challenges: an economic crisis with a young generation in search of jobs, population ageing potentially straining inclusion and innovation of our societies, climate change with its pressures to redesign energy, transport and housing patterns, just to name some of the most urgent “Grand Challenges”. SERISS brings together three research infrastructures in the social sciences: the European Social Survey (ESS), the Survey for Health Ageing and Retirement in Europe and the Consortium of European Social Science Data Archives (CESSDA). Also involved in SERISS are non-ESFRI research infrastructures: GGP - Generations and Gender Programme; EVS - European Values Survey and the WageIndicator Survey. The overarching objective of this project is to support the Union, the Commission and the Member States to tackle these challenges with a solid base of socio-economic evidence. The scientific objective of this project is to exploit the synergies among these three infrastructures to their fullest extent and to leverage these synergies to influence the still rather fragmented landscape of smaller infrastructures. Specific bjectives are • to better represent the European population, including target groups of policy measures addressing the Grand Challenges, e.g., young unemployed, older persons in institutions and migrants, • to strengthen cross-national harmonization across Europe by leveraging recent advances in questionnaire design, translation and coding techniques, • to exploit the advances in software technology for cost-effective web-based interviewing, more efficient fieldwork management, and to support new ways of collecting data • to better connect the world of research-driven social surveys with the world of process-generated administrative data, and, • to ensure that the ethical and data protection concerns of the respondents are properly be taken into account by creating a consistent and EU-wide framework for all social surveys

RISCAPE will provide systematic, focused, high quality, comprehensive, consistent and peer-reviewed international landscape analysis report on the position and complementarities of the major European research infrastructures in the international research infrastructure landscape. To achieve this, RISCAPE will establish a close links with a stakeholder panel representing the main user groups of the report, including representatives from ESFRI, the OECD and Member state funding agencies to ensure usability and the focus of the Report. It will also benefit from close co-operation with other projects and initiatives in the European research infrastructures development to ensure consistency with the existing landscape work. Particularly, RISCAPE builds on the European Research Infrastructures (RIs) in the ESFRI landscape report (2016) and on the landscape analysis done or currently underway in the H2020 cluster projects. RISCAPE leverages the experts on the European RIs with extensive knowledge on the disciplines involved and RI development in Europe and the project benefits from the contacts and tools developed in the cluster- and international RI collaboration projects to maximize the discipline-specific usability of the results. A key factor in the RISCAPE analysis is that the complementarities will be analyzed in a way which is natural and suitable for the discipline and RI in question. The resulting Report and the used methods will be independently peer reviewed to maximize the usability and objectivity of the information provided for the EU strategic RI development and policy. The project answers directly to the European Commission strategy on EU international cooperation in research and innovation, particularly on the need to obtain objective information in order to help implement the (EC) strategic approach.

European and global research infrastructures (RIs) provide facilities and resources to support excellence and innovation, delivering socio-economic value by raising skills, advancing knowledge and technology and its exploitation, and driving new development and construction. RIs closely engage with their specialist communities but RI sustainability in the long term requires engagement with civil communities and stakeholders where an understanding of the significance and the socio-economic benefits of the services delivered underpins financial and strategic support. RI-VIS will increase the visibility of European RIs to broader scientific communities, industry and strategic partners in third countries. The RI-VIS consortium has main membership from the life sciences RIs where there is urgent need to improve outreach and strategic partnerships. Partner RIs in other thematic groups ensure that outcomes are relevant to all. A major advantage of this consortium is first hand knowledge of RI services and operating processes and their user communities. RI-VIS will target communities and stakeholders with current and precise information and match them with RIs to facilitate i) the development of new collaborations, ii) user accessibility, iii) collaborative and innovative actions, iv) funding opportunities, v) knowledge transfer and vi) training opportunities. RI-VIS will make it easier for new entrants to find out how RIs are organized and funded, where and how to access RI services and where data is available. The communication framework will include several digital platforms to achieve broad reach and generate a communication toolkit to help others benefit from the experiences gained. RI-VIS will broker engagement of RIs with various stakeholder groups using events and thematic workshops. A collaboration toolkit will identify best engagement strategies to bring new agreements to fruition. RI-VIS will mentor a selection of partnerships to broker cooperation agreements.

The European Cohort Development Project (ECDP) is a Design Study which will create the specification and business case for a European Research Infrastructure that will provide, over the next 25 years, comparative longitudinal survey data on child and young adult well-being. The infrastructure developed by ECDP will subsequently coordinate the first Europe wide cohort survey, which we name EuroCohort. This is achieved through the following three objectives: i. Building support from key political policy makers with a brief which covers child well-being as well as national funding agencies tasked with infrastructural spending on science and survey data collection ii. Develop a scientifically excellent research design iii. Establish a robust operational framework that will ensure the logistic integrity of EuroCohort. The culmination of ECDP is in the creation of an infrastructural platform with a commitment from key stakeholders across Europe and from which the next stages in finalising EuroCohort can begin. There is at present no equivalent data source available to scientists to comparatively analyse the well-being of children as they grow up and therefore to develop policies to improve their well-being. As the respondents to EuroCohort grow up an increasing body of data will develop, becoming ever richer and informative, able to show the ways in which national policies have made impacts and showing where policy interventions can make significant improvements. ECDP has a tripartite focus on securing political support, operational robustness and scientific excellence. We recognise that each of these imperatives are necessary to the development of a successful research infrastructure, as scientific excellence alone is not enough. ECDP comprises a range of Work Packages that detail the specific requirements of a EuroCohort, the costs that would be involved and the policy benefits that accrue.