Taking into account the fact that buildings constitute the largest end-use energy consuming sector, the design and development of solutions targeted at reducing their energy consumption based on the adoption of energy efficient techniques and the active engagement of citizens/occupants is considered crucial. Innovative solutions have to be implemented upon properly understanding the main energy consuming factors and trends, as well as properly modeling and understanding the citizens’ behaviour and the potential for lifestyle changes. The ENTROPY project addresses this challenge by building upon the integration of technologies that facilitate the deployment of innovative energy aware IT ecosystems for motivating end-users’ behavioural changes and namely: (1) the Internet of Things that provides the capacity for interconnecting numerous devices and applying energy-efficient communication protocols, (2) the evolvement of advanced Data Modelling and Analysis techniques that support the realization of semantic models and knowledge extraction mechanisms and (3) the Recommendation and Gamification eras that can trigger interaction with relevant users in social networks, increase end users’ awareness with regards to ways to achieve energy consumption savings in their daily activities and adopt energy efficient lifestyles as well as provide a set of energy efficient recommendations and motives. Novel practices that fully integrate information collected from a set of sensor networks and mobile crowd sensing activities are going to be exploited along with processes for monitoring, reporting and analysing sets of data with regards to energy consumption and the behavioural profile of citizens. The engagement and inclusion of end users will be strongly supported upon the development of a set of serious games and personalised applications. The designed IT ecosystem is planned to be validated in three pilot sites.

This project is aimed at a new technology for heating, cooling, air humidity control and water recovery in greenhouses as well as for drying of agricultural goods using thermo-chemical conversion principles based on the use of salt solutions (thermochemical fluids). The common effect in all applications is the hygroscopic property of thermochemical fluids, allowing an uptake of water vapor from air thus releasing sensible heat involved in the phase change. The technology allows to (1) use unexplored potentials of solar- and residual heat at farm level, (2) to convert and to store the heat into thermochemical potential without thermal losses and (3) to use the potential through re-conversion of the potential into heat within the above-mentioned applications. Within two different demonstrators in Central European Climate (heating) and Mediterranean Climate (cooling, water recovery and desalination) the technology will be tested, further developed and disseminated. Lab tests will explore the processes and materials involved, will include tests on material drying and on interactions between different applications. Development of improved knowledge on modelling of the involved processes, the simulation and control of specific applications and the development of control strategies are further tasks to provide a bright insight into the novel approach. Strategies to bring the technology to market will be developed. Thermochemical applications in agriculture have the potential to significantly reduce the energy consumption in greenhouse climate control as well as in crop drying and will provide an alternative to energy intensive water desalination in arid regions. The uptake, conversion and storage of solar heat from greenhouses even provides the perspective to turn protected intensive horticulture from an energy/water consuming to an energy/water producing method, allowing to secure the important market of food production and food processing and to extend it to new regions.

Despite the tremendous socio-economic importance of Supply Chains (SCs), security officers and operators have still no easy and integrated way to protect their interconnected Critical Infrastructures (CIs) and cyber systems in the new digital era. CYRENE vision is to enhance the security, privacy, resilience, accountability and trustworthiness of SCs through the provision of a novel and dynamic Conformity Assessment Process (CAP) that evaluates the security and resilience of supply chain services, the interconnected IT infrastructures composing these services, and the individual devices that support the operations of the SCs. In order to meet its objectives, the proposed CAP is based on a collaborative, multi-level evidence-driven, Risk and Privacy Assessment approach that support, at different levels, the SCs security officers and operators to recognize, identify, model, and dynamically analyse advanced persistent threats and vulnerabilities as well as to handle daily cyber-security and privacy risks and data breaches. CYRENE will be validated in the scope of realistic scenarios/conditions comprising of real-life supply chain infrastructures and end-users. Furthermore, the project will ensure the active engagement of a large number of external stakeholders as a means of developing a wider ecosystem around the project’s results, which will set the basis for CYRENE large scale adoption and global impact.