Natural hazards, such as extreme weather events, are exacerbated by climate change. As a result, emergency responses are becoming more protracted, expensive, frequent, and stretching limited available resources. This is especially apparent in rapidly warming regions. MedEWSa addresses these challenges by providing novel solutions to ensure timely, precise, and actionable impact and finance forecasting, and early warning systems (EWS) that support the rapid deployment of first responders to vulnerable areas. Specifically, MedEWSa will deliver a sophisticated, comprehensive, and innovative pan-European–Mediterranean–African solution comprising a range of complementary services. Building on existing tools MedEWSa will develop a fully integrated impact-based multi-hazard EWS. This call contained five expected outcomes, all of which will be specifically addressed by MedEWSa. Led by WMO, MedEWSa will be an exemplar of the UN Secretary General’s March 2022 call to ensure that everyone on Earth is protected from extreme weather and climate-related hazards by EWS within the next five years. Through eight carefully selected pilot sites (areas in Europe, the southern Mediterranean, and Africa with a history of being impacted by natural hazards and extreme events with cascading effects), four twins will be created: ● Twin #1: Greece (Attica) – Ethiopia (National Parks): wildfires and extreme weather events (droughts, wind) ● Twin #2: Italy (Venice) – Egypt (Alexandria / Nile Delta): coastal floods and storm surges ● Twin #3: Slovakia (Kosice) – Georgia (Tbilisi): floods and landslides ● Twin #4: Spain (Catalonia) – Sweden (countrywide): heatwaves, droughts and wildfires. The twins will bridge areas with different climatic/physiographic conditions, yet subject to similar hazards, and are well positioned to deliver long-term bi-directional knowledge transfer. They will demonstrate the transferability and versatility of the tools developed in MedEWSa.

The ENTRUSTED consortium proposes to establish a Network of Users for governmental Satellite Communications, with the aim to achieve a reliable collaboration and coordination between them to eventually agree on common user needs and requirements, to share information about existing and planned future SatCom capabilities and to have a framework to establish symbiotic relationships when beneficial for the partners. The main project's results will be a consolidated set of institutional EU user requirements for secure SatCom services and a long-term Roadmap and Coordination plan for research and innovation activities related to the user technologies, to serve as reference guidelines for the future user related activities and pave the way for a potential future EU GOVSATCOM programme.

Europe needs to step up its efforts and strengthen its very own security capacities to secure its digital society, economy, and democracy. It is time to reconquer Europe’s digital sovereignty. The vision for Europe can only be to join forces across Europe’s research, industry and public sector and to include all talents not just those that have representation in the EU mainstream or are within big organizations. Diversity and inclusion are keys for success. Europe has incredible coverage and talent in the area of IT and cybersecurity. The area of cybersecurity is geographically fragmented across Europe for competences, and often also technically fragmented with problem-specific development of security solutions. There is no doubt that excellent research exists in Europe. Nevertheless, it is a fact that this research does not result in IT products and solutions that contribute to the European Single Digital Market. On contrary, a lot of research, also financed by EU ERC grants, is tested on real data in large US companies that cooperate with them. Europe has to and is already rethinking this strategy. CONCORDIA addresses the current fragmentation of security competence by networking diverse competences into a leadership role via a synergistic agglomeration of a pan-European Cybersecurity Center. The vision of CONCORDIA is to build a community a strong cooperation between all stakeholders, understanding that all stakeholders have their KPIs, bridging among them, and fostering the development of IT products and solutions along the whole supply chain. Technologically, it projects a broad and evolvable data-driven and cognitive E2E Security approach for the ever-complex ever-interconnected compositions of emergent data-driven cloud, IoT and edge-assisted ICT ecosystems.

The overall vision of FORTESIE is to design, demonstrate, validate and replicate innovative renovation packages in the building industry with Smart Performance-Based guarantees and financing, aiming at Efficient, Sustainable and Inclusive Energy (ESIE) use to accelerate the Renovation Wave in Europe. The renovation packages will combine state-of-the-art construction materials and technologies components (prefabricated facades, BIPV, heat pumps, etc.), innovative digital technologies for measurement and verification, and attractive financing (e.g. contractual frameworks for smart performance guarantees, financing mechanisms, engagement techniques, green-euros, etc.), to raise the overall EPC value proposition. The renovation packages will be tailored to specific target groups needs and optimised to improve the ESIE performance considering energy, CO2 and comfort. Each package will be demonstrated and validated in real life use cases and customised for replication in all other partner countries for immediate market take-up. Methodologies from Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) will be adopted for: a. the creation of collaborative business models that boost the Renovation Wave by considering all stakeholders’ value and revenue streams, b. novel incentivisation and behavioural change models that aim to stimulate long term engagement with focused interactions to adopt green behaviour c. the incorporation of a digital currency, green-euro, (€G) for financing, rewarding and creating an inclusive /collective narrative in the fight against climate change d. the collection of feedback for recommendations to policy and business stakeholders, e. Mapping and understanding the complex interplay between the different stakeholders to deliver an engagement strategy across the value chain.These demonstrations will potentially constitute the green-euro as a retail Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), hence revolutionising the financing of renovation approaches. An online marketplace, will be offering first level advice, directing consumers through the value chain of stakeholders and facilitating access to these “packaged” renovation services.

Early evidence suggests that participants in Blockchain ecosystems have to resolve technological, innovation, governance and stakeholder management tensions at different levels: organizational (internal innovation development and management), ecosystem (alliances, platform emergence) and individual level (consumer, user adoption). Industry, Government and research bodies must join forces and share expertise to properly investigate the phenomenon and maximize the societal and economic impact of Blockchain technology for EU and global entities. Given that Blockchain technology exists at the intersection of these three different levels of analysis (organizational, ecosystem, societal) it is impossible to study the phenomenon without taking into consideration the dynamics that are created at the intersection of these levels. DIEM consortium brings together academic, government and industry expertise to holistically investigate the managerial, economic and societal implications of Blockchain technology. DIEM is a Doctoral Network (Industrial Doctorates) that creates a platform for researchers to engage in the co-production of knowledge by investigating state-of-the-art challenges and societal implications of Blockchain technology across actors and industry boundaries. It has a significant potential for creating an impact on careers of PHDs, as transforming Europe into a society capable of building its competitiveness on digital technology requires developing a new generation of responsible researchers with the competency to understand how fundamental shifts in digital technology impact across businesses, industries and society.