Europe urgently needs to restore and intensify its engagement with its past. Time Machine will give Europe the technology to strengthen its identity against globalisation, populism and increased social exclusion, by turning its history and cultural heritage into a living resource for co-creating its future. The Large Scale Research Initiative (LSRI) will develop a large-scale digitisation and computing infrastructure mapping millennia of European historical and geographical evolution, transforming kilometres of archives, large collections from museums and libraries, and geohistorical datasets into a distributed digital information system. To succeed, a series of fundamental breakthroughs are targeted in Artificial Intelligence and ICT, making Europe the leader in the extraction and analysis of Big Data of the Past. Time Machine will drive Social Sciences and Humanities toward larger problems, allowing new interpretative models to be built on a superior scale. It will bring a new era of open access to sources, where past and on-going research are open science. This constant flux of knowledge will have a profound effect on education, encouraging reflection on long trends and sharpening critical thinking, and will act as an economic motor for new professions, services and products, impacting key sectors of European economy, including ICT, creative industries and tourism, the development of Smart Cities and land use. The CSA will develop a full LSRI proposal around the Time Machine vision. Detailed roadmaps will be prepared, organised around science and technology, operational principles and infrastructure, exploitation avenues and framework conditions. A dissemination programme aims to further strengthen the rapidly growing ecosystem, currently counting 95 research institutions, most prestigious European cultural heritage associations, large enterprises and innovative SMEs, influential business and civil society associations, and international and national institutional bodies.

To reach the COP21 goal of nearly-zero energy, zero emission buildings MBLabs Labs strives to unleash the innovation potential of the SMEs of the Construction sector by lowering the entry barriers to test innovative solutions in a network of testing facilities in RTOs and Living Labs in 13 countries, most EU member states (ES, FR, BE, IT, DE, TR, UK, LU, PL, SE, HU, AT, IE) allowing a direct feedback from the end-users during the final development stages. The MBLabs concept consists of 5 innovation pillars: 1) SME outreach by metaclustering & Open Innovation Digital Platform as cornerstones to engage and support SMEs in innovation and testing based on the networks of MBLabs’ 40 consortium partners, targeting over 180 clusters and building upon the sister H2020 METABUILDING project which reaches out to 9000 SME cluster members. 2) OITB Brokerage Business Model: the SEP will be a light brokerage structure in the form of an association - with the consortium partners as members - that serves as a business provider to entities running testing facilities and/or providing innovation services for building envelopes and finances itself through membership fees, adapted to the size and financial capacities of its members, market place revenues and a commission for the brokerage service. 3) Harmonised testing framework for building products development: consisting of guidelines for the characterization of smart/active systems, a detailed and validated energy model and LCAs to assure the application of EU regulatory practices. 4) O3 Building Envelope Testbench (standardized, replicable, affordable, Digital Twin enabled): first fully replicable, standardised, cost-effective Open Source/Open Data/Open Access Building Envelope Testbed enabling virtual testing and made available (co-funded) to some of the project partners. 5) Streamlined access to Living Labs & pilot matchmaking: with a single-entry point, an innovative matchmaking module and standardised internal procedures.

FITNESS is a Doctoral Network at the intersection of electric power distribution networks optimization, electricity markets, communications, and control systems. The project will develop new methodologies for active distribution networks services in the era of smart grids. FITNESS is the first training network dedicated to this challenge and involves 4 Beneficiaries and 6 Associated Partners from 7 EU countries, guaranteeing a pan-European approach in a multi-sectoral context (universities, research centres, and SMEs). FITNESS will train a new generation of scientific professionals who can transition between disciplines and between the public and private sectors based on (i) Recruited Researcher (RR) projects; (ii) courses and workshops, with the emphasis on hands-on, collaborative learning and attention to transferable skills; (iii) mobility, knowledge transfer, all within a training network that includes some of Europe’s finest researchers.

The EU construction industry is challenged to boost innovation of SMEs (99% of companies) inside a traditional sector, to expand its value chain and integrate new dynamic industrial sectors. The European Construction Technology Platform (ECTP) is joining efforts with 4 industrial sectors: ICT, Additive Manufacturing, Nature Based Solutions, and the Recycling industry, to underpin and fuel the emergence of new cross-sectoral, cross-border industrial value chains, delivering a metaclustering process to achieve critical mass and boost internationalisation. To reach Clusters and their SMEs in their business environment, METABUILDING will achieve a sustainable and expandable collaborative innovation ecosystem backed by an open innovation digital platform performing 6 main functions: 1) Cross-sectoral/border Digital Marketplace; 2) interactive Knowledge Repository; 3) Industrial commons database with technology assets from EU funded R&D, 4) Business Strategy resourcing, 5) Innovation Funding Scaling knowledge support and 6) Metaclustering Network Management. MB will nurture, mentor and technically assist SMEs and implement several cascade funding mechanisms, achieve at least 140 cross-sectoral, cross-border challenge-based SME-led innovation ideas/projects coming from regional clusters in 6 target countries: Austria, Spain, Portugal, France, Italy and Hungary. Coordinated by an experienced construction sector RTO, MB will feature: 6 Metaclusters working with 4 EU level R&D roadmapping institutions (ECTP, AM Platform, EuRic and EFB) and 90 clusters with reach to more than 9000 SMEs; 3 National Technology Platforms, 1 national Construction Federation, 1 Industrial Association and 1 Business Network to build an EU level enlarged innovation Ecosystem and value chain with actors involved from across the innovation chain (from EU R&D platforms, RTOs/UNIs, funding bodies, to regionals SMEs; being supported in each country by an External Pool of technical and value chain resources.

In modern economy, digitalization is a major driver of productivity growth across industries and services. However, the construction sector is lagging behind, even behind agriculture. The construction sector is characterised by a high presence of SMEs, low capitalization, a low rate of higher educated employees, low investment in innovation, and a long supply chain. Moreover, in the EU market, different languages, taxation, and regulatory frameworks are obstacles to Union synergies. DigiPLACE will exploit EU added value. Several initiatives have been developed at national level to improve the innovation in this sector. At EU level, some projects were devoted to facilitating the exchange of information, practice and knowledge (e.g. CPR 305/2011 and Levels). DigiPLACE will create a common ecosystem of innovation, standardization and commerce with the aim to collect the achieved results and to increase the productivity of the sector and the quality of its end products (building&infrastructure). Could digitalization help the sector to solve these historical issues and future ones? What kind of digitalization, what kind of market, what kind of production and supply-chain we could imagine? What kind of consumers do we have for our products and services. How do these worlds work together? DigiPLACE aims to investigate all these themes with a strong analysis of markets, actors and barriers. It will define a Reference Architecture Framework (RAF) for digital construction platform based on an EU-wide consensus involving a large community of stakeholders and the expertise of selected key players, resulting in a strategic roadmap for successful implementation of this RAF. DigiPLACE will rely on a large set of partners, linked 3rd parties and an Advisory Board representing leading European entities, companies and/or associations of industry, builders, owners (private and public), architects, research institutes, and ICT firms (for digital production, services and knowledge).