ROUTE-TO-PA is a multidisciplinary innovation project, that, by combining expertise and research in the fields of e-government, computer science, learning science and economy, is aiming at improving the impact, towards citizens and within society, of ICT-based technology platforms for transparency. ROUTE-TO-PA envisions that Information and Communication Technologies for Transparency must improve the engagement of citizens by making them able to socially interact over open data, by forming or joining existing online communities that share common interest and discuss common issues of relevance to local policy, service delivery, and regulation; moreover, ROUTE-TO-PA aims at engaging citizens to a higher degree by providing a robust and more holistic understanding of transparency, by underpinning the next generation open-data based transparency initiatives, ensuring that published data are those of value to citizens, with a personalized view in different forms to different segments of the citizens and public based on their profiles for facilitate better understanding. ROUTE-TO-PA will deliver the experimented innovative and engaging ICT platforms to ensure citizen-friendly, conscious, and effective access to open-data, by offering easy understanding of, and social collaboration on, open data offered by PAs. The objectives of Route-To-PA are: (1) develop a Social Platform for Open Data (SPOD) enabling social interactions among open data users and between open data users and government data ; (2) build Transparency-Enhancing Toolset (TET) as extensions for existing major Open Data Platforms; and (3) develop a set of recommendations (GUIDE) as good practice guide for open data publishers for achieving higher quality transparency through open data. The objectives are deployed, tested and experimented in a real setting, with at least 5 pilot studies in five different European countries.

The main objective of the City.Risks project is to increase the perception of security of citizens in cities by activating in a more transparent and sustainable way their participation in communities, through which information and interventions can be provided both to proactively protect citizens from falling victims to criminal activities as well as to reactively provide more timely and effective response and assistance. In order to do so, the City.Risks project will leverage a set of innovative technologies, city infrastructures, and available data sources, but more importantly will aim at making the citizens' smart phones the modern tool for increasing their personal and collective sense of security. The project will design and develop an innovative ecosystem of mobile services that will transform the smart phone or the tablet of the citizen into a tool that will collect, visualise and share safety-critical information with the appropriate authorities and communities. The project will rely on a wide spectrum of available technologies to design and implement an interactive framework among authorities and citizens through mobile applications that will allow in a collaboratively way to prevent or mitigate the impact of crime incidents or other security threats. Thus, it will contribute to an increase of the citizens' perception of security, which will be measured and validated in real-life scenarios and conditions through the deployment and operation of pilot trials at several selected cities by the project partners. Moreover, to further found its sustainability, the project will devise business models and replication plans of its results that will contribute in the next generation innovative security solutions for the future smart cities.

A strong data economy is emerging in Europe, where both large companies and SMEs acknowledge the fundamental value of Big Data to cause disruptive change in markets and business models . Nevertheless, the growth of the data economy is hampered by the lack of trusted, secure and ethical-driven personal data platforms and privacy-aware analytics methods capable of, on the one hand, securing the sharing of personal data and proprietary/commercial/industrial data and, on the other hand, of strictly and fairly defining how value can be captured, produced, released and cashed out for the benefit of all the stakeholders involved. Addressing this kind of concerns on privacy, ethics and IPR ownership over the DataVaults value chain is one of the cornerstones of the project. Its goal to set, sustain and mobilize an ever-growing ecosystem for personal data and insights sharing and for enhanced collaboration between stakeholders (data owners and data seekers) relies exactly on DataVaults personal data platform’s extra functionalities and methods for retaining data ownership, safeguarding security and privacy, notifying individuals of their risk exposure, as well as on securing value flow based on smart contract. DataVaults aims to deliver a framework and a platform that has personal data, coming from diverse sources in its centre and that defines secure, trusted and privacy preserving mechanisms allowing individuals to take ownership and control of their data and share them at will, through flexible data sharing and fair compensation schemes with other entities (companies or not). The overall approach will rejuvenate the personal data value chain, which could from now on be seen as a multi-sided and multi-tier ecosystem governed and regulated by smart contracts which safeguard personal data ownership, privacy and usage and attributes value to the ones who produce it.

Air pollution and ambient pollution, carbon-related issues ranging from GHG emissions to carbon shortages in soil, the opportunities provided by NBS and the intricacies of urban ecosystems present an extremely complex set of interdependent problems and opportunities that have to be addressed as such – interactively, mutually and innovatively. Upsurge is considering all these aspects and is providing evidence-based targeted responses that will enable EU cities to transition into a more regenerative future. At its core, Upsurge is presenting the European Regenerative Urban Lighthouse, which will enable cities to unlock their regenerative potential and provide them with knowledge and guidance in regenerative transition. Supported by an innovative continuous self-check progress mechanism (Regenerative Index) and by the Clearing House as a knowledge nerve centre, Upsurge will motivate cities and other clients through its networking activities to engage and step aboard the regenerative transition under Lighthouse’s leadership. Upsurge is demonstrating technical excellence through a multimodal adaptable sensing system, through integrated and integrative digitalisation environment supported by IoT and AI, several real-life demonstrations and based on extrapolated criteria conducted simulative demonstrations showcasing the viability, feasibility and implementability of proposed technical solutions. The knowledge core of Upsurge will be introduced within the quintuple helix verification model bringing together all relevant factors affecting the implementation of NBS and thus regenerative change. Quintuple helix approach will truly enable the assessment and exploration of complementary beneficial effects provided by project solutions.