Generative adversarial networks (GANs) are a class of AI models able to create media contents audio and video resembling reality. Although there are different promising areas of application of GANs e.g. audio-graphic productions, human-computer interactions, satire, artistic creative expression their current and foreseen misleading uses are just as numerous and worrying. The main concern is related to the so-called deepfakes, fake images or videos simulating real events with extreme precision. If trained on a face, GANs can make it move and speak in a hyper-realistic way. This technology poses an urgent political threat since GANs could be and have already been used to spread fake news and disinformation. This raises an urgent challenge to democratic governance and regulation: to improve GANs accountability, transparency, and trustworthiness. Nevertheless, GANs also constitute an opportunity to enhance democratic awareness and expand active and inclusive citizenship. SOLARIS reacts to these challenges in two ways. On the one hand, we analyse political risks associated with these technologies, to prevent negative implications for EU democracies. As a result, SOLARIS will establish regulatory innovations to detect and mitigate deepfake risks. On the other hand, we assess the opportunities raised by GANs for reinvigorating the democratic engagement of citizens. We will co-create, involving citizen science, value-based GANs contents to enhance democratic engagement. SOLARIS involves three use cases: the first aims at understanding the psychological aspects of GANs perceived trustworthiness. The second simulates the circulation of threatening GANs contents on social media, to detect risks and design mitigation strategies. The third co-creates value-based GANs contents to boost awareness on key global democratic topics (e.g: climate change, gender dimension, human migration), to ultimately enhance active and inclusive digital citizenship.

The Med-IREN project aims to provide actionable demonstration on how to climate proof the Mediterranean critical infrastructures, across critical sectors, by introducing NBS both in terms of improving climate risk management and sustaining their business continuity to extreme climate change. The project will be showcased in five lighthouse regions across the Mediterranean, each corresponding to a present day challenge, that are aligned with regional policies and can constitute the EU as a global leader in the field. Med-IREN will cover different and diverse types of CI (energy, transport, water, ICT, social) , priority climate hazards within the Mediterranean, which is a climate hot-spot, and NBS interventions. In parallel, the interventions and solutions will be replicated into four more regions across the EU, covering the Mediterranean, Black Sea and Boreal regions. Med-IREN will also provide evidence how key enabling conditions, such as participatory governance and citizen engagement, novel forms of financing, innovative urban/landscape planning and capacity building will support regional systemic transformation nd provide the upscaling and replication mechanism within Mediterranean regions and beyond. A high-end digital decision making support toolset will be developed, integrating data from multiple sources, both in-situ and E.O., applying state-of-the-science models, as well as providing unprecedented visualization and sensemaking capabilities for understanding and quantifying resilience through-out the infrastructure and NBS life-cycle. Med-IREN will rely on the integration of the research output of more than 15 European and National projects, that focused on the (climate) resilience of infrastructures, regional adaptation and implementation of NBS. Med-IREN is conceived as a powerful showcase of the EU twin green & digital transition and an immediate success story of the EU Green Deal.

Fake News are now a hot issue in Europe as well as worldwide, particularly referred to Political and Social Challenges that reflect in business as well as in industry. Europe is lacking of a systematic knowledge and data transfer across organizations to address the aggressive emergence of the well-known problem of fake news and post-truth effect. The possibility to use cross sector Big Data management and analytics, along with an effective interoperability scheme for all our data sources, will tackle this urgent problem, generating new business and societal impacts involving several stakeholders: a) Media Companies: news agencies, broadcaster, newspapers, etc, b) Governmental institutions and organisations, c) The overall industrial ecosystem, d) The entire society. The aim of FANDANGO is to aggregate and verify different typologies of news data, media sources, social media, open data, so as to detect fake news and provide a more efficient and verified communication for all European citizens. European tradition in democracy, journalism and transparency should play a wordwide example in fast changing society, where all citizens appears completely overwhelmed by the new technologies and by the new social challenges. The FANDANGO project aims to break data interoperability barriers providing unified techniques and an integrated big data platform to support traditional media industries to face the new “data” news economy with a better transparency to the citizens under a Responsible, Research and Innovation prism. This goal will be validated and tested in three specific domains Climate, Immigration and European Context, these are typical scenarios where fake news can influence perception with respect to social and business actions and where news can be verified and validated by trustable information, based on facts and data.