The main objective of UNDETERRED is to strengthen the fight against racial, ethnic and religious inequalities experienced by the younger generation (18-35 years old) of immigrant and national minority populations in Europe. In this perspective, action research will take the systemic dimension of discrimination as a priority. It will focus on improving knowledge about the norms, procedures and practices that produce racial, ethnic and religious inequalities in the EU without 'institutional intentions' in the housing, employment, health and higher education sectors.

Meeting the challenges of providing European citizens with affordable, safe and nutritious food and of creating healthier and more sustainable City Region Food Systems raises the need for the development of integrated urban food policies that are able to engage with the complexity of the food system. Today’s leading platform for this endeavour is the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact, a powerful global network of learning cities experimenting around, and advocating for, the implementation of a holistic approach to food system transformation. FOODTRAILS, a four-year project led by the City of Milan, brings together a Consortium of 19 partners (including 11 EU cities, 3 universities and 5 prominent food system stakeholders), which will be followed by another 21 worldwide cities, to translate the MUFPP’s shared vision and collective commitment to integrated urban food policies into measurable and long-term progress towards sustainable food systems. Building on the momentum created by the recent emergence of cities as key sites to reimagine, enact and engage with food system transformation, FOOD TRAILS will provide city and regional governments and other agents of change with evidence-based policy narratives, co-designed and verified through the activities of 11 multi-objective and multi-actor Living Labs committed to addressing the 4 priority areas of the flagship FOOD 2030 framework. Using the existing knowledge on innovations for food system transformation, the Living Labs will co-design pilot projects that minimize the trade-offs between the 4 priorities of FOOD 2030 and that can function as an entry point for the development of integrated urban food policies. FOODTRAILS will also establish a pan-European Investors’ Living Lab to develop innovative financial instruments that will attract new resources to sustain the urban food policies developed during the project, maximize their visibility and support their replicability across the EU.

SynchroniCity represents the first attempt to deliver a Single Digital City Market for Europe by piloting its foundations at scale in 11 reference zones - 8 European cities & 3 more worldwide cities - connecting 34 partners from 11 countries over 4 continents. Building upon a mature European knowledge base derived from initiatives such as OASC, FIWARE, FIRE, EIP-SCC, and including partners with leading roles in standardization bodies, e.g. ITU, ETSI, IEEE, OMA, IETF, SynchroniCity will deliver a harmonized ecosystem for IoT-enabled smart city solutions where IoT device manufacturers, system integrators and solution providers can innovate and openly compete. With an already emerging foundation, SynchroniCity will establish a reference architecture for the envisioned IoT-enabled city market place with identified interoperability points and interfaces and data models for different verticals. This will include tools for co-creation & integration of legacy platforms & IoT devices for urban services and enablers for data discovery, access and licensing lowering the barriers for participation on the market. SynchroniCity will pilot these foundations in the reference zones together with a set of citizen-centred services in three high-impact areas, showing the value to cities, businesses and citizens involved, linked directly to the global market. With a running start, SynchroniCity will serve as lighthouse initiative to inspire others to join the established ecosystem and contribute to the emerging market place. SynchroniCity takes an inclusive approach to grow the ecosystem by inviting businesses and cities to join through an open call, allowing them to participate on the pioneering market place enabling a second wave of successful pilots. They will strengthen the ecosystem by creating a positive ripple effect throughout Europe, and globally, to establish a momentum and critical mass for a strong European presence in a global digital single market of IoT-enabled solutions.

The transport sector is expected to alter shape in the coming decades. This transition is driven by user-centred mobility services, integrated and intelligent transport networks, pricing and payments, automation, safety and security, as well as public and private innovation. Next to Big Data and Artificial Intelligence, these developments provide major opportunities, but also increase system complexity. The overarching aim of DIT4TraM is to develop, implement and test a generic distributed control paradigm, applicable at the level of traffic operations, mobility management, demand-supply synchronisation and shared mobility, including advanced monitoring, estimation and (machine learning) forecasting technology, and associated algorithms for a variety of novel multi-modal management and mobility concepts operating at all urban scales. A holistic approach to decentralisation, distribution and mechanism design for monitoring and control is proposed aiming to achieve social optimality, yet with only necessary information exchanges, which is further translated into four key application fields corresponding to four interlaced urban scales carefully selected to ensure that all relevant challenges are tackled. Pilots in several cities across Europe are organised to test DIT4TraM concepts and assess market potential and design business models. Our vision is to support the transition to seamless and sustainable connected and autonomous mobility by disentangling the system components to the highest extent possible, yet ensuring sufficient cooperation and emergent coordination by smart system design, leading to liveability, safety, resilience, efficiency, as well as privacy, participation, fairness and sustainability on a city scale. The DIT4TraM partnership (4 Universities, 5 Industrial partners, 2 RTOs, 3 stakeholders), has been formed to address the combination of technical, organisational, and implementation challenges to develop and successfully test the proposed solution.

Urban logistics has become increasingly fragmented due to on-demand and time-sensitive delivery. Urban distribution systems have become multi-tier and multi-modal, and increasingly include multiple deconsolidation, cross-dock, and inventory locations. This implies an increase in the use of urban space, both for storage and movement of goods. While models to support urban planners and companies have advanced substantially, the combination of space and time requirements have received little attention. We develop innovative strategies leveraging advanced analytics to cope with the inherent dynamics of the urban logistics system, including stochastic models designed to support decision makers to best use of existing networks of logistics facilities and delivery modes, and to cope with limited urban space while meeting the increasing and time-sensitive customer expectations. We take a ground-breaking approach to also include the welfare of delivery couriers explicitly into our modelling approach, recognizing the anxiety and stress that human logistics operators face in this challenging environment. Our strategies and models are evaluated based on the urban realities of Bordeaux (France) and Chengdu (China). This allows us to compare logistics practice in two medium-sized cities with various topology and business environment, and with relatively low urban density to that in a metropolis with extremely high density.