RESPONSE supports the Lighthouse cities of Dijon (FR) and Turku (FI) and their Fellow cities Brussels (BE), Zaragoza (ES), Botosani (RO), Ptolemaida (GR), Gabrovo (BU) and Severodonetsk (UA) to facilitate them deliver positive energy blocks and districts. Through RESPONSE ,the two LHs will achieve a local RES penetration of 11.2 GWh/y, energy savings of 3,090 MWh/y and an emission reduction of 9, 799 tons CO2eq/y within their districts. To achieve this goal, RESPONSE demonstrates 10 Integrated Solutions (ISs), comprising of 86 innovative elements (technologies, tools, methods), that are being monitored with specific impact metrics (KPIs). It attracts the interest of various stakeholders by generating innovative business models enabling the upscale and replication of the solutions forming a validated roadmap for sustainable cities across Europe and beyond. RESPONSE adopts an energy transition strategy, which includes 5 Transformation Axes (TAs), encompassing the 10 ISs. TA#1 focuses on transforming existing and new building stock into Energy Positive and Smart-ready. TA#2 focuses on the decarbonization of the electricity grid and the district heating/cooling systems, supporting fossil-based regions in transition and the development of energy communities. TA#3 proposes grid flexibility strategies and novel storage systems for optimizing energy flows, maximize self-consumption and reduce grid stress. TA#4 links existing CIPs with apps and other digital infrastructure to enable digitalisation of services and connected city ecosystems, integrating also smart e-Mobility to promote the decarbonisation of the mobility sector. TA#5 offers interdisciplinary citizen engagement and co-creation practices putting citizen at the forefront of shaping the cities they live in and towards the development of each city’s 2050 own bold city-vision. Special focus is given to creating resilient and safe cities increasing quality of life and lowering the impacts of climate change.

Culture heritage - tangible and intangible - can be understood as a reservoir of creativity, well-being, identity and knowledge that is useful to overcome present and future challenges. The cultural value attributed to our traditional and historic buildings denotes our identity as communities and individuals, playing an important role both in urban and rural domains. The historic building stock is heterogeneous and consists of buildings from different time periods, constructed in different ways with different materials, and also follows different architectural ideals. This situation implies that there is a need for differentiated renovation strategies and targeted policies along the heritage built environment’s life cycle that promote energy efficiency, sustainability, inclusiveness and resource efficiency, while preserving cultural heritage value. The overall vision of INHERIT is to create a systematic methodology, accompanied by leading-edge Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), such as Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI) and (big) data analytics, and associated social/behavioural practices, towards sustainable, inclusive and resource-efficient CH solutions. INHERIT will enable socially innovative and economic viable interventions at different urban levels (buildings, city/neighbourhood), covering all relevant aspects of the heritage-built environment’s life cycle: (1) Design and renovation; (2) Monitoring, operation and management; (3) Preservation and maintenance. The solutions will be tested in 8 cultural heritage sites across EU. In addition, INHERIT will create a capacity building programme addressing heritage operators and stakeholders (including large companies, SMEs, public authorities, research organisations and citizens) to support sustainable CH with particular focus on NEB community and projects and will work on policy recommendations towards sustainable heritage.

Buildings are responsible for approximately 40% of energy consumption and 36% of CO2 emissions in the EU. Deep Renovation of existing old buildings has the potential to lead to significant energy savings and a tremendous carbon footprint shrinkage. The current EU climate targets open an ample opportunity for exponential growth in the building thermal insulation materials market owing to the increasing number of new residential buildings and current deep renovation needs. The target is to support residential building´s construction performance extraordinary at all three hierarchical levels of construction parts simultaneously (building, component, material) by creating an amplified environmental impact and reducing additionally VOC emissions. BIO4EEB will apply non-hazardous bio-based material as e.g., Posidonia and various bio-based foams to develop and to proof the marketability of smart components for external and internal use as material application, pre-fab panels or windows. The efficiency and effectiveness is quite important to match with market demands and establish a unique selling proposition including a seven years RoI! BIO4EEB will close the increasing gap of insulation material shortage caused by the regular growing demand and the mismatch caused by lacking production potential and the outcome of the current energy crisis by boosting the use of available bio-based qualified materials as alternative solutions. The objective is to substitute using fossil resources for components and replace them at a comparable price value positioning. New business models utilizing the complete economic value chain open the market for bio-based BIO4EEB solutions and products uplifting the generic bio-based material use and qualifying their application at a circular economy approach for creating a much greener EU building and construction industry real estate stock.

RobetArme will deliver a human-robot collaborative construction system for the automation of shotcrete (i.e. concrete spray casting), which is an emerging technology in construction domain. A multitasking Inspection-Reconnaissance mobile manipulator-IRR (ROB) will fuse the latest Geotechnical models (BIM/CIM) (DTT), high-density visual data and semantic SLAM (CERTH) representations to automate modelling and fast reconstruction (DTU) of the surface to be shotcreted. IRR will facilitate rebar reinforcement through metal additive manufacturing (ANIMA) capitalizing on its precise repair skills (EPFL). The Shotcrete and Finishing mobile manipulator ?SFR (COBOD) will apply dexterous concrete placement through closed-loop visual guidance methods, suitable for turbid conditions (KUL). Concrete mix-design and study on innovative reinforced cementitious materials (TITAN) will contribute to the reduction of materials? and water waste during shotcrete. The SFR robot equipped with universal tool changing (ROB) will also automate the surface finishing step through delicate and human-like robot manipulations, enabled from a safety operation toolkit that includes physical human-robot collaboration and human-aware navigation (CERTH). A Digital Twin (DTT) coupled with simulation tools (SDU), advanced decision making (ICE) and task planning (CERTH) skills will facilitate fast and greener shotcrete automation. RobetArme will be evaluated (DS4) on four diverse construction sites, i.e. tunnels/culverts (BYCN), bridges posttensioned boxes (ARUP), beams & piles of buildings (CEAS) and ground support walls (BYCN), assessing its autonomous shotcreting abilities. RobetArme will substantially increase the repair/maintenance automation, will foster adoption of robots in Construction 4.0 era (EFF), while it will increase construction productivity providing flexibility to the maintenance personnel, contribution to standards (UNI) and better quality to their workplaces (MORE).

In line with the general principles of sustainable development, the Construction sector is preparing its transition to a performance based approach. The complete sector will have to adapt and needs operationnal and efficient tools for all actors. Life cyle assessment is unanimously considered as the reliable tool for environmental performance assessment of buidlings. However, its everyday use by non experts in actual construction or refurbishment projects is limited due to several scientific and technical locks. The BENEFIS project will try to provide efficient answerr to some of the most important locks identified : - need for improvement of energy and environmental modelling of energy efficient buildings (EEB), - need for simplified models for building programming and design, and for quick assessment of items that details assessment is not required in all situations, - Improvement of reproducibility fo studies from a tool to another or for tool user to other, by providing guidelines and educational softwares for energy and LCA modelling, improving hypothesis traceability, simplifying data collect and capture, - Difficulty of LCA results analysis and use (understanding, interpretation, conditions of use for decision making, robustness, uncertainties...). The project partners will be careful in providing knowledges and know how deliverables that can be used by all interested parties (methodological reports, scientific papers, scientific popularization documents...). ELODIE and EQUER developers will use all knowledge and know how provided by the project to improve their softwares in new releases. All project partners will use their scientific, technical and professionnal network to widely communicate and disseminate the knowledge and know how developed in this project.