The European health services have well responded to the COVID-19 emerging crisis, especially if and where the intensive care unit (ICU) capacities were sufficient, were prepared and collectively cooperating, sharing knowledge and were able to protect from further spreading of the disease among the healthcare workforce and the patients. Today, only 47% of hospitals have the recommended coverage of intensive care specialists and they are unevenly distributed between centres and periphery. The Cyber-Physical System for Telemedicine and Intensive Care (CPS4TIC) enables existing or new ICU structures to transform and operate as one ICU Hub with one central ICU and connected ICUs in peripheral hospitals. CPS4TIC was used successfully in the first wave of COVID-19 to ensure efficient and effective diagnosis and treatment of COVID-19 patients, while reducing the risk of infection drastically. The CPS4TIC consists of a telemedicine cockpit, telemedicine consoles at each peripheral hospital, a connector platform and smart bedside hubs including robotic arm at the bedsides of both, the central telemonitoring clinics and the peripheral telemonitored hospitals. The ICU Hub operates telemedicine, continuous real-time telemonitoring and bedside smart care environment. The bedside smart care environment reduces the risk of infection for the health workforce significantly both for the central and the peripheral hospitals. ICU4Covid will deploy and test the CPS4TIC at large-scale, in 10 ICU Hubs in Europe, involving more than 30000 patients/year with a coverage of approximately 60 Million citizens.

The ProRetro project aims to - Overcome barriers to residential building refurbishment by offering new one-stop-shop services to customers in five German cities/regions - base the one-stop-shop design on the needs of customers so that - they are attractive to customers, - conceptualise, plan, implement and monitor and evaluate the new one-stop-shops - prepare their continuation beyond the project lifetime - cover the whole customer journey of a building renovation from audit/advice, planning, contracting, implementation and monitoring and approval – and involve respective stakeholders/experts in the service offer - build on information and experiences in designing and implementing one-stop shops from best practice examples in other European countries and establish peer-learning structures with those organisations

The European Commission has developed two parallel approaches to support the implementation of smart urban technologies: the creation of 'lighthouse projects' (large scale demonstration of technology in cities and communities) and 'horizontal activities' to address specific challenges (e.g. regulatory barriers, in standardisation, public procurement and performance monitoring). CITYKEYS project is within the context of these horizontal activities. The mission of CITYKEYS is to develop, and validate, a holistic performance measurement framework for future harmonized and transparent monitoring and comparability of the European cities activities during the implmeatation of Smart City solutions. The work methodology will be based on the following key factors: • Extensive collaboration and communication with European cities. • Establish a baseline by analysis and integration of existing results from previous initiatives. • Develop a set of KPIs specific for Smart Cities initiatives evaluation and comparability • Smart solutions for transparent and open data collection and processing. The tangible objectives of the CITYKEYS project are to: 1) Develop and validate a transparent performance evaluation framework: including KPIs definition, guidelines for data collections, performance system prototype and testing in case-cities. 2) Develop recommendations for the implementation of the performance system into the cities decision-making process and recommendations for the development of new business. 3) Engage stakeholders in identifying and exploiting opportunities for synergy and replicability; and establish a collaboration platform for European cities. The consortium includes 3 multidisciplinary research organizations, 1 cities association and 5 partner cities covering different geographical regions in Europe and different urban realities. In addition to the 5 partner cities, 15 others shown their commitment to join the project stakeholders advisory group.