The RESCUE project aims to strengthen the resilience, security, and adaptability of critical infrastructure systems through advanced edge computing, AI-driven anomaly detection, and robust communication networks. In an era of increasing cyber threats, environmental challenges, and resource uncertainties, maintaining stable and secure critical infrastructure is vital for societal well-being and economic continuity. RESCUE focuses on real-time data processing at the edge, resilient communication channels, and advanced cybersecurity to enable continuous operation and rapid response to risks. The project will deliver cutting-edge solutions to enhance the reliability of power distribution, urban infrastructure, and communication networks by implementing flexible, autonomous systems that maintain functionality even in the face of unexpected disruptions. By integrating diverse sensor data, strengthening multi-channel connectivity, and employing AI for predictive insights, RESCUE ensures that infrastructure systems can detect, classify, and respond to threats autonomously. The project combines technical innovations with a strong emphasis on data privacy and security, aligning with EU regulations like the Cyber Resilience Act and the AI Act. Through rigorous testing and demonstrative use cases across Europe, RESCUE’s solutions will set new standards for critical infrastructure resilience, paving the way for safer and more dependable smart city and energy systems.

SIFIS-Home aims at providing a secure-by-design and consistent software framework for improving resilience of Interconnected Smart Home Systems at all stack levels. To this end, the framework enables the development of security, privacy aware and accountable applications, algorithms and services, and makes it possible to detect and dynamically react to cyber-attacks and intrusion attempts or violation of user-defined policies, thus increasing control and trust of Smart Home end users. Smart Home is an emerging application paradigm which has been gaining increasing popularity. Most recently, the Internet of Things (IoT) has been fostering a vision of Smart Home systems, where users can install connectable (smart) devices and appliances that cooperate to automatically manage home services and functionalities. This emerging market is rapidly attracting software developers to produce novel applications and services, to provide additional Smart Home functionalities. However, noticeable barriers and concerns are still present, mainly related to cyber-security and safety within Smart Home systems, as well as to the privacy and integrity of produced and consumed data, most of which are personal and sensitive. Also, many Smart Home devices use custom and proprietary security solutions that do not account for interactions with other devices in the Smart Home system. Plus, developers have to develop applications adaptable to different systems and architectures, where security aspects are often neglected or poorly addressed. The consortium combines leading industry players in the IoT, telecommunication and cyber-security markets with research and academic institutions, also involved as key contributors to premier international standardisation bodies (e.g. IETF), and having leading roles in the SPARTA, CONCORDIA and CyberSec4Europe projects of the European Cyber Competence Network. SMEs active in the Smart Home and IoT markets and Open Source community complete the consortium.

In recent decades, new planning paradigms have reshaped cities. Urban regeneration has renovated public spaces, redeveloped city centers, and established innovation districts. Smart cities have implemented technological systems, such as transport management, water and contamination monitoring, and energy-efficient buildings. A new sustainable approach, including recycling, renaturalization, and recovery, has emerged in response to the demand for environmental sensitivity in urban planning. These strategies have mainly been applied to wealthy areas to attract tourism and companies, repositioning cities in the global economic framework. However, applying these regeneration strategies, smart systems, and renaturalization processes to deprived areas is crucial. These areas tend to face multiple urban problems, such as pollution, social and cultural issues, lack of services and low-quality built environments, and public spaces, leading to issues related to liveability, functionality, quality of life, social cohesiveness, and physical and mental health. Moreover, there is a growing need for climate change adaptation strategies, which has led to the implementation of Nature Based Solutions (NBS). However, a new pattern is emerging, which considers nature as a stakeholder in itself, beyond the ecosystem services it provides. Innovative technologies such as AI, machine learning, and immersive realities are also emerging, which can enhance the accuracy of information delivery and people engagement. GreenIn Cities aims to develop methodologies and tools for collaborative climate mitigation and adaptation urban planning approaches, specifically for deprived areas, addressing three main challenges: improving societal readiness level and awareness of vulnerable groups, going beyond classical greening and renaturing interventions, and leveraging cutting-edge technologies to enhance co-creation and maximize urban regeneration impacts.

ELABORATOR uses a holistic approach for planning, designing, implementing and deploying specific innovations and interventions towards safe, inclusive and sustainable urban mobility. These interventions, consist of smart enforcement tools, space redesign and dynamic allocation, shared services, and integration of active and green modes of transportation. They will be specifically co-designed and co-created with identified “vulnerable to exclusion” user groups, local authorities and relevant stakeholders. The interventions will be demonstrated in 6 Lighthouse and 6 Follower cities across Europe with three principal aims: i) to collect, assess and analyse user needs and requirements towards a safe and inclusive mobility and climate neutral cities; ii) to collect and share rich information sets made of real data, traces from dedicated toolkits, users’ and stakeholders’ opinions among the cities, so as to increase the take up of the innovations via a twinning approach and iii) to generate detailed guidelines, policies, future roadmap and built capacity for service providers, planning authorities and urban designers for the optimum integration of such inclusive and safe mobility interventions into Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMPs). The Lighthouse cities are: Milan (Italy), Copenhagen (Denmark), Helsinki (Finland), Issy-les-Moulineaux (France), Zaragoza (Spain) and Trikala (Greece). The Follower cities are Lund (Sweden), Liberec (Czech Republic), Velejne (Slovenia), Ioannina (Greece), Split (Croatia) and Krusevac (Serbia).

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) in Edge computing is entering a new era based on the use of ubiquitous small and connected devices. Until now, Europe has not been doing well, as America sets the standards and most components are produced in Asia or America. This project believes doing better is realized by (1) Putting European values of self-organization, privacy by design and low use of energy in the core of the Edge Computing components that shape this new era, and delivering the technology needed to promote these values; (2) Focusing on pan European cooperation to ramp up the capabilities needed to deliver these new components at a scale that can make a real impact. Europe does not have huge IT leaders so cooperation from a very early phase is key. All partners in the project participate in delivering key parts of these new Edge Computing components; and (3) Demonstrating the use of these components in key European industrial areas. Clear and early examples are needed to un-lock corporate and external funding to deliver on the promise of this very exciting project. The DAIS project will research and deliver distributed artificial intelligent systems. It will not research new algorithms, as such, but solves the problems of running existing algorithms on these vastly distributed edge devices that are designed based on the above three European core values. The research and innovation activities are organized around eight complementary and mutually supportive supply chains. Five of these focus on delivering the hardware and software that is needed to run industrial-grade AI on different types of networking topologies. Three of the supply chains demonstrate how known AI challenges, from different functional areas, are met by this pan European effort. The DAIS project consists of 48 parties from 11 different countries. The DAIS project fosters cooperation between large and leading industrial players from different domains.