UPGRADE seeks to broaden the research scope of the involved teams, focusing on tackling key challenges in geotechnical and geoenvironmental engineering. Specifically, it aims to pioneer innovative solutions for repurposing waste geomaterials generated by construction and mining industries worldwide. Waste geomaterials represents half of the waste volume generated in EU. These waste geomaterials generally exhibit poor engineering characteristics that prevent their direct use at construction/mining sites. However, if adequately treated, they could represent an excellent resource for construction purposes with significant money saving and reduction in the environmental footprint, thus contributing to the establishment of a circular handling/management of geomaterials. To achieve this, UPGRADE will develop protocols, software and tools to improve the engineering characteristics of waste geomaterials, and to guarantee the performance level over the service life of geostructures built from waste geomaterials considering site-specific conditions. The fundamental concern of UPGRADE is to promote strategies for sustainable use of waste geomaterials generated by geoengineering activities, and to determine how to turn a waste geomaterial into a durable material, with a positive revenue stream. The originality of UPGRADE's approach is that not only it draws expertise on the environment and geotechnics, but also in computer sciences, geochemistry, analytical chemistry, natural resources exploitation, and in the circulatory economy. We intend to form a multidisciplinary consortium composed of 10 academic and 5 industrial beneficiaries and 6 Third Country partners which aim to address this problem. UPGRADE will create an international, interdisciplinary and intersectoral network of creative and innovative researchers and practising engineers ready to face geotechnical and geoenvironmental engineering challenges which arise in the vanguard of technological innovation.

Planet Earth faces unprecedented environmental changes that will affect all members of society. Arctic climate warming is more than twice the global rate and unpredictable extreme events cause major impacts on ecosystems and people. However, the Arctic atmospheric circulation causes extreme events and societal damage beyond the Arctic which need international research and monitoring to understand and predict. Furthermore, attitudes need to be changed throughout the world through outreach while the next generation needs to be equipped to live in a different world. INTERACT III innovates a pan-arctic network of 86 research stations in 16 northern countries to provide a fully integrated, advanced infrastructure now able to meaningfully address major societal challenges and provide services for 155 global and regional networks. Furthermore, the global reputation of INTERACT has attracted world-leading partners and enterprises to participate in reducing the impacts of hazardous change while maximizing the opportunities arising from new technologies. Specifically, INTERACT III provides comprehensive coordination of 64 partners and 86 research stations. The station managers design best practices to ensure excellent research, monitoring, education and outreach. INTERACT III builds on an extremely successful transnational access program that has already populated the Arctic with 900 researchers to further provide excellent science while reducing the environmental footprints of researchers through improving remote and virtual access. The access transnationality ensures new collaborations, innovative science and science diplomacy at a time of heightened geopolitical tensions. Station managers, transnational access and joint research activities cooperate to address major societal challenges in a fully integrated infrastructure while their data and understanding are made globally available through exceptional outreach and education and policy briefings to decision makers.

INTERACT aims for a geographically comprehensive and excellent state-of-the-art terrestrial research infrastructure throughout the Arctic and adjoining forest and alpine regions to identify environmental change, to facilitate understanding and prediction of future change and to inform decision makers about societally-relevant impacts. INTERACT is the fundamental building block and one-stop-shop for EU and international projects, programmes and organisations requiring access to northern lands, data and services, and includes a rapid response capability to potential hazards. INTERACT is pan-Arctic, multidisciplinary and crosses EU call domains by linking to forest, coastal, marine and atmospheric communities. INTERACT uniquely unites 77 research stations in a Station Managers’ Forum ensuring inter-comparability of information and excellent science support. A Data Forum improves availability of data by bringing data providers together with data users. Physical (7780 days) pan-Arctic Trans-national Access is offered by 43 stations and virtual access is offered by 29. An innovative TA User Community will stimulate new collaborations and improved information flow while new state-of-the-art educational resources will encourage young scientists. Joint research activities will ensure close cooperation between the Arctic Council’s biodiversity monitoring programme and station activities; develop new technology in a WP led by Industry to enlarge the research stations’ environmental observing footprints; and produce guidance for local communities to adapt to change. INTERACT’s incalculable legacy and societal impact includes aiding people to adapt to local and global environmental changes, recruiting the next generation of environmental scientists, offering access and opportunities to researchers world-wide and providing data and information to high level regional and global organisations and decision-makers.