digital-water.city’s (DWC) main goal is to boost the integrated management of waters systems in five major European urban and peri-urban areas, Berlin, Milan, Copenhagen, Paris and Sofia, by leveraging the potential of data and smart digital technologies. DWC will create linkages between the digital and the physical worlds by developing and demonstrating 18 advanced digital solutions to address current and future water-related challenges; namely the protection of human health, the increase of performance and return on investment of water infrastructures and the involvement of citizens in urban water management. Areas of application of DWC digital solutions range from groundwater management, sewer maintenance and operation, wastewater treatment and reuse to urban bathing water management. DWC combines cutting-edge digital technologies such as augmented reality, open source software, cloud computing, real-time sensors, artificial intelligence, predictive analytics and decision support systems. DWC integrates the development of digital solutions in a dedicated guiding protocol to cover the existing gaps regarding ICT governance, interoperability, ontology and cybersecurity. Ultimately, DWC will provide an interoperable free flow of information among stakeholders and across the water value chain. DWC will generate the necessary conditions for co-creation and open innovation by the establishment of Community of Practices aiming at integrating stakeholder knowledge, ensuring the transferability of the digital solutions in other European or international contexts, supporting knowledge transfer beyond DWC and creating durable binding between European cities. The large scale assessment and communication of the benefits provided by the digital solutions in five major cities will serve as lighthouse, raising the awareness of European cities for a necessary digital transformation, and opening new market opportunities for DWC partners and European providers of digital solutions.

Europe's environment is in an alarming state, with climate change effects aggravating. To secure economic prosperity, human wellbeing and social peace, systemic transformative change of our society is imperative. Ecosystem restoration using nature-based solutions (NbS) is key to this change, in which freshwaters hold a pivotal role. MERLIN will demonstrate freshwater restoration best-practice; implement innovative NbS at landscape-scale; upscale systemic restoration seizing green growth and private investment opportunities; mainstream restoration by co-development with local communities and economic sectors; multiply solutions for transformative restoration to key players of systemic change. MERLIN will capitalise on successful freshwater restoration projects across Europe. Success factors of 17 flagship projects will be scrutinized, generating a blueprint for proficient NbS implementation. With investments of 10 mio Euro in hands-on upscaling measures along scalability plans, MERLIN will transform these projects into beacons of innovation for systemic change. Upscaling to the European level, MERLIN will identify landscapes with high potential for transformative restoration and will analyse cost-benefits of restoration scenarios. Economic analyses of European regions will seize green growth opportunities arising from restoration. MERLIN will delineate models for private investment into restoration alongside public funding. MERLIN's initiatives will co-design win-win solutions with economic sectors (agriculture, water supply, insurance, navigation) and local communities, spearheading systemic economic, social and environmental change. The MERLIN Academy and virtual marketplace will multiply innovations to the community of practice, investors and policy makers across Europe and beyond. MERLIN is committed to a sustainable, climate-neutral and -resilient, inclusive and transformative path, mainstreaming restoration as a cornerstone for systemic change.

Time is running out to achieve a more sustainable development. Post COVID-19 economic stimuli need to deploy a green new deal (GND) that ReSETs economic systems to create secure and meaningful employment whilst protecting nature for people, for climate change and flood mitigation, temperature regulation, pollution prevention and soil and biodiversity conservation. This green new deal needs to harness safe, renewable technologies and nature-based solutions. A business as usual (BAU) post-COVID stimulus would embed employment, economic and environmental precarity in what is now fundamentally an unsustainable and unequitable model. RESET aims to leverage developments in spatial modelling, artificial intelligence and interoperable environmental sensing to better understand pathways to RESET agricultural and urban development across Europe for sustainability. For agriculture we will examine BAU versus an alternative trajectory of regenerative agriculture and rewilding. For cities we will examine BAU vs a more telecommuting focused trajectory of lowered densities, re-greening, traffic reduction to reduce (air, water, noise) pollution and improve the quality of urban life. In all cases we will examine impacts on employment, environment and economy. We focus on farmland and urban land uses as understudied environments and as key for sustainable development. We will build upon the success of our previous work in developing spatial policy support systems and accompanying user-led design processes, to further develop and integrate advanced environmental sensor networks with a focus on per-person individualised employment, economic and environmental outcomes of investments. This will require environmental and social intelligence to an unprecedented degree bringing together environmental modelling, advanced sensor research, social science and stakeholders’ engagement, and artificial intelligence to go way beyond conventional environmental impact assessment approaches.

Mediterranean agrosilvopastoral ecosystems (MAEs), such as Dehesa in Spain, Montado in Portugal, Meriagos in Italy, & Valonian oak forests in Greece, provide essential environmental services and influence significantly local communities and their economies. MAEs are expected to be severely affected by climate impacts and extreme conditions such as droughts, high tree mortality and wildfires. Addressing these challenges, requires supporting local communities and authorities with local solutions and transformations towards climate-resilience. This DRYAD proposal supports the Mission Adaptation to Climate Change by developing and implementing real-life, climate-resilient nature-based solutions (NBS) for MAEs. DRYAD combines front-line scientific, technological, social, and business innovations as well as transformative solutions. The proposal will be centered around development, testing and demonstrating NBSs in 5 demonstration regions including Andalusia and Extremadura (ES), Alentejo (PT), Sardinia (IT) and Aetoloakarnania (EL) (5 in Cohesion Fund Regions). The most promising NBSs will be transferred to these 3 replicating regions: Castilla-y-León (ES), Occitanie (FR) and Tuscany (IT). Furthermore, DRYAD will support a multi-level and cross-sectoral integrated and adaptive management governance via development of Decision Support Systems. DRYAD will mobilize regional and local authorities and stakeholders that own the climate challenge, research entities, private/public foundations, companies & citizens and involve them in co-creation, co-implementation, and co-validation processes by means of Living Labs. This will lead to the creation of real, widely re-applicable solutions with long-lasting impacts. The project will provide tools and implementation guidelines to promote sustainable and climate-resilient practices and facilitate regional adaptation plans, contributing to the Nature Restoration Law in terms of resilient nature and climate adaptations.

REXUS ambitious goal is to bring transformative change in the way our societies approach the Water Food Energy Climate Nexus. The project argues that this is possible only through the activation of inclusive nexus partnerships, the Learning & Action Alliances (LAAs). The objective is for the pilot case Alliances in Europe and Latin America to develop shared visions and adaptive Nexus Management Strategies that will meet the Nexus sectoral objectives as well as broader criteria, such as habitat protection. In this context, LAAs will (a) co-produce new knowledge regarding Nexus interactions to inform the development of System Dynamics Models at suitable spatial and temporal scales and (b) explore multiple co-developed scenarios of demographic change, climate change, socio-environmental, economic incentivization and regulatory policies. Thus, SDM development is the means to (i) develop stakeholder platforms of trust, (ii) test the efficacy of integrated cross-sectoral policies, and (iii) build legitimacy for evidence-based decisions towards sustainable transitions. SDMs will inform climate risks assessments for combined-resource-management strategies by capturing the cascading effects among Nexus domains. The pilot cases will be the test-beds for the integration of methods, such as thematic biophysical modelling using Earth Observation, environmental cost valuations, natural capital and carbon accounting to explore case-specific challenges (including greening the CAP). In response to these challenges, Ecosystem-based Adaptation measures will be planned for these regional and transboundary systems. On a policy level, for the first time, REXUS will explore the opportunity to link Climate Adaptation (i.e. the Paris Agreement framework) to Nexus management as a means to push forward the Nexus agenda. The approaches above will support REXUS’ vision for Nexus systems that are managed within renewable natural resource constraints and in appreciation of climate feedbacks. The REXUS consortium is not meant to take side in the ongoing political discussions in the different pilot areas and the scope of the project activities is not intended to review and/or question any international or other form of agreement among the counties involved.