In the face of climate change, events like COVID-19 crisis with high impact in specific sectors demonstrated the importance of resilient societies. As such, it is vital to act with a level of urgency for climate change related impacts to health sector that are proportionate to the scale of the threat, be prepared and informed on the basis of the best-available science, and practise clear and consistent communications to all those involved. Therefore, in MOUNTADAPT, various regional and local authorities and community members will take the leadership to co-design, co-develop and test eleven state of the art climate adaptation solutions across the mountains biogeographical region, in Austria, Slovenia, France and Romania. A diversity of actors of the health system will also collaborate throughout the project to demonstrate the replicability of the solutions in a diversity of settings: within the Alpine mountains in Romania, outside Europe in the Pyrenees in Andora and beyond, in the continental area in Germany. MOUNTADAPT will develop robust models to better understand the impact of climate change on health (PR1). The project will cover the whole chain of response to a climate induced health emergency with monitoring tools (PR2) that will be directly linked to short term forecasts to communicate warnings (PR3) to the relevant stakeholders. An emergency management tool (PR4) will finally support health systems to optimally organise staff in crisis time. This will be supported by guidance for transforming the health system (PR5) and empowered actors with the training courses for healthcare professionals and awareness raising campaigns for citizens (PR6). Detailed monitoring protocols and impact assessment frameworks (PR7) will allow for a continuous evaluation of a range of adaptation solutions during and after the project, providing incentive for their implementation. Finally, MOUNTADAPT will provide a full guide (PR8) for the implementation of its adaptation solutions, boosting their replication in new territories and will provide feedback to the Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority.

Meeting the challenges of providing European citizens with affordable, safe and nutritious food and of creating healthier and more sustainable City Region Food Systems raises the need for the development of integrated urban food policies that are able to engage with the complexity of the food system. Today’s leading platform for this endeavour is the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact, a powerful global network of learning cities experimenting around, and advocating for, the implementation of a holistic approach to food system transformation. FOODTRAILS, a four-year project led by the City of Milan, brings together a Consortium of 19 partners (including 11 EU cities, 3 universities and 5 prominent food system stakeholders), which will be followed by another 21 worldwide cities, to translate the MUFPP’s shared vision and collective commitment to integrated urban food policies into measurable and long-term progress towards sustainable food systems. Building on the momentum created by the recent emergence of cities as key sites to reimagine, enact and engage with food system transformation, FOOD TRAILS will provide city and regional governments and other agents of change with evidence-based policy narratives, co-designed and verified through the activities of 11 multi-objective and multi-actor Living Labs committed to addressing the 4 priority areas of the flagship FOOD 2030 framework. Using the existing knowledge on innovations for food system transformation, the Living Labs will co-design pilot projects that minimize the trade-offs between the 4 priorities of FOOD 2030 and that can function as an entry point for the development of integrated urban food policies. FOODTRAILS will also establish a pan-European Investors’ Living Lab to develop innovative financial instruments that will attract new resources to sustain the urban food policies developed during the project, maximize their visibility and support their replicability across the EU.

The aim of this project is to develop a ground breaking holographic label-free 3D time-lapse microscope to follow the development of living embryos directly in an incubator. Our device will measure original physiological parameters to identify new markers of mammalian preimplantation embryonic health and hence to pinpoint the embryos with the highest chances of implantation and development. Imaging of human preimplantation embryos is performed routinely in tens of thousands of in vitro fertilization (IVF) laboratories worldwide for millions of infertile couples. During the IVF process, many embryos arrest in the initial divisions or after implantation and one of the main challenge of IVF is to select and transfer the embryos that have the highest developmental and implantation potential, in order to maximize the chances of a rapid pregnancy. Currently this choice is largely made by visual inspection taking into account mainly the morphological aspect of the embryos. Embryoscopes have recently been made available, permitting to follow the kinetics of embryonic development and bringing additional criteria to identify the “best” embryos. Their use has however not significantly improved pregnancy rates and no clear-cut criteria has yet permitted to identify the best embryos. We believe that the use of holographic microscopy with 3D reconstruction driven by powerful physical neural networks will permit to identify novel markers of preimplantation embryonic health that cannot be seen by the technologies currently available. The first phase of Live3D-CNN will be centered on the development of a 3D phase microscope equipped with convolutional neural networks. Our 3D microscope will be compact, easy to use, and will work directly in an incubator. Our neural network algorithms rely on a pioneering 3D reconstruction method, i.e. a physical neural network directly encoding the physical laws of light propagation in terms of refractive index distribution and light propagation. The second part of the project will develop and assess the quantification of dry mass measurements in 3D of different embryonic structures by means of neural networks. Our microscope will be the first system to quantify the dry mass of polar bodies and cell nuclei, and the first to permit cell counting in living embryos up to the blastocyst stage. Measurements of dry mass will also be correlated with cell morphology, nuclear shape, modality of cell division, and 2D intracellular particle movement. Our prototype will be tested on living early-dividing mouse embryos in both healthy and diseased conditions to constitute a strong database for embryonic classification. Genetic tests will be further correlated with the measured novel markers for a more accurate classification of aneuploid embryos. Results from these analyses will feed a predictive neural network to foresee the embryonic fate and guide decision over pre-implantation procedures. The project will be carried out by a multidisciplinary consortium regrouping engineers and experts from the CEA-Leti in the field of optical instrumentation and artificial intelligence (AI) and infertility and early mammalian specialists from the GETI-IAB team permitting to unite all the required complementary skills required for the success of the project. Both teams have been collaborating on this novel and challenging subject for three years permitting to establish the baseline for this project. Exciting preliminary data give us great confidence in the success of this original project expected to have important repercussions on both disciplines independently.

CLIMABOROUGH is an Innovation project designed to field test the ClimHub, Climate Sandbox and Climate Service concepts within 12 European Cities engaged in their ecological and digital transition. The project aims to enhance traditional urban and spatial planning approaches through data and knowledge based decision making (including a possible new role for GIS - Geographic Information Systems), including climate services co-production for transitions, cross-city and cross-country pilot co-creation as well as the tactical use of public procurement of innovative solutions. The goal is not just to enhance an open set of tools leveraging climate transition in cities, but also to boost the exchange of experimental good practices, experiences and lessons learnt in this field, to help cities meet climate neutrality by 2050. This will be achieved by the following expected results: (A) building ClimHubs of Cities and solution providers to work on experimentations in real conditions, (B) harnessing the collective intelligence of local stakeholders for collaborative solution development, (C) defining Climate Services as a model strategy to use data and visualisation tools for climate transition, (D) field testing the Climate Sandbox concept as a way to prioritise and facilitate transformation of successfully deployed prototypes into established solutions for climate adaptation and mitigation in cities, and (E) monitoring and assessing the progress in achieving those goals and in implementing a climate neutrality planning scheme. Based on the lessons learnt and successful concept of the H2020 Designscapes CSA, CLIMABOROUGH has the ambition to bridge the gap between design and implementation of urban innovations, particularly in the domain of climate change adaptation and mitigation.

The sales of electric vehicles (EVs) are increasing but their drivers still encounter problems to find appropriate charging options. The vision of eCharge4Drivers is to focus on the users and substantially improve the EV charging experience within cities and on long trips, making it better than refuelling an ICE vehicle. The work will start with wide surveys in 10 demonstration areas, to capture the a priori users’ perceptions and expectations as regards the various charging options and their mobility and parking habits. Based on the survey findings and after matching with the perspective of authorities, operators and service providers, the project will develop and demonstrate in 10 areas, including metropolitan areas and TEN T corridors, easy-to-use, scalable and modular, high- and low-power charging stations, low-power DC charging stations and components with improved connection efficiency and standardised stations for LEVs. All stations will offer various direct payment methods and bigger user-friendly displays. The charging stations and all actors’ back-ends will support the ISO 15118 Plug & Charge feature and will enable the standardised transfer of enhanced information in the ecosystem, thus enabling the interoperability of communication and the provision of more sophisticated services to the users before, during and after the charging process, including smart charging services. The project will demonstrate additional convenient charging options within cities, a mobile charging service, charge points at lamp posts and networks of battery swapping stations for LEVs. Using the knowledge generated, the project will propose an EV Charging Location Planning Tool to determine the optimum mix of charging options to cover the user needs, recommendations for legal and regulatory harmonisation and guidelines for investors and authorities for the sustainability of charging infrastructure and services.