HARMONIA will leverage existing tools, services and novel technologies to deliver an integrated resilience assessment platform working on top of GEOSS, seeing the current lack of a dedicated process of understanding and quantifying Climate Change (CC) effects on urban areas using Satellite and auxiliary data available on GEOSS, DIAS, urban TEP, GEP etc. platforms. HARMONIA will focus on a solution for climate applications supporting adaptation and mitigation measures of the Paris Agreement. HARMONIA will test modern Remote Sensing tools and 3D-4D monitoring, Machine Learning/Deep Learning techniques and develop a modular scalable data-driven multi-layer urban areas observation information knowledge base, using Satellite data time series, spatial information and auxiliary data, in-situ observing systems, which will integrate detailed information on local level of neighborhoods/building blocks. HARMONIA focuses on two pillars: a) Natural and manmade hazards intensified by CC: urban flooding, soil degradation and geo-hazards (landslides, earthquake, ground deformation) and b) Manmade hazards: heat islands, urban heat fluxes, Air Quality, Gas emissions. Sustainable reconstruction of urban areas and the health of humans and ecosystems, are top priorities. HARMONIA will take into account the local ecosystems of European urban areas, following an integrated and sustainable approach by incorporating the active communities’ participation initiative, which will involve the use of a social platform. Paying extra attention to Sustainable Urban Development, one of the Societal Benefit Areas posits that use of EO is a crucial tool towards resilient cities and the assessment of urban footprints, to promote equity, welfare and shared prosperity for all, feed new indicators for the monitoring of progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals in an EU context.

YADES aims to efficiently train a network of fellows on the field of the resilience of Cultural Heritage (CH) areas and historic cities against Climate Change (CC) and other types of hazards. Towards this direction, YADES aims to introduce a research framework for downscaling the created climate and atmospheric composition as well as associated risk maps down to the 1x1 km (historic area) scale, and specific damage functions for CH materials. Applying atmospheric modelling for specific CC scenarios at such refined spatial and time scales allows for an accurate quantitative and qualitative impact assessment of the estimated micro-climatic and atmospheric stressors. YADES will perform combined structural/geotechnical analysis of the CH sites and damage assessment under normal and changed conditions, based on the climatic zone, the micro-climate conditions, the petrographic and textural features of building materials, historic data for the structures, the effect of previous restoration processes and the environmental/physical characteristics of the surrounding environment. The data coming from installed monitoring system will be coupled with simulated data (under our cultural heritage resilience assessment platform-CHRAP) and will be further analysed through our data management system, while supporting communities’ participation and public awareness. The data from the monitoring system will feed the DSS so as to provide proper adaptation and mitigation strategies. The produced vulnerability map will be used by the local authorities to assess the threats of CC (and other natural hazards), visualize the built heritage and cultural landscape under future climate scenarios, model the effects of different adaptation strategies, and ultimately prioritize any rehabilitation actions to best allocate funds in both pre- and post-event environments. To train the fellows, the project will make use of extensive workshop and training sessions, as well organise summer schools.

HEART’s integrated approach aims to significantly improve urban health and reduce health disparities through an innovative urban planning methodology that embraces and promotes the policy making of proper Blue-Green (BG)-based technologies with techniques for changing individual -citizens’- behaviour. HEART mainly targets to: (i) monitor and efficiently assess the impact of specific BG-based interventions on Public Health (PH) and Well-Being (WB) through studies to be carried out at both clinical and non-clinical settings, in three European cities, i.e. Belgrade (Serbia), Aarhus (Denmark) and Athens (Greece). This way HEART aims to create evidence-based policy making recommendations that will be addressed to the relevant health authorities of these countries (based on specific KPIs), (ii) change individual -citizens’- health related behaviour, by using emerging ICT-based techniques, (iii) develop robust plans for regenerating and rehabilitating urban ecosystems to improve PH and WB, while in parallel addressing key challenges such as low environmental quality and low biodiversity, resilience to Climate Change and extreme weather conditions, air pollution, undervalued use of space in deprived and residual-values areas leading to health inequalities; (iv) create inclusive and accessible urban environments by systematically implementing gender mainstreaming strategies and new participatory tools (ICT-based) in order to ensure that diverse groups’ needs are properly considered and embedded into urban-regeneration-planning; (v) design urban regenerating plans targeting to deliver cities-for-people: the proposed BG solutions will improve citizens’ quality of life, based on real evidence and co-design processes, as well as stimulating and supporting social inclusivity for all; and (vi) improve urban resilience (operational, social and economic) through interventions designed using a set of urban planning matrices based on stakeholders’ participation. ΗEART is part of the European Urban Health cluster.

EuPOLIS aims to: (a) replace the traditional perception in which engineering systems are built to protect the environment at significant costs. We aim to deploy natural systems to simultaneously enhance Public Health (PH) and Well-Being (WB), and create resilient urban ecosystems at lower Life-Cycle Costs; (b) propose a structured approach to activate the hidden possibilities and services of existing Natural and Engineered urban systems, integrate them and define their joint social, cultural and economic effects, as a main vehicle for Ecosystem Business Services and Investment; (c) regenerate and rehabilitate urban ecosystems, while in parallel addressing key challenges such as low environmental quality, fragmentation and low biodiversity in public spaces, water-stressed resources, undervalued use of space in deprived areas and therefore we improve urban livability; (d) improve urban resilience (operational, social and economic) through interventions designed using a set of proper urban planning matrices, which catalyse stakeholder participation, with a special attention to gender, age and disability perspectives within the process; (e) create inclusive and accessible urban spaces by systematically implementing gender mainstreaming strategies and novel participatory tools into all phases and processes of project development to ensure that the needs of diverse groups are considered. We aim to stimulate active communities’ participation throughout the process; (f) to improve citizens’ quality of life providing them with pleasant socializing open areas that stimulate social exchange and inclusivity; (g) monitor and validate the impact of all interventions to PH and WB of citizens. EuPOLIS solutions will be demonstrated in 4 European cities: Belgrade, Lodz, Piraeus and Gladsaxe. We have also included some follower cities (Bogota, Palermo, Limassol and Trebinje) in order to replicate and demonstrate the advantages of our innovations via mentoring and coaching.

HERON aims to develop an integrated automated system to perform maintenance and upgrading roadworks, such as sealing cracks, patching potholes, asphalt rejuvenation, autonomous replacement of CUD elements and painting markings, but also supporting the pre/post-intervention phase including visual inspections and dispensing and removing traffic cones in an automated and controlled manner. The HERON system consists of: i) autonomous ground robotic vehicle that will be supported by autonomous drones to coordinate maintenance works and the pre-/post- intervention phase; ii) various robotic equipment, including sensors and actuators (e.g., tools for cut and fill, surface material placement and compaction, modular components installation, laser scanners for 3D mapping) placed on the main vehicle; iii) sensing interface installed both to the robotic platform and to the Road Infrastructures (RI) to allow improved monitoring (situational awareness) of the structural, functional and RI’s and markings’ conditions; iv) the control software that interconnects the sensing interface with the actuating robotic equipment; v) Augmented Reality (AR) visualization tools that enable the robotic system to see in detail surface defects and markings under survey; vi) Artificial Intelligence/AI-based toolkits that will act as the middleware of a twofold role for: a) optimally coordinating the road maintenance/upgrading workflows and b) intelligent processing of distributed data coming from the vehicle and the infrastructure sensors for safe operations and not disruption of other routine operations or traffic flows; and vii) integrate all data in an enhanced visualisation user interface supporting decisions and viii) communication modules to allow for Vehicle-to-Infrastructure/-Everything (V2I/X) data exchange for predictive maintenance and increase users safety. HERON aims to reduce fatal accidents, maintenance costs, traffic disruptions, thus increasing the network capacity and efficiency.