The Sustainable Mobility Planner (SMP) is a specialized innovative IT software (tool) that enables environmental, financial and social impact assessments of sustainable transport initiatives taken in an urban environment. The tool integrates methods and calculations of the benefits of creating environmental zones, using low emission vehicles for urban distribution, bundling of goods, night distribution, reducing road capacity, etc. In short, all schemes, which municipalities, individually or together with the transport and logistics industry and retailers, can implement in urban areas to optimize freight activities and increase focus on sustainable freight transportation initiatives. The SMP interconnects emission calculations and small scale traffic models with visual communication in one system tool. The tool's usefulness and ease of use is ensured through constant updates with the latest available data from NTU’s portfolio of projects, as well as through user-based data inputs and feedback. The business model guarantees a continuous development and upgrading of the tool, which will be based on the latest available transport and environmental data. The reliability will, compared to existing tools, set new standards, by replacing estimates with concrete and updated data, which is added to the system via the backend solution. SMP will: - On a continuous basis be able to monitor progress, calculate environmental improvements and assess the potential and need for new investment in the urban transport initiatives. - Give politicians and planners the opportunity to compare environmental impacts of different transportation alternatives. - Be a useful decision support tools with high and multifaceted functionality for transport solutions and the associated political framework.

The primary objective of the AfroSAFE project is to make a significant progress in propagation of the Safe System modus operandi within the road safety work context in African countries. This is reached by exposing the local practitioners and decision makers to the state-of-the-art knowledge and practices within road safety management based on Safe System principles, as well as supporting them by sharing necessary knowledge, tools and methods for road safety improvement—adjusted to the African conditions and in tight cooperation with the local actors. More specifically, this is reached through mapping of the existing regulations, procedures, methods and tools within all five pillars of road safety (management, safe infrastructure, safe vehicles, safe road users and post-crash care), development of the recommendations for improvements and running a series of pilots and demonstrations to illustrate these recommendations in action. In these activities, the problems and needs of the vulnerable road users will receive particular attention. Another focus area for the AfroSAFE project is capacity building through education of the local educators in all areas relevant for road safety. Together with them, the current curriculums are revised, new educational programmes created, and an educational platform—a virtual centre of excellence—will be created.

The EU's ambition to achieve climate neutrality by 2050 and increase networks interconnection, makes the proliferation of hybrid AC/DC grids a promising solution towards a more interoperable and resilient pan-European system. In this context, THEUS project aims to showcase advanced methodologies and tools supporting hybrid grids implementation across High Voltage (HV), Medium Voltage (MV), and Low Voltage (LV) levels. To successfully achieve its objectives, the project will develop a set of six planning and six operation solutions, that will be validated in five use cases addressing the most representative challenges faced by European grids. These use cases will rely on accurate models and will be fed with data from five real grids representing different project stages and voltage levels: a planned transnational HVAC/HVDC transmission interconnector connecting Crete-Cyprus-Israel; an existing distribution hybrid grid in Italy; a planned MVDC distribution grid in Turkey; an existing HVAC/HVDC link between Attica-Crete; an existing MVAC/MVDC/LVDC microgrid in Spain. The validation will be conducted on six test benches that will allow to reach TRL 5 by the end of the project. THEUS assembles a competitive consortium of 15 partners from 8 EU countries, including research organizations, technology manufacturers, electric system operators, a wind farm operator, a SME to guarantee the exploitation of the project solutions, and a European Association to ensure the successful dissemination of the project outcomes. THEUS will directly impact in the electricity system orchestration of future pan-European AC/DC hybrid architecture by performing a validation campaign in which 2 under-planning networks will be designed, and 3 existing networks will be improved in terms of management and operation. Overall, THEUS is expected to achieve 10-30% reductions in energy losses and 15-20% in O&M costs while ensuring the safe operation of hybrid grids with a higher penetration of RES.