The pinnacle of community driven urban energy transition are Positive Energy Districts (PED). They improve energy efficiency, integrate local renewables and excess heat more effectively and enable interaction with the energy and non-energy sectors like mobility, ICT and industry. A crucial, and often neglected complication is that PEDs are in constant evolution. This is due to ever-evolving changes in their environment: social context, legislation, energy market, increased electric vehicles, etc. As such, there is a strong analogy with the theory of evolution. Although the DNA between PEDs varies, the implementation and evolution of different PEDs is not a process of chance: the environment determines the probability of success in the urban energy transition. The PEDvolution project paves the way for cross-sectoral integration of ever-evolving PEDs. This over a duration of three years, consisting of three consecutive phases: analyse, co-develop and demonstrate. European pioneers in PED conceptualisation, implementation and tool development will co-develop and implement seven interoperable solutions accommodating the constant evolution of PEDs: 1) PED Design and Planning Toolset, 2) PED Readiness Assessment, 3) Dynamic Decision Support Guideline for PED Development, 4) PED Energy Manager, 5) Data Exchange, Integration and Interoperability Platform, 6) PED Business Models, 7) Social Innovation tool. These PEDvolution solutions will evaluate and improve the ‘PED Readiness Level’ according to the four genes of the PED genotype: social, technology, interoperability, and market. These are influenced by their interaction within the PED and its environment (PED phenotype). At least six real-life PEDs across Europe, will provide a demonstration and validation environment for the solutions, paving the way for replication, upscaling and mainstreaming.

Vascular dementia and heart failure represent major health burden to morbidity, mortality and quality of life. Comorbidities (hypertension, aging, diabetes, etc.) affect all organs, but the brain and heart are especially sensitive to these chronic stresses resulting in cognitive impairment (a mental disorder) and heart failure (a non-mental disorder). These comorbidities also induce a reduction in microvascular density, called microvascular rarefaction. We have build a consortium, CRUCIAL, which will develop a coordinated program to investigate the role of microvascular rarefaction in cognitive impairment and heart failure. Diagnosis of microvascular rarefaction is limited by the inability to assess microvascular density. We will develop advanced imaging tools taking advantage of the newest MRI technology including non-contrast and artificial intelligence methods to assess brain and heart microvascular rarefaction. We will also develop other non-invasive measures that will be cheaper and easier to widely disseminate in clinical practice (sublingual and retinal microvascular imaging, and blood microvesicle analysis). We will then apply these techniques to prospective and retrospective patient cohorts with cognitive impairment and heart failure to demonstrate that rarefaction can be used as a biomarker to diagnose and stratify patients. Microvascular regression is now recognised as an active process. We will therefore investigate, through animal models, the molecular mechanism of vessel rarefaction in the presence of comorbidities that could be targeted therapeutically. Therapeutic options for cognitive impairment or heart failure are currently limited to treating co-morbidities. The aim of CRUCUAL is to deliver diagnostic tools to clinician and therapeutic pathways to pharma that target microvascular health in order to prevent cognitive and cardiac disease progression, reduce morbidity and ultimately improve quality of life for patients.

Considering Artificial Intelligence (AI) capabilities and potential risks, and taking into account its limitations, AI4CCAM will develop an open environment for integrating trustworthy-by-design AI models of vulnerable road user behaviour anticipation in urban traffic conditions, and accounting for improved road safety and user acceptance. Leveraging the Trustworthy AI guidelines for general intelligent software systems and the ethics recommendations for connected automated vehicles, AI4CCAM will support AI-based scenarios management in which pedestrian/cyclist behaviour anticipation models will integrate visual gaze estimation and where explainable ego car trajectory prediction models are simulated with ethical dilemmas and multiplied with generative adversarial networks and metamorphic testing techniques. The AI4CCAM open environment will include an interoperable digital framework for managing and generating AI-based urban-traffic scenarios in which trustworthy-by-design AI models can be tested and an online participatory space to foster acceptance of AI in automated driving, determine AI risks and identify biases in datasets and cyber-threats. Simulation scenarios of road users interacting with automated vehicles will be developed and evaluated in three complementary use cases covering the whole sense-plan-act paradigm and user acceptance. As such, the project will advance knowledge in building trustworthy-by-design AI-based solutions for CCAM applications.

The FIREFLY project rises to the sustainable evolution of the catalyst-based chemical industry, towards its electrification and reduced third-party dependence on metals and fossil energy. The controversial sustainability challenges and opportunities in catalysts recycling/production and catalyzed chemical processes motivated the synergy of 16 partners proposing the FIREFLY concept, relying on the development of: i) Electro-driven technologies for metal recycling from spent, waste, and off-specification catalysts available in Europeincluding a modelling, optimization, and engineering approach; ii) Efficient integration of renewable electricity; iii) A digital tool for predictive decision-making; iv) Production of (electro)catalysts for innovative (electro)chemical processes that overcome traditional production associated with high operating conditions, greenhouse gas emissions, and lack of circularity. The 48-month project foresees 3 stages: i) The technologies involved in the concept will be developed to TRL4, accompanied by an integrated sustainability assessment that will support the selection of the most promising technology routes based on their environmental and techno-economic performance. ii) The selected flowsheets will form the FIREFLY process, in a small-scale pilot. They will be demonstrated at TRL6 in the predictive, RES powered, and flexible production of new metal-based (electro)catalysts from secondary resources as well as in the application of these outputs in innovative (electro)chemical processes of selected chemicals: ammonia and hydrogen peroxide (with current environmental and operational concerns), depolymerization of lignin and biomass processing for bio-based chemicals (in support of defossilization of the chemical industry). iii) The activities and results will be effectively communicated, disseminated, and exploited to a wide set of stakeholders.

Current European refineries and civil infrastructures, like tunnels and bridges, are ageing, and therefore gradually become deteriorated, especially taking into consideration the current and future economic situation in Europe where large investments in renewing infrastructures are not foreseen. Then, it is paramount important to increase the efficiency and quality of inspection and maintenance activities in order to keep the necessary safety levels in these ageing infrastructures. To overcome this important challenge, PILOTING proposes the adaptation, integration, and demonstration of robotic solutions, in an integrated platform, which will be tested and evaluated in three large-scale pilots: refineries (Oil&Gas sector), bridges/viaducts and tunnels (Civil/Transport Infrastructure sector) with the involvement of all the actors that conform the full value chain. The developed platform will: demonstrate the application of robotics at scale in the domain of Inspection and Maintenance (I&M), reduce end-user commercial risks on the deployment of robotics in the sector, demonstrate capabilities and improve understanding of robotics uptake value, develop and support the related ecosystem around the piloting I&M operations, as well as, contribute to industrial standards in robotics for I&M. To achieve the above, PILOTING will develop an advanced robotic-based platform that will be deployed in the three industrial scenarios and demonstrate the real value towards the inspection and maintenance community as well as its high level socio-economic impact when applied at scale. PILOTING will establish large-scale pilots in real industrial environments to directly reply to main I&M challenges through the demonstration of: increasing rate of inspection and maintenance tasks, improving coverage and performance, decreasing costs and time of operations, improving inspection quality and increasing safety of operators.