ECLIPSE is a collaborative project aimed at combating hate speech and mis/disinformation both online and offline across Europe, combining advanced technologies with insights from social, behavioural, criminological, and legal sciences. The project partners with law enforcement agencies, civil society organisations, and international bodies will develop innovative tools and strategies for analysing harmful content and deploying counter-narratives. These tools include natural language processing, social network analysis, and natural language generation technologies. In addition, ECLIPSE enhances the engagement of target groups through innovative training methods like digital storytelling, gamification, and augmented/extended reality, designed to increase knowledge and awareness about the societal impacts of these phenomena. These efforts aim to foster resilience among professionals and citizens, helping them identify and address hatred and fake news in both virtual and real-world contexts. A key objective of ECLIPSE is to equip stakeholders with validated and modern tools, methods, and curricula, enabling them to effectively tackle hate speech and mis/disinformation in a culturally sensitive manner. The project also seeks to standardise European approaches for gathering data and implementing countermeasures, all while respecting fundamental rights such as freedom of expression and privacy. Finally, ECLIPSE will produce policy briefs with actionable recommendations for European and national policymakers, supporting them in countering hate speech and fake news online and offline. Through collaboration with networks across Europe, ECLIPSE will work in multiple languages and towards scalable, sustainable solutions to combat these societal challenges at the national, EU, and global levels. The project's impact will be felt through pilots in Belgium, Germany/Austria, Italy, the UK, Spain, and Türkiye with a vision for broader adoption across Europe and beyond.

Amidst the mounting challenges posed by climate change, particularly escalating urban flooding events, the Institute for Artificial Intelligence R&D of Serbia (IVI) introduces the ARTIFACT project, focusing on the synergy of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and engineering for urban flood resilience. Recognizing the limitations of existing physics-based models, the ARTIFACT seeks to harness AI's capabilities to elevate urban flood prediction, management, and mitigation, emphasising the importance of integrating nature-based solutions (NBS) and AI in urban planning to confront future flood risks. Notably, IVI aims to utilize vast datasets and advanced machine learning techniques to offer in-depth, real-time analysis concerning climate change impacts. By intertwining AI-driven solutions and expertise of IVI with engineering prowess from leading EU partners, Delft University of Technology (TU Delft), IHE Delft Institute for Water Education (IHE Delft), and Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH), the initiative aims to foster advanced strategies in AI-based urban flood modelling. As IVI positions itself at the forefront of AI-driven environmental modelling, the ARTIFACT project emerges as a beacon of innovation, cementing IVI's role as a regional leader and research lighthouse in this domain. To achieve this ARTIFACT will use staff exchanges, expert trainings, summer schools and workshops to boost the research excellence, innovation capacity and visibility of IVI members focusing on ESRs and administrative staff. The project will gradually shift focus from research to innovation-driven implementation by setting up Blue-Green AI Hub at IVI as an interface towards the regional ICT sector, bridging high-quality IVI research with thriving regional ICT innovation scene. With the help of EU partners, ARTIFACT will put the IVI on the European map of emerging AI-based flood and NBS modelling, while via Blue-Green AI Hub, IVI will become integral part of regional ICT industry.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) holds enormous potential for enhancing human decisions, improving cognitive overload and lowering bias in high-stakes scenarios. Adoption of AI-based support systems in such applications is however minimal, chiefly due to the difficulty of assessing their assumptions, limitations and intentions. In order to realise the promise of AI for individuals, society and economy, people should feel they can trust AIs in terms of reliability, capacity to understand the human’s needs, and guarantees that they are genuinely aiming at helping them. TANGO will develop the theoretical basis and computational framework for hybrid decision support systems (HDSS) in which humans and machines are aligned in terms of values and goals, know their respective strengths, and work together to reach an optimal decision. To this end, TANGO will develop: 1) A cognitive theory of mutual understanding and hybrid decision making, of intuitive vs deliberative approaches to decision making and of how they affect our trust in human and AI teammates. 2) Cognition-aware explainable AIs implementing synergistic human-machine interaction, enabling machines to determine what information a specific decision maker (e.g., layperson vs expert) needs, or does not need, to reach an informed decision. 3) A “Human-in-the-loop” co-evolution of human decision making and machine learning models building on bi-directional, explanation-augmented interlocution. The TANGO framework will be evaluated on four high impact use cases, namely supporting: i) women during pregnancy and postpartum, ii) surgical teams in intraoperative decision making, iii) loan officers and applicants in credit lending decision processes, and iv) public policy makers in designing incentives and allocating funds. Success in these case studies will establish TANGO as the framework of reference for developing a new generation of synergistic AI systems, and will strengthen the leadership of Europe in human-centric AI.

Nature-based solutions (NBS) have gained traction over the past decades as a urban design philosophy that reduces pressures of climate change by creating sustainable and resilient urban spaces. With an investment of over €240 million, EU proves that NBS is “essential component” in its sustainable development strategy. However, the use of blue-green infrastructure, a core component of NBS is often too technical, excluding a primary user and beneficiary, general public, from giving input into NBS planning. This further leads to the lack of public acceptance of NBS projects and poor socially-responsible design. Hence, there is a need for better tools and processes to facilitate co-creation of NBS projects between public and planning professionals. The aim of Public pArticipatory Co-creation Tools for NBS (PACT-NBS) project is to create a framework for facilitation of urban NBS co-design by using public value frameworks integrated within serious games to aid decision making. This will be achieved by: (1) using systematic approach to establish public values metrics relevant to diverse European communities; (2) developing and testing serious gaming tool integrated with environmental and social objectives for urban design; and (3) providing holistic co-creation framework for serious game application in NBS planning, based on the results of public and professionals testing across Europe. PACT-NBS goes beyond the state-of-the-art by addressing critical gaps in NBS public planning, but also captures EU's policy objectives and sustainability agendas through European Green Deal and SDGs 6 and 11. Utilising researchers extensive background on NBS development and social engineering, together with cross-European collaboration and professional networks through hosting institution and non-academic placement, the project will not only deliver the highest benefits to research, industry and general public, but form international network to advance EU's climate and social resilience.