Today more than half of the planet’s inhabitants live in cities and this is projected to increase. The world-wide migration of rural people to cities is particularly prominent in West Africa. This leads to increased practicing of peri-urban agriculture, supported by a) the lack of formal jobs and as a means of adding up to household income in low and middle-income countries (LMIC), b) the young generations of farmers are not willing to live in remote areas, c) initial stages of agriculture intensification in LMIC usually involves concentration of production in peri-urban areas. Even though intensified peri-urban farming has significant advantages, it also introduces concerns about zoonotic diseases, sanitary issues, local environmental degradation, antimicrobial resistance and more. Especially in LMIC, the intensification of food systems, as they transition from subsistence to market-oriented production, is typically associated with human health risks. URBANE is addressing this challenge of sustainable agriculture for food nutrition security, applying a One Health approach for tackling issues related to the application & intensification of peri-urban agriculture, as well as providing the necessary framework for its sustainable & safe application in different contexts. To achieve this, the project will be built around the principles of agroecology. URBANE is building on the extensive experience in agroecology of its partners whilst exploiting friendly tools & methods for measuring the progress & impact of the agroecological transition of farming. The URBANE approach will be demonstrated through 6 case studies in Africa, while its transferability in other regions will also be studied and facilitated through specific tools. New/ adapted business models will also be worked out for the URBANE case studies, that will act as lighthouse examples of how such business models can be - with suitable local adaptations informed by local specificities.

According to the EU Soil Strategy, around 60 to 70% of the soils in the European Union are not healthy and suffering from severe degradation processes. The degradation processes primarily affecting the topsoils are also depleting the subsoil health reducing the ecosystem services delivery. However, subsoil knowledge is scarce in spite of the relevance it has. SUS-SOIL is a 4-year project adopting multidisciplinary approach that will develop a set of 15 Subsoil-Living Labs (LLs) to inventory, analyse and benchmark different agroecology subsoil management (ASM) and land uses and their impacts on the subsoil spatial variations and dynamics to best combine ASM practices in rural and urban areas within a global regional context. SUS-SOIL results will be the start point to increase the awareness of land managers and public authorities to understand the subsoil threats and risks, support EU agroecological transformation tackling subsoils and increasing ecosystem services delivery, promote water security and climate change mitigation of rural and urban ecosystems. The main outcomes include: (1) develop a subsoil/soil monitoring database (S-DB) able to be interoperable with the LUCAS and ESDAC databases, (ii) the analysis long-term ASM land use and management of 3 relevant types of soil per LL and the relationship with rural and urban ecosystem services delivery including modelling, (iii) develop a set of farm idiotypes per LL mixing the ASM best practices as an alternative to conventional systems to enhance the ecosystem services provision at regional level for citizens through (iv) a Subsoil Decision Support Tool (S-DST) considering soil degradation and relevant business models and propose a (v) subsoil policy strategy framework to foster ASM best practices.

There is a continuously increasing need for miniaturised sensors providing simultaneous access to multiple chemical and biochemical parameters sensing. Optical spectroscopy is the golden standard for the identification and quantitative measurement of several chemicals simultaneously, using a single device: a spectrometer. Challenge #1: Conventional FTIR spectrometers are bulky benchtop instruments. Regarding PTS for gas sensing, the proof-of-concept has only recently been validated at macroscopy scale. Considering field deployment of such spectrometers, the main challenges are related to the production cost, ruggedness & size of the instrument. Challenge #2: A key advantage of FTIR absorption spectroscopy is its broad spectral range in the MIR range, where fundamental molecular vibrational tones have large absorption cross section. However, while conventional benchtop FTIR spectrometers can operate up to 25000 nm or more, it is still a big challenge when considering miniature spectrometers to reach a wide spectral range coupled with high sensitivity. SIWARE recently developed an ultra-compact, MEMS-based, FTIR spectrometer. The commercial product, NeoSpectra, is operating in the Near-Infrared range up to 2500 nm. BROMEDIR will address the aforementioned challenges and make an important step towards meeting the related need, using Neospectra as a Spectroscopy Development Platform, targeting though the development of a radically new spectrometer with multiple extensions of its capabilities beyond the SotA. In parallel, a novel, miniaturised PTS spectrometer will be developed, taking advantage of the same silicon-MEMS technology platform that has been used for the development of the PIC used in Neospectra’s FTIR chip. In BROMEDIR, this new generation of miniature spectrometers will be used to develop sensing platforms, to be demonstrated in 3 application domains: a) sustainable farming, b) hydrogen supply chain quality monitoring and c) fuel quality control