Petroleum-based geotextiles have been widely used for several decades in road structures to fulfill the separation function. Such geotextiles preserve the characteristics of the subgrade by limiting their contamination by fine materials from the backfill layer. They present an economic and ecological interest by reducing both the thickness of the subgrade and the emission of greenhouse gases during construction and maintenance operations, in particular those generated during the excavation and transport of materials. The use of local biosourced products with a low environmental impact is an opportunity to increase the contribution of geosynthetics to the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, as defined by the United Nations in 2015, to promote sustainable consumption and production, combat pollution and the depletion of biodiversity. The objective of the GEONAT project is to demonstrate the potential of integrating local natural geotextiles to perform filtration separation functions in replacement of petroleum-based geosynthetics in road structures. Nonwovens made exclusively of hemp fibers, manufactured in France by the company Géochanvre, could be used for such applications. The strategy deployed to achieve this objective involves: - optimizing the performance of the natural geotextiles produced by Géochanvre and developing natural and biological treatments to increase their use in apparently inappropriate environments; - understanding the initial behavior of natural geotextiles and their evolution over time in road structures depending on the characteristics of soils and traffic through their integration into an instrumented test platform representative of various pavement complexes and into real instrumented road structures; - developing accelerated ageing methods in laboratory conditions to estimate the durability and biodegradability of such materials and ensure that their performance longevity is adapted to their application; - assessing their environmental impact compared to petroleum-based geotextiles, using relevant indicators such as greenhouse gas emission, energy consumption and resource preservation... as used in life cycle analyses. This ambitious objective can be reached though the complementarity of a consortium composed by a research laboratory (Univ-Eiffel), a technical center (IFTH), an innovative SME (Géochanvre) and one of the main actors of the road infrastructure construction (Eurovia). A multidisciplinary approach (laboratory-pilot-industry) will be implemented, based on an experimental and modeling approach spanning the material scale to the real-life road scale. The main expectations of this project are to elaborate recommendations to support the prescription, use and application of natural geotextiles in road structures, to provide test methods evaluating initial performance and performance over time, and to develop current standards. These are all essential steps in the field of civil engineering ensuring the transfer of technology and skills to the profession. The outcome of the GEONAT project will also have important economic repercussions by creating wealth for farmers and manufacturers. It will also generate and increase employment in the production sector of natural geotextiles and in the fields of recommendation and technical support. All GEONAT's tools, methodologies and results will support and facilitate further studies to integrate other local fibers into natural geotextiles and contribute to their further development and use in various applications.

Although France and Germany are similar in many socio-economic dimensions, their total fertility rates are at the opposite extremes of the spectrum found in the OECD. German family policy has sought to increase the low rate for years with little success. We believe that much can be learned from a systematic comparison that is guided by economic theory, features detailed modeling of family policy and labor market environments alike, and adequately controls for heterogeneity in preferences. In the proposed project, we develop an estimable life cycle model with endogenous fertility, career, and labor supply decisions. The model is fully forward-looking, so women choose their careers based on their desired fertility level and the costs of career breaks. These costs are shaped by policy through the prices of childcare, maternity leave benefits, and birth-related job protection policies. They are also influenced by the choice of career itself: Foregone returns to experience and human capital depreciation vary with the task baskets associated with different types of jobs. Our model includes the decision to obtain a university degree; in order to get a meaningful distinction between different career paths we develop a task based approach. Heterogeneous preferences for education, work and fertility ensure that we do not falsely attribute differences in outcomes to variation in the institutional setting. We perform extensive model checks, including validation on holdout samples. Estimating comparable versions of the model for Germany and France allows us to decompose differences in outcomes into differences in policy, the labor market environment, and preferences. We are also able to investigate possible interaction effects between these three sets of explanatory factors. We also use the model to study specific family policy measures in greater detail. Our main application will be the 2007 reform of parental leave benefits in Germany. Unlike the existing quasi-experimental studies, the structural model will allow us to quantify the separate effects of the different components of the reform, to isolate the reform effects from concomitant changes such as the expansion of childcare, and to predict the long-run fertility effects of the reform, distinguishing changes in completed fertility from pure timing effects. We will also use the model to simulate changes to the current system of parental leave regulations and to approximate the efficient frontier of fertility and female labor force participation, while leaving total fiscal cost constant at the present level.

Political equality is a core requirement and a key principle of democracy. However, research casts serious doubt on the realization of this ideal and points to “unequal responsiveness”. This project examines political (in-)equality in France and Germany through the lens of group representation, with a focus on mandates and their realization in the form of policies. We look at the supply and the demand-side of political competition. How do pledges and fulfilled policy appeal to groups with different characteristics? How and under what conditions do citizens respond to group targeting in electoral manifestos (prospective) and pledge fulfillment (retrospective)? One main hypothesis of this project is that political actors not only disproportionately appeal to certain groups when making pledges, but also that pledge fulfillment is not constant and varies depending on the characteristics of the social groups, i.e. their mobilization resources and social images. UNEQUALMAND further investigates how group targeting affects citizens’ perceptions and assessment of pledges, with a focus on group-based heuristics, and the moderating role of the ambiguity of the pledge (broadness of the targeted group and preciseness of promised policy). We draw on a mixed-method research design combining hypothesis-testing with more inductive approaches that are relevant to an emerging research agenda. For studying how political actors target groups, we gather macro-level quantitative data on promises and their realization, which we use, first, to generate a typology on groups and their characteristics, and then to test our hypotheses. The data on pledges is used to design surveys and vignette experiments on voters’ reactions to group-targeting in pledge making and pledge fulfillment. Qualitative process-tracing of cases of (non-)fulfilled pledges targeted at specific groups shed light on the mechanisms linking groups, pledges and fulfillment, and allow for further hypotheses to be inductively generated. The country selection represents a diverse cases design: France and Germany are comparable in many respects, but their institutions and party systems also differ crucially. This allows maximization of the external validity of the findings, and provides variance for the explorative, inductive part of the project. By tracing (in)equal representation at different stages of the policymaking process (pledge making and realization), UNEQUALMAND makes an important contribution not only to the literature on unequal responsiveness, but also to previous research on public policy, party competition and electoral pledges. More broadly, this project has major potential implications for the understanding of (un)equal representation in representative democracy – from the perspective of political actors and voters.

INCIT-EV aims to demonstrate an innovative set of charging infrastructures, technologies and its associated business models, ready to improve the EV users experience beyond early adopters, thus, fostering the EV market share in the EU. The project will seek the emergence of EV users’ unconscious preferences relying on latest neuroscience techniques to adapt the technological developments to the users’ subjective expectations. 5 demo environments at urban, peri-urban and extra-urban conditions will be ready for the deployment of 7 use cases, addressing: Smart and bi-directional charging optimized at different aggregation levels Dynamic wireless charging lane in an urban area Dynamic wireless charging for long distance (e-road prototype for TEN-T corridors) Charging Hub in a park&ride facility Superfast charging systems for EU corridors Low power DC bidirectional charging infrastructure for EVs, including two-wheelers Opportunity wireless charging for taxi queue lanes in airports & central stations These use cases pursue innovations in the current charging solutions as well as their seamless integration into the existing transport, grid, ICT and civil infrastructures. For this purpose, the INCIT-EV Platform will be developed comprising a DSS and a set of APPs addressing the users and e-mobility stakeholders’ needs. As a result, INCIT-EV will engage 3,475 private EV drivers, as well as 10 local communities, 4 Taxis cooperatives, 4 car sharing and 4 LEVs sharing companies. In total, the project will mobilise directly an investment on the use cases of 8.872 M€. INCIT-EV consortium counts with 33 partners, including 3 OEMs, 6 charging technology providers and 5 public authorities, 6 RTOs, 2 ICT companies, 2 road infrastructures companies, 4 DSOs, 2 TSOs, 2 SMEs with expertise in user behaviour and e-mobility exploitation, a car sharing services SME and a EV users association. Finally, ENTSO-e or the TInnGo project on gender issues support the project.

Maintenance of road infrastructures represents a considerable socio-economic challenge in a context where budgets of asset managers are increasingly restricted. To optimize the maintenance of these infrastructures, it is necessary to develop monitoring and diagnosis methods to estimate reliably their residual lifetime. It is one of the objectives of the French “Road National Observatory - https://www.idrrim.com/ONR/” launched in January 2016 by the representatives of the road infrastructures sector. The MOVEDVDC project aims at the characterization of residual mechanical properties of bituminous materials in base layers, and their evolution over time, two inputs which are necessary to the calculation of pavement lifetime, and pavement maintenance solutions. The important targets are: - To define a methodology for assessing ageing and damage of bituminous materials, based on the analysis of materials sampled on field and on studies on materials aged in laboratory conditions, - To define ageing indicators used for the assessment of materials lifetime, - To propose, form these studies, models to predict mechanical properties of aged materials (in particular complex modulus and fatigue resistance) and their evolution, to be implemented in pavement lifetime calculation. This is an important output for the dissemination of the project. MOVEDVDC complements the National project DVDC (Pavement lifetime – www.dvdc.fr) which is a collaborative research project launched in June 2016, aiming at the development of tools and methods for the evaluation and maintenance of old pavements. The DVDC project brings together nearly forty partners of the road infrastructures sector: private companies, asset managers, research organizations. MOVEDVDC adresses one of the most important technical and scientific challenges identified in the DVDC project, which is the assessment of ageing and damage state of bituminous materials. The research program of MOVEDVDC is structured around 6 main tasks: (i) coordination, (ii) selection and characterization of experimental sites, (iii) analysis of binder behaviour, (iv) analysis of mixture behaviour, (v) modelling and calculation of pavement residual lifetime and (vi) dissemination. It is realized by a consortium constituted of 4 academic organizations (ESTP, IFSTTAR, INSA Strasbourg and University of Limoges) and 4 private companies (Eiffage Infrastructures, Eurovia, Malet, Total), which bring together strong scientific skills, a strong link to the field, and important laboratory testing facilities. Two major outputs are expected from this project, which will constitute important inputs for the establishment of operational technical guidelines shared with all the stakeholders: - A methodology for the characterization of aged and damaged bituminous materials, at binder and mixtures scales, - A new approach for describing the mechanical performance of these aged materials in the calculation of pavement lifetime and design of pavement maintenance solutions. This approach will constitute a contribution for the future guidelines on pavement maintenance which will be a deliverable of the DVDC project. The project will also lead to the development of a more advanced model for the description of the fatigue behaviour of cracked or damaged materials.