EDICULA is an innovative approach that fuses the interdisciplinary collaboration among the sectors of applied sciences in the protection of monuments with humanities disciplines using XR technologies, to develop an educational framework to advance scientific transdisciplinary synthesis. The innovation of the EDICULA project is that it emphasizes that this transdisciplinary collaboration can be instrumentalized through education, with the various universal educational tools and the experience from the emblematic Holy Sepulchre rehabilitation acting as common base. The EDICULA project will address the following requirements of the innovation, education, modernization and internationalization:·Social and educational value of European cultural heritage, its contribution to job creation, economic growth and social cohesion. The project will raise awareness of the importance of Europe's cultural heritage through education, including actions to support skills development, social inclusion, critical thinking and youth engagement. It also includes new participatory and intercultural approaches to the protection of monuments, as well as educational initiatives aimed at fostering intercultural dialogue.·Innovative practices in a digital era, with focus on actions that promote advanced methods and tools for teaching, training and learning on different levels of education, including postgraduates and experts and a broader audience enhancing social participation, economic growth and social cohesion. The EDICULA project taking as a starting point the emblematic rehabilitation of Holy Sepulchre aims a) to promote cooperation between Universities in the projects of rehabilitation and protection of CH monuments b) to fuse the interdisciplinary and innovative research in the rehabilitation of the Holy Aedicule, its context and setting, to trans-cut with the history of architecture in Jerusalem c) to create immersive and interactive educational material and dissemination by using AR technology, d) to reform the curricula of the three postgraduate programs of the EDICULA partners, in order to promote transfer knowledge and create new courses that in a complimentary approach will lead to the promotion of a Joint Master Degree in the field of protection of monuments, e) to develop the EDICULA Teachers’ Course, in order to train higher education teachers to promote the transdisciplinary scientific synthesis as a key element for innovative education, f) to proceed with the organization of multiplier events and special conference sessions. Although the two basic axes of the universities are Education and Research, their interconnection is not always projected into Society. The EDICULA project aims to connect society with higher education in order to transfer research achievements to the wide audience, using the field of Cultural Heritage (CH) as a carrier. Innovation can serve as the catalyst to transform research into novel educational approaches to achieve authentic learning. The wide audience and experts are approached through digital games and educational toolkits in the field of protection of monuments. The added value of the project is that it aims to transfer the connection of society with higher education by teaching the importance of innovative transdisciplinary scientific synthesis to teachers in post-graduate programs in scientific fields other than CH.EDICULA is distinguished into four Work Packages that will lead to the achievement of the project. Within the duration of EDICULA project four Multiplier Events and one Teaching Activity will be carried out.

E-RIHS PP is a coordination and support action addressing the topic “Preparatory Phase and support to early phase of ESFRI projects” within the call H2020-INFRADEV-02-2016. The specific action addressed by this project is the preparation of E-RIHS, the European Research Infrastructure for Heritage Science (HS), one of the six new projects which entered the ESFRI Roadmap in 2016, and the only research infrastructure project in the Social and Cultural Innovation section of the Roadmap. E-RIHS will help the preservation of the World’s Heritage by enabling cutting-edge research in HS, liaising with governments and heritage institutions to promote its constant development and, finally, raising the appreciation of the large public for cultural and natural heritage and the recognition of its historic, social and economic significance. E-RIHS PP will start in 2017 and will last three years (2017-2020). The first two will be used to address governance, financial aspects, legal documents and logistics. This will lead to a business plan ready for application to ERIC, or to another suitable legal form, by 2019. The last year will be devoted to negotiations with stakeholders, based on the agreed instruments, further strategic planning and to start up of activities for entering the transition phase. E-RIHS will hopefully be launched as a stand-alone RI in 2021.

The IPERION HS proposal aims at establishing and operating an Integrating Activity for a distributed pan-European research infrastructure, opening key national research facilities of recognised excellence in heritage science. Heritage science is a young and cross-cutting scientific domain embracing a wide range of research disciplines enabling deeper understanding of the past and improved care for the future of heritage. Since 2016, heritage science is included in the ESFRI Roadmap as one of the strategic areas in the domain of Social Sciences and Humanities, where it is represented by the ESFRI Project E-RIHS (European Research Infrastructure for Heritage Science). IPERION HS will provide to the advanced community of heritage science - built and reinforced with the support of four EU projects spanning across four Framework Programmes, approaching 20 years of constant service to the heritage domain - a further level of pan-European integration, in view of the establishment of E-RIHS. IPERION HS is a further step towards a unified scientific approach to the most advanced European instruments for the analysis, interpretation, preservation, documentation and management of heritage objects in the fields of art history, conservation, archaeology and palaeontology. IPERION HS core activity will be offering Trans-National Access to a wide range of high-level scientific instruments, methodologies, data and tools for advancing knowledge and innovation in the domain. In addition, IPERION HS will contribute joint innovative research for a better interoperability not limited to data, but including sample materials, methods and instruments. The networking activities in the project aim at reinforcing the binding in the group and at creating a sense of belonging for heritage science researchers which will exploit the RI services. IPERION HS consists of partners from 22 Countries clustered around their national nodes.

The ARIADNEplus project is the extension of the previous ARIADNE Integrating Activity, which successfully integrated archaeological data infrastructures in Europe, indexing in its registry about 2.000.000 datasets. ARIADNEplus will build on the ARIADNE results, extending and supporting the research community that the previous project created and further developing the relationships with key stakeholders such as the most important European archaeological associations, researchers, heritage professionals, national heritage agencies and so on. The new enlarged partnership of ARIADNEplus covers all of Europe. It now includes leaders in different archaeological domains like palaeoanthropology, bioarchaeology and environmental archaeology as well as other sectors of archaeological sciences, including all periods of human presence from the appearance of hominids to present times. Transnational Activities together with the planned training will further reinforce the presence of ARIADNEplus as a key actor. The technology underlying the project is state-of-art. The ARIADNEplus data infrastructure will be embedded in a cloud that will offer the availability of Virtual Research Environments where data-based archaeological research may be carried out. The project will furthermore develop a Linked Data approach to data discovery. Innovative services will be made available to users, such as visualization, annotation, text mining and geo-temporal data management. Innovative pilots will be developed to test and demonstrate the innovation potential of the ARIADNEplus approach. Fostering innovation will be a key aspect of the project, with dedicated activities led by the project Innovation Manager.