NEB Junction collects, packages and validates stakeholder knowledge into Knowledge Gems, and makes them publicly available in an AI-supported, attractive and accessible IT Portal. We cooperate with a broad set of NEB stakeholders - and stakeholders that might not yet be interested or are traditionally excluded - using multi-stakeholder sessions, learning journeys and stakeholder assemblies. Our Monitoring System bridges cultural and creative perspectives with environmental, economic, social, health and governance aspects, making sustainable solutions more relatable and attractive to policy makers, public authorities, construction ecosystems and local communities. We connect stakeholders with the NEB Facility through NEB Coffees, mapping of R&I gaps, foresight activities and more, to distill NEB at your Fingertips - Pathways to NEB Implementation, and a Roadmap for the NEB Facility. We work with creative and cultural sectors and industries to generate a sense of belonging to NEB, combining AI-supported analysis with human reflections on NEB values, needs and expectations in a co-design approach. All of this work is supported by a Vision co-created with the stakeholders, enabling its long life-time also after the end of the project. The NEB Junction is created and managed by 8 experienced NEB partners: AIT, Ars Electronica, Climate KIC, DemSoc, DOWEL, ERRIN, ICLEI, and NTNU as Project Coordinator.

With the rise and spread of ICT-enabled crimes and illicit financial flows (IFFs), law enforcement agencies (LEAs) and financial intelligence units (FIUs) need innovative policing tools in the virtual sphere as well as skills, organisational and regulatory adaptations to counter these threats. TRACE will focus on input (forming initial suspicion), processing (substantiating suspicion, collecting evidence, locating suspects and their assets) and output (producing court proof / admissible e-evidence) to develop ICT-enabled solutions to identify, track and document IFFs, to pave the way for recovering the proceeds of crime and to disrupt the IFFs. TRACE will apply its solutions in use cases on terrorist financing, web forensics, cyber extortion, use of cryptocurrencies in property market transactions, money laundering in arts and antiquities, and online gambling, all of which have been developed in consultation with LEAs. TRACE will make recommendations on harmonisation of information formats in suspicious activity reports. Heretofore the differences and fragmented use of e-evidence in criminal justice processes have hindered cross-border investigations, prosecutions and convictions and recovery of assets. TRACE will create an open source platform for LEAs and for advancements in technology-based solutions in policing. With stakeholder engagement from the outset, the TRACE partners will co-develop advanced investigation tools and test and validate their efficacy in detecting IFFs. TRACE will also create a working group of partner LEAs and Stakeholder Board LEAs to discuss good practices in information sharing among EU LEAs. The project will create a Stakeholder Board of about 20 key stakeholders and an Ethics Advisory Board comprising four external ethics experts and two partners. TRACE has a multidisciplinary consortium comprising LEAs, AI technology companies, academia, research institutes and NGOs with track records of delivering cutting edge EU projects.

HESTIA aims to provide a cost-effective solution for the next-generation DR services which will leverage the consumer engagement, energy and non-energy services, while dealing with both energy supply and demand side in a holistic manner. HESTIA intends to engage with residential consumers representing a still largely untapped sector, while enabling them to play an active role in flexibility sharing and grid balancing. HESTIA will enable residential DR services through: (i) exploitation of energy demand flexibility by engaging the consumers in demand-side management activities, and (ii) valorisation of energy efficiency in multi-carrier energy dispatching and optimal operation of building systems. HESTIA will exploit the consumer engagement as part of cooperative DR strategy at the community level, i.e. clusters of individual consumers and prosumers. To motivate the consumers to actively participate, HESTIA will leverage the financial, environmental and social drivers, while cross-fertilizing them to maximize the impact. HESTIA will involve the residents in the designing of the solutions through participatory co-design processes. HESTIA will create community engagement methodology and organisational tools with a high acceptance, that can be replicated and provide the corresponding tailored toolsets for a broader rollout. HESTIA will exploit the aggregated energy resource flexibility at the demand-side, in terms of cumulative energy consumption, distributed energy generation and storage, to better manage the disparity between energy demand, RES availability and grid requirements. User-personalized services will be delivered via a fully service-oriented, flexible ICT platform, underpinned by agent-based concepts, consumer digital twin and non-intrusive data analytics. This way, HESTIA will set the foundation for an open marketplace and a new grid reality, while steering consumer engagement according to the grid requirements and promoting RES and sustainable behaviour.