NCDs, especially diabetes and cardiovascular diseases (CVDs), are the leading causes of morbidity and mortality worldwide. CVDs kill more people globally than any other disease, accounting for 17.9 million deaths per year. Diabetes, on the other hand, accounts for 2 million deaths annually. These diseases have a greater impact on vulnerable populations. This increased prevalence among this population is related to a range of social and environmental factors, lifestyles, and the impact of behavioural determinants. Low-income communities, such as migrants or ethnic minorities, are still undertreated and unprotected by most of the healthcare systems with a lack of quality of care for NCDs and a lack of preventive measures specifically adapted for them. Thus, HORUS aims to tackle NCDs, especially diabetes and CVDs, in urban built environments among vulnerable populations, mainly low-income communities, migrants and ethnic minorities. In particular, it has a twofold objective. (1) First, to analyse and explore in depth the causal links between the characteristics of the urban built environment and the prevalence of NCD risk behaviours in an integrated, comprehensive and multi-approach manner. HORUS will focus on existing urban interventions modifying the physical-social and functional characteristics of the built environment with a significant impact on the prevalence of risk behaviours and, eventually, NCD outcomes. (2) And, secondly, to develop pilot interventions in three European countries –Spain, Croatia and The Netherlands– to promote behaviour change towards healthier lifestyles for empowering vulnerable populations, and to support citizens in making optimal use of the urban environment they live in while reducing NCD risk behaviours, especially those related to diabetes and CVDs.

INDUSAC’s main objective is to develop and validate a state-of-the-art, Industry Academia collaboration (IAC) mechanism for quick, challenge-driven, human-centred co-creation. Its aim is to build upon pre-existing IAC mechanisms such as EIT KICs and to facilitate a simple, user-friendly co-creation process that allows to develop solutions that clearly address the needs and interests of companies, students, and researchers in the EU, with special attention to widening and associated countries. Of a highly digitalised nature, our project will pilot the mechanism’s two main components: a methodology developed by applying human-centred design principles and an online platform aimed at connecting stakeholders from the industry-academia ecosystem and at supporting them throughout their co-creation journey. The INDUSAC methodology will provide the guidance and tools needed to power the process, whilst the platform will stand as a networking space for stakeholders to connect, as well as a co-creation arena to develop joint solutions. Through the experience of supporting at least 300 transnational co-creation teams throughout project lifetime, the INDUSAC mechanism and its two key components will be successively improved until project end, delivering a tested mechanism ready for replication and upskilling. It is expected for INDUSAC to also create a dynamic community of industry-academia stakeholders, including at least 1000 companies, 3000 students and 300 researchers by project end. The INDUSAC counts with a strong interdisciplinary, cross-sectorial and geographically balanced partnership that counts with the needed expertise and network to achieve our project’s goals.

The steadily growing demand related to increasing urbanisation is turning the management of logistics flows in urban areas a more complex process, with higher demand for adaptability and flexibility for the new solutions to contribute to optimise the overall transport capacity, reducing operational costs and negative impacts (health, safety). URBANIZED develops and demonstrates the next generation of modular vehicle architectures for urban-sized commercial e-vehicles, satisfying design principles of optimisation and right-sizing vehicles for their mission, delivering outputs in 3 dimensions: 1) high-performance e-powertrain components and control architectures, through the use of advanced co-design approaches; 2) interchangeable, plug & play cargo modules for different urban freight transport use case scenarios and 3) integrated energy and fleet management strategies using data, connectivity and learning algorithms. URBANIZED follows a holistic design approach working at 3 levels (systems, vehicle, fleet) during the entire project: starting with the definition of specific mission profiles within 2 main pre-selected use cases (last-mile delivery of retail, e-commerce, courier and post; HoReCa and other urban on-demand services), during the optimisation loops of the design process, and until project demonstrations, to be performed both physical and in virtual environments, covering the specific requirements of operators. URBANIZED brings a complementary multi-disciplinary consortium of 9 partners from 6 EU countries, involving all relevant actors from the value chain, from academic, to industrial (TIER1, OEMs) and logistics operators. Aiming at broadening dissemination and impact, URBANIZED defines an extended partnership, involving 3 satellite cities (Groningen, Madrid and Bergen) committed to CO2-emissions free logistics in their city centres by 2030 and a high volume OEM (Ford) highly positioned in the LCV market, all interested in replicability of project results.

As car and truck engines have become quieter and cleaner over the past decades, particulate and noise emissions from road-tyre interaction have become the dominant source of traffic-generated particulate emission and traffic noise. Both particulates (airborne or as microplastics) and noise are suspected to contribute to negative health outcomes for those living near busy roads. Currently, non-exhaust particulate emissions are not regulated. Tyre noise is subject to labelling for passenger vehicles, but not yet for trucks. Legislation is in preparation but will require a solid body of evidence of the mechanisms of generation, dispersion and potential health effects of both particulate and noise emissions, in order to introduce measures that are effective and widely accepted. LEON-T will contribute to this body of evidence by investigating both particulate and noise emissions from tyres, and in doing so define and propose practical standardised methods for both lab and road testing—of tyre abrasion rate (mostly larger particles) and airborne particulate emissions. We will also further investigate and model the dispersion and environmental fate of these particulate emissions, as they form a sizeable fraction of microplastics found in the environment. The potential effects of tyre noise on cardiovascular health will be investigated using waking tests and sleep studies. Here we will consider not just average sound pressure level, but also sound qualities such as tonality and timbre—as these can be influenced by tyre and road surface design. The insights gained in these investigations will be used to optimise the design, prototyping and demonstration of a novel airless tyre, which we expect will combine reduced noise, wear and emissions with high safety, reliability and comfort. LEON-T will make policy recommendations to mitigate against potential health hazards caused by tyre particulate and noise emissions.

BatteReverse aims to enable the next generation of battery reverse logistics (RL). It will develop a more efficient and universal method for battery discharge and first diagnosis for a wide range of Li-ion battery types, safety packaging with a monitoring system reducing thermal runaway risk during transportation of batteries, automated dismantling and sorting of battery components based on a safe and more efficient human-robot collaboration, and a more precise and faster Remaining Useful Life assessment of battery modules for 2nd life applications based on acoustic testing and machine learning algorithms. On top of that, BatteReverse will develop a Battery Data Space with standardised labelling and battery passport functionalities to improve battery identification. We will connect the stakeholders through a community platform and analyse the entire RL process by a digital twin (DT) simulation that will optimise profitability of RL circular business models. The innovations will be integrated and demonstrated in an operational environment in two use-cases for end-of-first-life (EoFL) EV batteries - recycling and repurposing – mirrored with the DT simulation. By 2026 we expect these developments to contribute to following outcomes: increase recycling efficiency by 5%, raise share of repurposed EoFL batteries to 10%, reduce risk of severe events in reverse logistics to 1/10.000, successfully simulate two successful RL business models and to have a stakeholder’s community platform with 50+ stakeholders. These outcomes will contribute to the sovereignty of the EU in the battery sector. By further uptake of the developed results beyond the project, BatteReverse targets to avoid the use of 3.691 tonnes/year of primary critical raw materials, on top of that avoid the deployment of 100,8 MWh capacity of new batteries yearly while capturing an extra €30,24 million/year value out of EoFL batteries and avoiding 31 severe risk events/year within the EU RL battery chain by 2029.