Project aims to create new capacities for graduate students from partner-countries to integrate in international research-business collaboration in the sphere of sustainable urban development. The project will build a network of universities and research institutes, public and private companies and political bodies in Russia, China and EU to strengthen international collaboration in green technologies for sustainable development of megacities, including management and design of urban forests and green infrastructure, landscaping, urban farming and waste management. The main activities planned by the project include 1) internships of graduate students; 2) short-term introduction and adaptation courses for students, coming for internship abroad; 3) training international experts on environmental issues of urban sustainable development; 4) professional training courses for companies and policy-makers on environmental issues of urban sustainable development.

SHui is conceived as a network integrating long-term experiments of its 19 academic and SME partners across different environmental conditions and cropping systems in the EU and China. It provides a platform for research on soil-water resources management under water scarce conditions, to better understand the linkages between agricultural soil hydrology and sustainability and for a systematic assessment of adaptation and mitigation methods. It will develop and implement new strategies to increase water use efficiency and yield, based on sustainable intensification through integrated use of soil and water across different spatial scales. At farm level, this includes digital agriculture solutions integrating in situ and remote sensors and simulation models to exploit an improved understanding of the relationship between crop yield variability and soil hydraulic properties, optimizing circular approaches to re-use water and using waste water sources. These technical approaches are reliant on optimum data utilization and transdisciplinary research with multiple stakeholders. At regional scales, the aggregation of biophysical and socioeconomic variables in dynamic models will evaluate the impact of different policy strategies, to support decision makers to evaluate different scenarios of land-use dynamics, economic context and current and future climate in EU and China, including assessments of water and carbon footprint. SHui will exploit scientific, technological and social innovations by disseminating and communicating these to multiple stakeholders, and implementing novel technological packages from farm to large regional scales. It aims to make a significant contribution to the EU and China Research Agenda for Agriculture in providing food security and optimum use of scarce soil and water resources. Training a cohort of early career scientists in soil conservation and water-saving practices, SHui’s legacy will extend beyond the project duration.

Trees and forests are a proven nature-based solution that contribute to sustainable urban development. Their potential for delivering ecosystem services, enhancing biodiversity and contributing to the wellbeing of urban societies is often underestimated and underused. CLEARING HOUSE provides evidence and tools that facilitate mobilising the full potential of urban forests as nature-based solutions (UF-NBS) for rehabilitating, reconnecting and restoring urban ecosystems. UF-NBS comprise every measure a city can take to address urban development challenges by deploying tree-based ecosystems. CLEARING HOUSE will review existing knowledge and will collect new data from large scale analyses (WP1), and evidence emerging from the comparative analysis of ten case studies in Europe and China (WP2), including a citizen science approach. Knowledge will relate to the social, economic and policy drivers of UF-NBS, their design and implementation, and their impacts on urban ecosystem and human wellbeing across continents. CLEARING HOUSE implements a co-design approach early in the project to ensure that its research programme exactly fits the demand of end-users, and engages stakeholders and scientists in problem-oriented knowledge generation through a set of targeted learning mechanisms (WP3). CLEARING HOUSE then develops user-targeted outputs to support cities, planners, business and civil society in implementing UF-NBS. Inter alia, decision support tools such as an online application, a global benchmarking tool and guidelines will provide knowledge on the design, governance and management of UF-NBS, and on sustainable business models relating to them (WP4). Target group specific communication and dissemination activities complement the project. These include Sino-European science-policy symposia (WP5) targeting senior decision-makers, activities targeting businesses and civil society organisations, and measures reaching out to citizens including school children (WP5).

SIEUSOIL will design, implement and test a shared China-EU Web Observatory platform that will provide Open Linked Data to monitor status and threats of soil and assist in decision making for sustainable support of agro-ecosystem functions, in view of the projected climate change. The Observatory platform will through customizable modules support the wise management of soil at field level and will provide showcase of good practices on soil management both for EU and China. The final target will be to support sustainable management of soil, increase land productivity sustainably, reduce crop yield variability across time and space, and support the policy formulation process. Innovative practices and tools will be tested in SIEUSOIL and their impact will be assessed for improved soil fertility and land suitability.