ProCleanLakes targets to combat the combined impact of various disruptive factors that generate continuous pressure on the lake's ecosystem status and facilitate the accumulation of emerging, non-regulated, chemical contaminants and nutrient enrichment. The project will design and demonstrate the feasibility of integrated nature-based emerging approaches for joint protection and restoration of European Natural Lakes (ENL) and their biodiversity, considering scenarios which imply the presence of various pressures that affect the aquatic ecosystems' status. The holistic transdisciplinary approaches that are to be used in the project, based on the synergic effect of the economic-environment-social nexus, targets to support the improvement of ENL ecological and chemical status in association with major EU instruments, sustainable development goals and policies related to freshwater ecosystems. The project engages multiple sites affected by the presence of various pressures and stressors, that will be the subjects for the demonstration of integrated protection and restoration solutions efficiency. A replication roadmap powered by the necessity of assuring upscaling and universality of the optimal integrated solutions (IS) will be developed to prove the replicability. An IS support platform which merges a business accelerator with an adaptive artificial intelligence (AI) solution for empowering citizen science related to lakes protection and restoration will assure the collaboration between the municipalities and citizens and will offer capacity-building and encourage co-development and co-design towards natural lakes protection and restoration. Tools such as mobile decision support platforms, serious games for digital readiness, e-learning and augmented-based modules for reinforce-learning and multiple AI machine learning analytical frameworks will be developed to assure the synergic approach toward the maximization of integrated solutions impact and replicability.

Whilst citizen participation in environmental policy making is still in its infancy, there are signs of a growing level of interest. The majority of citizens, though, both as individuals and as groups often feel disengaged from influencing environmental policies. They also remain unaware of publicly available information, such as the GEOSS or Copernicus initiatives. The SCENT project will alleviate this barrier. It will enable citizens to become the ‘eyes’ of the policy makers by monitoring land-cover/use changes in their everyday activities. This is done through a constellation of smart collaborative technologies delivered by the SCENT toolbox in TRLs 6-8: i) low-cost and portable data collection tools, ii) an innovative crowd-sourcing platform, iii) serious gaming applications for a large-scale image collection and semantic annotation, iv) a powerful machine-learning based intelligence engine for image and text classification, v) an authoring tool for an easy customization by policy makers, vi) numerical models for mapping land-cover changes to quantifiable impact on flood risks and vii) a harmonization platform, consolidating data and adding it to GEOSS and national repositories as OGC-based observations. SCENT will be evaluated in two large scale demonstrations in Kifisos Attica and Danube Delta. Our consortium covers the complete stakeholder chain: industries in machine learning (IBM), SMEs in crowd-sourcing (U-Hopper), gaming (Xteam) and awareness raising (Carr), leading research institutes with expertise in hydrodynamic modelling (UNESCO-IHE), data harmonization and authoring tools (ICCS) and environmental monitoring (DDNI), NGOs at the pilot sites (HRTA, SOR) and policy makers/public bodies (Region of Attica). The SCENT initiative will go beyond the current project and form a European-wide citizen movement, created and fostered by the SCENT stakeholders, that will ensure its sustainability and its complementarity with existing citizen partnerships.

Restore4Life demonstrates the multiple socio-economic benefits generated by a holistic and transdisciplinary approach for the restoration of freshwater and coastal wetlands in the Danube basin that will contribute to new blue-green infrastructure supporting regional climate change resilience and mitigation. Restore4Life engages in 4 demonstration sites and 6 monitoring sites all across the Danube basin to make evident that increased delivery of key ecosystem services, as water and pollutant retention, carbon sequestration and tourism opportunities as well as improved resilience of water-dependent habitats will produce multiple socio-economic synergies that also provide opportunities for sustainable businesses and investments. Implementation of activities basically aiming to restore lateral connectivity in riverine corridors will be supported by a Restore4Life long term wetland restoration service/ Restore4Life Wetland Reconstruction Accelerator that combines timely integrative wetland management with a novel level of societal engagement. The Accelerator will provide tested indicators, monitoring approaches and decision support to identify adapted and future-oriented restoration goals, techniques and holistic road maps. Citizens and stakeholders will be empowered to engage in the co-design of projects by establishing stakeholder communities of practice, by twinning of similar projects at different realization stage, citizen science, thematic mobile apps and the use of multiple communication channels with special focus on visual, hands-on interactive information flow that promotes emotional links to water shaped environment. The various tools generated by Restore4Life also including handbooks for business audiences and targeted restoration roadmaps will secure the efficient replication of restoration activities in associated regions. In collaboration with similar mission activities, Restore4Life thus efficiently supports integrative social and economic transitions

CERES advances a cause-and-effect understanding of how future climate change will influence Europe’s most important fish and shellfish populations, their habitats, and the economic activities dependent on these species. CERES will involve and closely cooperate with industry and policy stakeholders to define policy, environment, social, technological, law and environmental climate change scenarios to be tested. This four-year project will: 1. Provide regionally relevant short-, medium- and long-term future, high resolution projections of key environmental variables for European marine and freshwater ecosystems; 2. Integrate the resulting knowledge on changes in productivity, biology and ecology of wild and cultured animals (including key indirect / food web interactions), and ‘scale up’ to consequences for shellfish and fish populations, assemblages as well as their ecosystems and economic sectors; 3. Utilize innovative risk-assessment methodologies that encompass drivers of change, threats to fishery and aquaculture resources, expert knowledge, barriers to adaptation and likely consequences if mitigation measures are not put in place; 4. Anticipate responses and assist in the adaptation of aquatic food production industries to underlying biophysical changes, including developing new operating procedures, early warning methods, infrastructures, location choice, and markets; 5. Create short-, medium- and long-term projections tools for the industry fisheries as well as policy makers to more effectively promote blue growth of aquaculture and fisheries in different regions; 6. Consider market-level responses to changes (both positive and negative) in commodity availability as a result of climate change; 7. Formulate viable autonomous adaptation strategies within the industries and for policy to circumvent/prevent perceived risks or to access future opportunities; 8. Effectively communicate these findings and tools to potential end-users and relevant stakeholders.