“Landscape means an area, as perceived by people, whose character is the result of the action and interaction of natural and/or human factors” (Art.1 of European Landscape Convention (ELC)). Landscape is both a physical reality and the representation that we make of it. It is the face of a land with all its natural and anthropological elements and, at the same time, the feelings and emotions that it arouses in us when we see it. The ELC (aka the Florence Convention, 20/10/2000 came into force on 1/3/2004, Council of Europe Treaty Series no. 176) indicates that assessment of different dimensions that exist in landscapes should be taken into account. ELC aims to encourage public authorities to adopt policies and measures at local, regional, national and international level for protecting, managing and planning landscapes throughout Europe. The Covid-19 crisis seems to have hit a pause to these policies and activities, but it is not the time to ignore such issues nor forget about the training of trainers, students and citizens required to achieve these objectives. With this situation in mind, GEOLAND focuses on NATURA 2000 sites. ParticularlyGEOLAND will:1. explore and develop educational procedures for the effective participation of Higher Education (HE) students in decision-making for landscape management, planning and protection of NATURA 2000 sites. 2. enable the uptake of novel ways to engage and empower HE students in environmental science and stimulate participatory decision-making. In particular, it will provide the opportunity to students, citizens & stakeholders being interested in the definition and implementation of landscape policies to play an active part in setting sustainability indicators of desirable landscape quality objectives (Landscape Quality Objectives/LQO). 3. attempt to identify and summarize the environmental/cultural stratification in the examined landscapes through a sophisticated Landscape Character Assessment (LCA). On the basis of this Assessment, the capabilities of geospatial technologies (Earth Observation and Geographic Information Systems) and web-based GIS applications will be exploited. 4. encourage/introduce innovative pedagogies (citizen science), technologies and state of the art approaches (LCA) to higher education studies in Europe, while addressing issues of teaching and learning about Landscape as a multidisciplinary subject area in universities. PARTICIPANTSPartnership of 7 partners from 5 countries: 1 Research center, 2 Higher Education Institutes, 3 Non -Governmental Organizations, 1 ICT small-medium Enterprise and 1 chamber of commerce.RESULTS- Promotion of latest digital innovative technologies for Landscape monitoring in Higher Education.- Support of ELC comprehension from students regarding the knowledge of the landscapes (identification, analysis, assessment) and the definition of Landscape Quality Objectives in higher education.- Progress towards a coordinated and targeted approach to the best use of geospatial technologies and relevant data and their fusion on a multidisciplinary level in educational landscape ecological services.- Support the participation of students in environmental monitoring and landscape management.- Synthesize and integrate readily communicable, to a wide audience, findings suitable for awareness raising and policy negotiations among students in Europe.- Highlight the role of training students in real-life interaction between them and available geoinformatic technologies to set up a successful format.The aforementioned results will be materialised through the generation of:1. Educational Handbook for monitoring European Landscape2. Training Course - Web based GIS platform3. Policy outreach activities4. Online gallery of student’s work5. Digital educational readiness assessment tool.LONG TERM BENEFITSBenefits expected from above results will be felt in many ways, especially in the pedagogical, environmental and digital skills fields. In particular, they can be defined as follows:- Min. 30% increase (in participating organizations) in the number of students who will be aware of the most important pieces of ΕLC.- Min. 30% (in participating organizations) increase in students' awareness of Natura 2000 sites and network, as well as their environmental and socio-economic value.- Min. 500 students handling the most updated geoinformatic technological applications, products and services derived from the project.- Min. 40% (in the participating organizations) increase in the amount of students participating in proposed processes for the monitoring, management and protection of NATURA 2000 landscapes.- Identification and recommendation of policies and measures from HE students and professors aiming at landscape management and protection of landscape.

Humanity has exceeded planetary boundaries as is evident by the ongoing climate crisis. The linear economic model of ‘produce-use-dispose' has a major role in this, having driven manufacturing to operate in open-loop and even disregard for the environment. The transition to circularity is an imperative goal, yet there is a very slow uptake of circular practices and business models. ENCIRCLE aspires to accelerate this transition through technologies and solutions that optimize manufacturing towards sustainability and incentivize companies and consumers to think and act circularly. ENCIRCLE proposes a novel framework for environmental impact assessment via Digital Twins and Soft Sensors, incorporated in a virtual production line. Utilizing this virtual environment as a simulation and training space for AI, ENCIRCLE will decarbonize manufacturing, searching for sustainable production configurations and designs that reduce environmental footprint without compromising quality. This virtual space will be used for workforce training through gamification, cultivating new skills and fostering a new circular mindset. ENCIRCLE will follow a human-centered design and propose a symbiotic ecosystem of humans and AI through explainable Human-in-the-Loop methodologies. Building on the Digital Product Passport concept and product traceability via IoT and blockchain, ENCIRCLE will support circular business cases through a Digital Marketplace. On the producer’s side, a circular CRM, will enable companies to track their products and offer personalized, circular products and services. On the consumer’s side, a mobile app will empower users with sustainable consumption choices, expanding the lifespan or salvaging the remaining value of old products. ENCIRCLE will also explore the legal and ethical implications of its research, validating its research outcomes and hypotheses, through a series of demonstrators across the entire value chain.

This proposal describes the third core project of the Graphene Flagship. It forms the fourth phase of the FET flagship and is characterized by a continued transition towards higher technology readiness levels, without jeopardizing our strong commitment to fundamental research. Compared to the second core project, this phase includes a substantial increase in the market-motivated technological spearhead projects, which account for about 30% of the overall budget. The broader fundamental and applied research themes are pursued by 15 work packages and supported by four work packages on innovation, industrialization, dissemination and management. The consortium that is involved in this project includes over 150 academic and industrial partners in over 20 European countries.

Europe has made significant progress in becoming a leader in large parts of the HPC ecosystem: from industrial and scientific application providers via system software to Exascale systems, bringing together technical and business stakeholders. Despite such gains, excellence in research in high performance computing systems is fragmented across Europe and opportunities for synergy missed. At this moment, there is fierce international competition to sustain long-term leadership in HPC technology and there remains much to do. Europe intends to increase the budget spent on HPC by 1 billion euros. In order to realize the full potential of this investment, it will have to engage all the stakeholders, industrial as well as academic. EUROLAB4HPC’s bold overall goal is to build connected and sustainable leadership in high-performance computing systems by bringing together the leading performance orientated communities in Europe, working across all layers of the system stack, fuelling new industries in HPC. EUROLAB4HPC’s overarching goal is to Strengthen academic research excellence and innovation in HPC in Europe. This will be realised by means of four short-term objectives: (i) Structuring the community – by adding members to develop a community of excellence that engages in focussed high-quality cross-stack activity; (ii) Promoting entrepreneurship - by building an innovation pipeline from general purpose entrepreneurial training, business prototyping, business plan development and helping with funding, (iii) Stimulating technology transfer - by connecting with other technology transfer activities and providing competitive seed funding for HPC technology transfer, and (iv) Disseminating community news – by investing substantial resources in dissemination activities, creating a stronger EUROLAB brand. This will raise the visibility of the community, attract more participants and eventually grows the interest and impact of Europe’s Exascale research.

Manufacturing, construction, and agriculture are major driving forces for the European economy and prosperity. Maintaining its competitiveness in these sectors demands highly efficient and flexible processes, and this can be achieved through digitization. Novel intelligent robotic capabilities that can be deployed side-by-side with humans and can operate and adapt to dynamic environments can accelerate this process. However, existing robotic systems cannot fit well into such settings as they are not versatile and flexible enough to automate certain tasks, cannot collaborate safely with humans in open and dynamic environments, nor are they easily and economically adaptable to process changes. The SOPRANO project coalesces multidisciplinary research and innovation in human-robot collaboration and intelligent multi-agent systems, aspiring to design the next generation of manufacturing floors, construction sites, and agri-food production, where humans and intelligent machines will seamlessly work together. It proposes to scale collaboration from the single human-agent dyad to a peer-based synergy between multiple interconnected robotic systems featuring different physical and cognitive properties, supporting various tasks in collaboration with human workers, robotics and other agents. SOPRANO will validate the technological offering in three novel and open-access use cases addressing both large-scale industries and small to medium enterprises, adding value to EU key sectors and instrumenting community building surrounding the open-source technologies in the EU industrial ecosystem. During the project, we will also enable external SMEs and start-ups to benefit from the project technologies via an open call, which will enable the building of demonstrators using SOPRANO technologies that will open new market opportunities for their products and services.