Historic buildings represents a considerable share of the European building stock (around 25%). They contribute to the identity and uniqueness of many cities and will only survive if they are maintained as a living space. To preserve a living built heritage, it is necessary to find energy renovation approaches and solutions compatible with conservation rules. This means that the historical and aesthetic value of these properties must be preserved while increasing the comfort of these living spaces, and minimizing their energy consumption and their environmental impact. The project aims to establish new knowledge for the development of sustainable and efficient solutions for historic buildings in order to bring cultural heritage to life and make it open, accessible, inclusive, resilient and low-emission. It is part of the pursuit of various projects involving members of the CALECHE network concerning, for example, bio-sourced renovation or "custom" PV integration. The studied solutions will cover all stages of operation (prevention, monitoring, maintenance) and renovation (setting up the operation, design, works).

BENEFIT takes an innovative approach by analysing funding schemes within an inter-related system. Funding schemes are successful (or not) depending on the Business Model that generates them. The performance of the Business Model is affected by the implementation context and the transport mode. It is matched successfully (or not) by a financing scheme. Relations between actors are described by a governance model (contracting arrangements). These are key elements in Transport Infrastructure Provision, Operation and Maintenance. Success is a measure of the appropriate matching of elements. Within BENEFIT funding and financing schemes are analysed in this respect. Describing these key elements through their characteristics and attributes and clustering each of them is the basis of, first, developing a generic framework. This allows for the transferability of findings with respect to “lessons learned”, “limitations” and “the impact of the financial and economic crisis”. Identifying best matches in their inter-relations and where to intervene, leads to move from a generic framework to a powerful decision policy tool, which can assess funding schemes for investments in modern infrastructure with smart pricing and funding in view of 2050 challenges and needs. The BENEFIT partnership takes stock of over twenty years of EC funded, national and international research. It receives direct input (evidence study cases) from the OMEGA Centre and COST Action TU1001. It is set-up to share and exchange knowledge and debate. Its high level international advisory group and its consultation group demonstrate its ability to reach out to all stakeholders to share its innovative approach. Namely: 1)Transport infrastructure business models and their project rating by which further value propositions may be included to lead to funding schemes with enhanced creditworthiness enabling viable financing 2)Transferability 3)Open-access case study database serving both practitioners and researchers

What is the Origin of Everything? The Standard Model of Particle Physics explains everything except for the parts that it does not cover. This limitation calls for a science mission to gain a deeper understanding of matter, energy and the fundamental laws of nature. The first step is to elucidate the mysteries that revolve around the Higgs boson. Is it point like? Does it interact with itself? The best way to answer these such questions is to create a clean experimental environment with a highest luminosity particle collider. The Future Circular Collider Innovation Study (FCCIS) will deliver a conceptual design and an implementation plan for a new research infrastructure, consisting of a 100 km long, circular tunnel and a dozen surface sites. It will initially host an electron-positron particle collider. With an energy frontier hadron collider as a second step, it can serve a world-wide community through the end of the 21st century. This project will validate the key performance enablers at particle accelerators. Extreme luminosities, a factory producing a million Higgs bosons, luminosities up to 100 times the present world record with parts-per-million energy precision will strengthen Europe’s leadership in excellent science for many decades. This project will attract academic and industrial leaders to develop a feasible and affordable project that incorporates ecodesign and resource efficiency from an early stage onwards. The project includes work with the host states France and Switzerland to ensure that the infrastructure blends in with the territorial boundary conditions. A socio-economic impact analysis will reveal the added value that this infrastructure will generate during its first phase and serve as the basis for developing a funding and implementation plan. This project emphasizes the user capacity building process with theoretical and experimental physicists at an international scale to ensure an exploitation of the facility from the start.