Planet Earth faces unprecedented environmental changes that will affect all members of society. Arctic climate warming is more than twice the global rate and unpredictable extreme events cause major impacts on ecosystems and people. However, the Arctic atmospheric circulation causes extreme events and societal damage beyond the Arctic which need international research and monitoring to understand and predict. Furthermore, attitudes need to be changed throughout the world through outreach while the next generation needs to be equipped to live in a different world. INTERACT III innovates a pan-arctic network of 86 research stations in 16 northern countries to provide a fully integrated, advanced infrastructure now able to meaningfully address major societal challenges and provide services for 155 global and regional networks. Furthermore, the global reputation of INTERACT has attracted world-leading partners and enterprises to participate in reducing the impacts of hazardous change while maximizing the opportunities arising from new technologies. Specifically, INTERACT III provides comprehensive coordination of 64 partners and 86 research stations. The station managers design best practices to ensure excellent research, monitoring, education and outreach. INTERACT III builds on an extremely successful transnational access program that has already populated the Arctic with 900 researchers to further provide excellent science while reducing the environmental footprints of researchers through improving remote and virtual access. The access transnationality ensures new collaborations, innovative science and science diplomacy at a time of heightened geopolitical tensions. Station managers, transnational access and joint research activities cooperate to address major societal challenges in a fully integrated infrastructure while their data and understanding are made globally available through exceptional outreach and education and policy briefings to decision makers.

IMAJINE aims to formulate new integrative policy mechanisms to enable European, national and regional government agencies to more effectively address territorial inequalities within the European Union. It responds to evidence that spatial inequalities within the EU are increasing, contrary to the principle of territorial cohesion embedded as a third dimension of the European Social Model in the Treaty of Lisbon, and is particularly timely in examining the geographically differentiated impacts of the post-2008 economic crisis and the adoption of austerity policies. IMAJINE uniquely proposes to address the problem of territorial inequalities through an inter-disciplinary and multi-scalar approach that integrates perspectives from economics, human geography, political science and sociology and combines macro-scale econometric analysis and the generation and analysis of new quantitative survey data with regionally-focused qualitative empirical case study research in 11 EU member states; delivered by a multi-disciplinary and multi-national consortium. As such the research builds on the conceptual and methodological state of the art in several disciplines and advances conceptual understanding and the empirical knowledge base by producing new primary data, applying new analytical tests to secondary data and integrating the results along with insights from relational geographical theory and the concept of spatial justice. In particular, the centrality of spatial justice emphasizes the political as well as economic dimensions of territorial inequalities, and IMAJINE will move beyond existing knowledge by considering relationships between measured and perceived inequalities, models of multi-level policy-making and public service delivery, and support for territorial autonomy movements. IMAJINE will further translate these scientific insights into policy applications through participatory scenario building exercises with governance and civil society stakeholders.

The aim of the “Sustainable Spatial Planning of Tourism Destinations (SPOT)” project is to develop an innovative teaching method of sustainable tourism planning in a master programme and implement the method at five educational organisations involved in the project by the end of the project. This goal is influenced by the wider context of development of the European idea of innovative, sustainable, and inclusive tourism planning. Thus, the following specific objectives should be defined:- Understanding main trends and challenges of tourism in Europe; this objective will result in a comparison of different contexts of tourism development in Europe (literature studies);- Facing the challenges of tourism planning through learning by doing on the spot; as the result of this objective solutions for problems and challenges of tourism planning diagnosed in particular locations will be delivered (study visits);- Disseminating results of joint initiatives for development of tourism planning and its teaching methods; this objective will result in the scientific, application, and educational contributions to tourism planning development (seminars and conferences);- Exchange of European best practices in the field of tourism planning; as the result of this objective a scientific publication (European handbook of tourism planning) and educational manual (Manual for the course on sustainable spatial planning of tourism destinations) will be prepared; both outputs will be included in the educational package offered to teachers and students participating in the sustainable tourism planning course; the handbook will disseminate teaching content, while the manual will describe innovative teaching method developed during the SPOT project.The SPOT project will be implemented by the consortium of educational and scientific institutions co-operating on a regular basis, representing various research, educational, cultural and geographical contexts. The final selection of project partners resulted from the interdisciplinary nature of education and research in the field of tourism planning and the diversity of tourist planning challenges and problems diagnosed in different locations. Tourism geography and spatial economy are the educational and research fields of the leading project institution – University of Lodz. Tourism economics and tourism management are the fields of contribution of Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences. Mersin University's input to the project is associated with tourism sciences and city planning. Tourism sciences is also the main axis of the contribution from the Polytechnic of Leiria. Architecture, territorial, urban and environmental planning, historic cities, and heritage management are the main scientific and educational interests of Politecnico di Torino. Finally, research projects carried out by Institute of Geography and Spatial Organisation of the Polish Academy of Science are focused on geography and spatial economy. Moreover, various geographical contexts represented by project partners refer to different ways of social and economic development, and different cultures: Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, and Turkish.The SPOT project will influence the following target groups and stakeholders in both long- and short-term perspectives: (1) tourism planning students, (2) academic teachers, (3) higher education institutions, and (4) tourism planning institutions. It is expected that European awareness of innovative, sustainable, and inclusive tourism planning will increase in long-term perspective. The ambition of the project consortium is to introduce the course and method concerning tourism planning as a significant part of this increase. Future tourism planners completing this course will use the project's outputs to implement their knowledge, skills, and competencies on innovative, sustainable, and inclusive tourism planning into planning practice. Thus, institutions of tourism planning and, indirectly, stakeholders of tourism development, will be influenced by this project's outputs in long-term perspective. During the project students’ competences, skills, and knowledge in the field of tourism planning are expected to increase. However, the implementation of an innovative method of sustainable tourism planning designed in the project is a promise of all partner institutions representing higher education sector. Moreover, dissemination of project outputs should make other higher education institutions attracted by the method mentioned above, as an increase in the attractiveness of the higher education curriculum in the field of tourism planning from the perspective of both students and employers is expected.

The overarching objective of RUSTIK is to enable rural communities’ actors and policy makers to design better strategies, initiatives and policies fostering sustainability transitions of rural areas, through an advanced understanding of different rural functionalities, characteristics and future scenarios of rural areas, their potentials and challenges. Central specific objectives are to provide (1) a robust methodological framework for functional rural areas, (2) databases integrating data of different types and sources, (3), improved strategies and governance approaches for rural decision makers and stakeholders, and (4) improved approaches for rural impact assessment and decentralised rural proofing. RUSTIK aims to substantially contribute to enhancing existing European policy tools and approaches, most of all to support the European Green Deal, the European Digital Strategy, the European pillar of Social Rights and the EU Long-Term Vision for Rural Areas of the European Union. RUSTIK addresses the topic by illuminating three key transitions in rural areas, i.e. (1) socio-economic, (2) climate change and environmental, and (3) digital. Five types of rural functions are RUSTIK’s starting point for characterising the diversity of rural areas and their capacity to respond to these transitions. In order to achieve its overarching and specific objectives, RUSTIK will (1) create a conceptual basis for functional rural areas, transition and resilience of rural areas building on previous research, (2) co-design data collection approaches, and (3) investigate policy frameworks and coordination mechanisms. Closely interrelated with all of these activities, Living Labs in 14 European Pilot Regions in 10 European countries will be the central element of an action-oriented multi-actor approach to researching rural diversity and societal transformations.

A shift towards a more circular economy is crucial to achieve more sustainable and inclusive growth. Our objective is to provide local and regional authorities with an innovative transdisciplinary open source geodesign decision support environment (GDSE) developed and implemented in living labs in six metropolitan areas. The GDSE allows creating integrated, place-based eco-innovative spatial development strategies aiming at a quantitative reduction of waste flows in the strategic interface of peri-urban areas. These strategies will promote the use of waste as a resource, thus support the on-going initiatives of the EC towards establishing a strong circular economy. The identification of such eco-innovative strategies will be based on the integration of life cycle thinking and geodesign to operationalise urban metabolism. Our approach differs from previous UM as we introduce a reversed material flow accounting to collect data accurate and detailed enough for the design of a variety of solutions to place-based challenges. The developed impact and decision models allow quantification and validation of alternative solution paths and therefore promote sustainable urban development built on near-field synergies between the built and natural environments. This will be achieved by quantifying and tracking essential resource flows, mapping and quantification of negative and positive effects of present and future resource flows, and the determination of a set of indicators to inform decision makers concerning the optimization of (re-)use of resources. The GDSE will be open source. With a budget of €5 million, REPAiR funds a consortium rich in experience in waste and resource management, spatial decision support, territorial governance, spatial planning and urban design, and has deep knowledge of the 6 case study areas. REPAiR is supported by a user board, of key stakeholders for the development of CE as well as local authorities, who are heavily involved in the GDSE testing.