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Results

EGNSS – Closing the gaps in mature, regulated and long lead markets

Grant
HORIZON-EUSPA-2023-SPACE-01-42
Digital, Industry and Space
€8 Million
Innovation Action
01/10/2023
01/02/2024

Standardization and certification for the use of GNSS in regulated markets is a costly and time-consuming process. The topic aims to gaps in mature, regulated and long lead markets and deliver concrete pathways to standardization and certification towards broader EGNSS adoption.

Scope:

-Closing the related standardization and certification gaps for rail safety critical applications that support the rail network efficiency and cost reduction, converging towards a pan-European EGNSS-based solution adoption, within the European Rail Traffic Management System (ERTMS) evolution or adoption within railway lines that do not require a full interoperability with ERTMS.
-EGNSS-supported safe and efficient operations in coastal areas, maritime (including for energy production e.g. off-shore wind farms), inland waterways, fisheries and aquaculture
-Addressing potential standardization and certification bottlenecks for the use of EGNSS for road and automotive market safety-related applications in scenarios of potential harm to humans or damage to a system/environment
-Applications for the aviation market that require further consolidation include aircraft operations and planning for more efficient and green operations supported by EGNSS and its differentiators

Topics:

-Broaden the reach of EGNSS, by supporting its adoption in mature, regulated long lead markets, including rail, maritime inland waterways, fisheries and aquaculture, road and automotive, aviation
-Development of industry-accepted certification and standardization schemes that exploit the use of EGNSS and its differentiators for operational services.

HORIZON-EUSPA-2023-SPACE-01-61
Civil Security for Society
€10 Million
Pre-Commercial Procurement
01/10/2023
01/02/2024

The projects shall aim at identifying and address technological challenges related to the provision of GOVSATCOM services and increasing awareness on the benefits brought by the use of secure services provided by GOVSATCOM and will engage the users, public authorities and policy makers to the maximum extent.

Scope:

-Surveillance, including both land and sea scenarios
-Crisis management, such as telemedicine, humanitarian aid, civil protection, law enforcement, EU external action, maritime emergency, search and rescue
-Key infrastructure, such as transport (Air, Rail, Road, Maritime) management, space infrastructure, institutional communication, critical infrastructure (energy grid, CBRN, financial infrastructure, telecommunication/ICT)
-Response to natural and man-made disasters
-Rail traffic management to improve on limitations linked to geographical barriers
-Telemedicine for humanitarian aid

Topics:

-Identify, assess, and develop one or more suitable use case in the area of surveillance, crisis management, and key infrastructure
-Stimulate the definition of the validation strategy of the early developed GOVSATCOM services
-Develop the application, necessary to enable end-to-end demonstration of the selected use case(s) using services provided by the EU GOVSATCOM Hub

HORIZON-CL6-2024-CLIMATE-01-7
Digital, Industry and Space
€5 Million
Research & Innovation Action
17/10/2023
22/02/2024

The EU and China face similar challenges as a result of climate change where it comes to biodiversity related aspects, land use and land condition (including disasters risks). Similar challenges could benefit from similar actions and defining best practices in improving land monitoring in order to design better approaches integrating climate change adaptation, climate change mitigation and biodiversity. Reaching climate neutrality will require deep GHG emissions reductions as well as enhancing carbon removals by sinks.

The successful proposal should contribute to a strengthened cooperation between the EU and China, also in the context of a better cooperation between the regional European initiative under the Group on Earth Observations (EuroGEO) and the regional Asia Oceanian initiative under the Group on Earth Observations (AOGEO), building on the nationwide climate and biodiversity monitoring programmes in China and the EU associated to agriculture and land activities as well as the European Green Deal objectives.

– Improved land monitoring for climate and biodiversity actions with the use of environmental and Earth observation data and information

– Geographically-explicit monitoring of greenhouse gas emissions and carbon removals on land

– Better assessment of the impact of climate change on biodiversity and the land condition

– Identification, mapping and monitoring methodologies of climate and biodiversity synergies and trade-offs on land management and land-use in particular agriculture

– Development and exchange of best practices in land monitoring for better integrated climate and biodiversity approaches between the China and the EU for use in the EU and China

HORIZON-MISS-2023-OCEAN-01-01
Digital, Industry and Space
€8.5 Million
Innovation Action
17/01/2023
19/09/2023

The proposed innovation actions for the Blue Parks will seek the most effective and efficient protection and restoration measures, tailored to the specific biogeographical area or marine region. Activities leading to the creation of protected areas should concentrate on areas of high biodiversity value or potential321 and be consistent with the EU Guidance to Member States on the designation of additional protected or strictly protected areas

-Address the degradation of coastal and marine habitats, including degraded seabed habitats and will develop and demonstrate protection and restoration solutions to upgrade and enhance the EU’s blue natural capital
-Identify the connection between marine ecosystems, including seabed habitats and their biodiversity

-Reinforced ecosystem services from restored and protected marine areas
-Seabed protection and restoration solutions, including to preserve seabed carbon sequestration capacity
-Socio-economic transition processes through innovative solutions for ecosystem-based management of marine protected areas -Enhanced resilience of coastal and marine ecosystems
-A blue print for the identification of ecological corridors as part of a blue Trans-European Nature Network, and a strategy to build such a network

HORIZON-MISS-2023-OCEAN-01-04
Digital, Industry and Space
€15 Million
Innovation Action
17/01/2023
19/09/2023

Natural lakes are understood for the purposes of this Work Programme as natural inland bodies of standing surface freshwater or brackish water. There are more than 500 000 natural lakes larger than 1ha in Europe. There were over 2 800 lakes in the EU with bad or poor ecological status and over 8 000 lakes with moderate ecological status in 2018. The main pressures affecting the ecological status of European lakes are hydro-morphological pressures, pollution, in particular from chemicals and nutrient enrichment, water abstraction and climate change impacts

-Design and demonstrate integrated and replicable approaches to protect and restore natural lake ecosystems and their biodiversity that result in a significantly improved ecological and chemical status and maintain it in the long-term
-Demonstrate activities that combine measures and solutions to reduce pressures and stressors, to restore and protect the lake ecosystem and its biodiversity, in particular using effective nature-based solutions in the lakes, along shorelines and across their catchments to reduce use of chemicals and retain nutrients

-Enhance the implementation of the European Green Deal, the EU Biodiversity Strategy, the EU Zero Pollution Action Plan and the Water Framework Directive as well as other EU instruments and policies that concern freshwater ecosystems
-Improve ecological and chemical status of European natural lakes
-Demonstrate integrated and replicable approaches to protection and restoration of natural lake ecosystems, their biodiversity and healthy functioning, integrating all aspects of good ecological and chemical status of lakes under the Water Framework Directive
-Demonstrate effective and replicable nature based solutions for restoration and protection of European lakes

HORIZON-WIDERA-2023-ACCESS-07-01
Digital, Industry and Space
€60 Million
Coordination and Support Action
28/09/2023
07/03/2024

This action responds to the third priority in the ERA communication on translating R&I results into the economy and will especially support R&I policies aiming at boosting the resilience and competitiveness of our economies and societies. This means ensuring European competitive leadership in the global race for technology based on excellence while improving the environment for business R&I investment, deployment of new technologies and enhancing the take up and visibility of research results in the economy and society as a whole

Scope:

-Focus on Innovation through better linkages from innovation ecosystems in Widening countries and beyond, in the fields of academia, business, government, and society
-Demonstrate the win-win effects of the partnership established by the consortium and the benefits for employment and post crisis recovery
-Addressing regions as relevant R&I actors where innovation and industrial ecosystems breathe and develop
-Development of a cross-border joint R&I strategy that is aligned with regional smart specialization strategies

Topics:

-Facilitation of sustainable place-based R&I ecosystems in Widening countries and beyond in relevant domains, as well as long term joint R&I strategies characterized by strong relation to European action plans
-Strengthened linkages between science and business
-Improved knowledge transfer and development of entrepreneurial skills -Establishment of new business opportunities especially for SMEs, university spin-offs and start-ups, especially in deep tech

HORIZON-CL4-2024-HUMAN-01-06
Digital, Industry and Space
€30 Million
Research & Innovation Action
15/11/2023
19/03/2024

“Trustworthy AI solutions, need to be robust, safe and reliable when operating in real-world conditions, and need to be able to provide adequate, meaningful and complete explanations when relevant, or insights into causality, account for concerns about fairness, be robust when dealing with such issues in real world conditions, while aligned with rights and obligations around the use of AI systems in Europe.To achieve robust and reliable AI, novel approaches are needed to develop methods and solutions that work under other than model-ideal circumstances, while also having an awareness when these conditions break down. To achieve trustworthiness, AI systems should be sufficiently transparent and capable of explaining how the system has reached a conclusion in a way that is meaningful to the user, while also indicating when the limits of operation have been reached.

-Advance AI-algorithms that can perform safely under a common variety of circumstances reliably in real-world conditions and predict when these operational circumstances are no longer valid
-Advance robustness and explainability for a generality of solutions, while leading to an acceptable loss in accuracy and efficiency, and with known verifiability and reproducibility
-Extend general applicability of explainability and robustness of AI-systems by foundational AI and machine learning research

-Enhanced robustness, performance and reliability of AI systems, including awareness of the limits of operational robustness of the system
-Improved explainability and accountability, transparency and autonomy of AI systems, including awareness of the working conditions of the system”

EDF-2023-DA-CYBER-CSA
Digital, Industry and Space
€20 Million
Development Action
15/06/2023
22/11/2023

The threat of misuse of Artificial Intelligence (AI)-technology, which makes broad-scale attacks a lot easier, poses a serious threat to EU Member States. While the threat of mass cyber-attacks has become a reality since the Russian unprovoked aggression against Ukraine, the use of AI technology to manage mass cyber-attacks has drastically increased. There is an urgent need to develop new EU solutions in order to combat increasing threats in this field, while ensuring resilience, cybersecurity and enhance cyber operations capabilities.

Scope:

-Promote defence measures against AI-based cyber-attacks by developing autonomous depoyable AI agents

-Support human operators, analysts and decision-makers at all levels (technical, tactical, operational, strategic and political level)

Topics:

-Conduct automated and semi-automated incident management on different cyber defence systems for the entire process of the incident management cycle

-Contribute to enhanced cyber situational awareness, increased military infrastructure resilience and improved protection against AI-based and other advanced cyber threats

HORIZON-CL4-2024-DATA-01-01
Digital, Industry and Space
€38 Million
Innovation Action
15/11/2023
19/03/2024

“Developing, piloting and integrating systems, compliance tools and data economy enablers that process the increasing data volumes more efficiently, distill more useful knowledge from data, and contribute to the measurement, labeling, certification and reduction of the environmental footprint of massive data operations (e.g. by minimizing data transfers/traffic, improving energy reuse and/or reducing energy consumption of AI training/machine learning, privacy preservation and other processes). The aim is to provide Common European data spaces and AI data provision with reliable mechanisms to monitor, control and track/record transactions on data, to ensure compliance.

-Associate appropriate technologies and methods such as federated and distributed AI/analytics, with trustworthy AI techniques
-Protect privacy and confidentiality of AI training data as well as energy footprint reduction for these activities

-Enable companies and public sector to easily comply with existing and emerging regulations and create value on data assets that they possess or that they acquire from the market
-Improve citizen confidence in data-driven systems that treat them in a fair, unbiased and compliant way that respects their privacy and other rights
-Define, quantify and measure bias in data sets
-Shorten the time-to-market and reduce development costs of compliant data solutions
-Contribute to open, trusted, and federated Common European data spaces”

HORIZON-WIDERA-2023-ACCESS-06-01
Civil Security for Society
€40 Million
Research & Innovation Action
10/01/2023
28/09/2023

The Hop On Facility allows for legal entities from low R&I performing countries to join already selected collaborative R&I actions, subject to the agreement of the respective consortium and provided that legal entities from such countries are not yet participating in it. The scheme aims to improve the inclusiveness of Horizon Europe by involving more research institutions from Widening countries under Horizon Europe Pillar 2 and EIC Pathfinder actions

Scope:

-Integration of additional participants from a Widening country to an ongoing project under either Pillar 2 or EIC pathfinder scheme
-Demonstration of the added R&I value of the new partner and presentation of a visible and distinct work package for the acceding partner

Topics:

-At system level, it mobilises excellence in the Widening countries, increases visibility of the participants from the Widening countries, improves knowledge circulation, and reduces lack of participation of the Widening countries in specific thematic domains
-At organisation level, it opens up silos of established closed consortia, improves research excellence of the Widening country’s institutions in specific fields, enlarges outreach of the participants’ R&I actions and provides access to new talent pools
-At the level of the beneficiary, new competencies and skills for working in transnational projects including research management and dissemination and exploitation are acquired.

Upcoming Calls

HORIZON-EUSPA-2023-SPACE-01-42
Digital, Industry and Space
€8 Million
Innovation Action
01/10/2023
01/02/2024
HORIZON-CL6-2024-CLIMATE-01-7
Digital, Industry and Space
€5 Million
Research & Innovation Action
17/10/2023
22/02/2024
HORIZON-CL6-2024-BIODIV-01-5
Digital, Industry and Space
€4 Million
Research & Innovation Action
17/10/2023
22/02/2024

In line with the European Green Deal priorities, in particular with the EU biodiversity strategy 2030 and the 2030 Climate Pact, successful proposals will develop knowledge and tools to understand the role of transformative change for biodiversity policy making, address the indirect drivers of biodiversity loss, and initiate, accelerate and upscale biodiversity-relevant transformative changes in our society

– Operational knowledge and understanding of transformative change
– Improved and innovative governance tools and policy mixes that can effectively initiate, accelerate and upscale such biodiversity-relevant transformative changes in our society
– Help understanding the impacts of and the opportunities offered by digital transformation, use of data and sensors, emerging technologies such as AI and robotics and social innovation on biodiversity
– Proposals should look at key indirect drivers of biodiversity loss
– Proposals should generate knowledge on how to tackle biodiversity loss linked to technological and social innovation, which includes digitalisation
– Proposals should produce case studies on what transformative change means in practice and a collection of good and failed examples of developing and implementing policy tools, best practices and instruments, and on impacts of digitalisation
– Proposals should develop methodologies to assess the impacts of their proposed solutions on policy and its decision making
– This topic should involve contributions from the social sciences and humanities disciplines, as well as social innovation
– The proposals should build their analysis upon the synergies of multiple Sustainable Development Goals
– Proposals should include specific tasks and allocate sufficient resources to develop joint deliverables

– Foresight on society well-being based on realistic assumptions on careful use of natural capital and analysis of the consequences in terms of economic growth

– Evaluation of feasibility and limits of decoupling economic activities from natural capital use

– Knowledge and understanding of the transformative changes needed to address the indirect drivers of biodiversity loss

– Operational knowledge available to, and used by policy-makers, on indirect drivers of biodiversity loss that are underpinned by societal values and behaviours, and on the transformative changes that are necessary to tackle these indirect drivers
– Improved and new systemic, sustainable policy mixes and governance approaches

– Methods and tools promoting win-win solutions for biodiversity and socio-economic objectives

– Approaches to facilitate the application of such methods and tools are identified and used, while factoring in societal and political processes

– A better understanding of the impacts on, risks and opportunities for biodiversity of digital transformation

– Identification and assessment of how system-level change affecting biodiversity through social innovation happens

– Testing active intervention by R&I policy and sector policies

HORIZON-CL4-2024-DATA-01-01
Digital, Industry and Space
€38 Million
Innovation Action
15/11/2023
19/03/2024
HORIZON-CL4-2024-HUMAN-01-06
Digital, Industry and Space
€30 Million
Research & Innovation Action
15/11/2023
19/03/2024
HORIZON-CL4-2024-DATA-01-03
Digital, Industry and Space
€45 Million
Innovation Action
15/11/2023
19/03/2024

“The objective is the development of systems to become open platforms underpinning an emerging open edge ecosystem including midcaps, SMEs and start-ups that foster edge solutions, which represent a modular functional spectrum of executable apps and services critical to establishing a mature European supply chain under challenging and extremely competitive market conditions

Target up-take and up-scaling of emerging EU-driven smart industrial internet of things and edge computing systems to perform under real life conditions, as to mature particular technologies like meta-operating systems for the IoT and the Edge, cognitive cloud technologies and tools for decentralized intelligence and swarm computing for adoption across key applications and sectors crucial for Europe’s competitiveness and open strategic autonomy

-Implementation of edge paradigms in real environments leading to matured and customized IoT and next generation edge computing technologies for adoption in key applications and sectors
-Open platforms underpinning an emerging open edge ecosystem including midcaps, SMEs and start-ups that foster edge solutions, which represent a modular functional spectrum of executable apps and services critical to establishing a mature European supply chain under challenging and extremely competitive market conditions
-Demonstrating cross-domain standardisation and up-scaling of edge infrastructure solutions”

Closed Calls

HORIZON-MISS-2023-SOIL-01-04
Digital, Industry and Space
€5 Million
Innovation Action
17/01/2023
20/09/2023

In 2017, 25% of land in Southern, Central and Eastern Europe was estimated to be at high or very high risk of desertification. Risks are likely to increase as a consequence of accelerating climate change and continued pressures from land use, both in Europe and beyond. Desertification not only reduces agricultural productivity but also leads to loss of biodiversity, of organic carbon and of other land-based ecosystem services. Desertification further amplifies global warming through the release of CO2 linked with the decrease in vegetation cover. It has severe environmental, social and economic consequences.

-Synthesise evidence on and assess drivers for land degradation at a large scale using models, and land management action alternatives (scenarios) to alleviate those pressures
-Demonstrate and promote measures for reducing and reversing desertification, taking into account changing climatic conditions, diverse land use (also beyond agriculture) and different scales of actions
-Specifically for agriculture: Identify and demonstrate farming systems which are more resilient and are suitable for combatting desertification while sustaining ecosystem services
-Analyse incentives and obstacles for the widespread uptake of prevention and restoration measures

-The drivers and impacts (particularly socio-economic ones) of land degradation of natural and agricultural systems in arid areas (as well as areas becoming increasingly arid) are more effectively addressed
-Locally/regionally adapted, economically viable solutions for the prevention of soil desertification and for the restoration of degraded land (soil protection measures that help retain water and reduce water needs, improve management of soil organic matter, avoid salinisation and increase resilience to droughts) are applied in selected sites
-Access for land managers everywhere to such solutions and to information about the conditions under which they are effective is facilitated.

HORIZON-MISS-2023-SOIL-01-02
Digital, Industry and Space
€6 Million
Research & Innovation Action
17/01/2023
20/09/2023

The complexity of soil presents major challenges with regard to the modelling of soil processes. Past efforts have been limited to specific aspects such as individual ecosystem services rather than providing a holistic understanding of soil dynamics including physical, chemical, and biological processes and the interlinkages between ecosystem services. In addition, advances in modelling offers new opportunities to predict the delivery of ecosystem services.

-Improve existing and develop and test new soil models that allow for better and easier integration and reduced uncertainty of soil-related (physical, chemical and biological) processes
-Integrate soil processes modelling for ecosystem services quantification
-Ensure inter-operability between existing databases and integration into Destination Earth and the European Soil Observatory
-Develop specific user cases for soil modelling, e.g. large-scale soil erosion modelling, towards the integration of local sustainable soil management practices or catchment or field scale modelling of nutrient exports (surface-subsurface-groundwater components)

-Enhanced modelling capacity of soil-related processes under Destination Earth
-Enhanced access to comprehensive soil relevant knowledge and data for a wide range of stakeholders and more informed decision making processes related to soil management and policy through relevant data provided by digital modelling of soil processes
-Improved sustainable soil management practices based on an increased understanding of soil-related processes, their synergies and their interlinkages with ecosystem services
-Increased understanding of soil responses to practices under different land uses, climate extremes, dry and rewetting and land cover dynamic at various scales

HORIZON-MISS-2023-SOIL-01-01
Digital, Industry and Space
€12 Million
Research & Innovation Action
17/01/2023
20/09/2023

Subsoil refers to the horizons immediately below the topsoil. In the past, this layer has often been neglected as most land management practices (e.g. tillage, cover crops) are focused on the topsoil. The same goes for the availability of spatial datasets on soils at both national and EU-scale. However, the subsoil can have a large impact on a soil’s potential productivity and supply of ecosystem services. It is estimated for example that plants extract between 10 and 80% of their nutrient and water requirements from the subsoil. Also, subsoils play a key role in the carbon cycle: globally, subsoils store two times more soil organic carbon than the uppermost 30 cm.

-Identify drivers and pressures on the subsoil that impair a range of soil functions and ecosystem services as well as on subsoil degradation and identify indicators to assess changes in soil ecosystem functioning
-Develop tools and methods for risk assessment as regards subsoil degradation
-Identify existing as well as develop and test sustainable management practices to improve subsoil conditions (e.g. water retention, nutrient provision, habitat for soil biodiversity, carbon storage) and minimise soil disturbances
-Establish robust methods to spatially assess and monitor the state of subsoils and improve data collection. The long-term storage and access to subsoil data should be done in close collaboration with the European Soil Observatory (EUSO)

-Improved access to data and knowledge on the spatial variations in the chemical, physical and biological conditions and dynamics in subsoils for land managers and public authorities to support the development of sustainable management practices and financial and policy incentives
-Enhanced access and deployment of sustainable management practices to improve the protection, sustainable management and restoration of subsoil in agricultural and forest soils and to increase relevant soil-dependent ecosystem services such as the provision of food and fibre or the enhancement of soil biodiversity
-Improved understanding of the role of subsoil in climate change adaptation and mitigation, e.g. regarding carbon and water storage

HORIZON-MISS-2023-OCEAN-01-01
Digital, Industry and Space
€8.5 Million
Innovation Action
17/01/2023
19/09/2023
HORIZON-MISS-2023-OCEAN-01-02
Digital, Industry and Space
€8.5 Million
Innovation Action
17/01/2023
19/09/2023

In the Danube river basin area and the Danube river delta more than 70% of its wetlands, flood plains, coastal wetlands such as salt marshes have been lost and/or disconnected and the remaining wetlands are under pressure from human activities, such as discharges of sewage and waste water, drainage for agricultural use and pollution. Yet, wetlands are among the most productive ecosystems and they are important hotspots of biodiversity. They provide key ecosystem services, such as water retention and purification, serve as a buffer in case of floods and droughts, remove excess nutrients and reduce of eutrophication as well as contribute to the management of riverine sediments. They have also a potential as carbon sinks reducing the input of greenhouse gas emissions in the future

-Demonstration of active and passive restoration of wetlands, flood plains, coastal wetlands such as salt marshes including in the transitional waters of the Danube river delta at a large scale
-Monitoring of carbon sequestration capacity of the wetlands, coastal wetlands such as salt marshes covered by the projects and of the impacts of changes in the climate system on this capacity as well as assessment of the impact of different ecosystem management methods and human activities in these ecosystems on their carbon sequestration capacity

-Contribute to the European Green Deal, the EU Biodiversity Strategy, the EU Zero Pollution Action Plan and the Water Framework Directive as well as other EU instruments and policies that concern freshwater ecosystem protection
-Contribute to the implementation of the protection and restoration of wetlands, flood plains and coastal wetlands and salt marshes under the 1971 Ramsar Convention on Wetlands of International Importance
-Reverse the deterioration of the wetlands, flood plains, and salt marshes in the Danube river basin
-Improve protection of local communities and ecosystems from extreme events

HORIZON-MISS-2023-OCEAN-01-04
Digital, Industry and Space
€15 Million
Innovation Action
17/01/2023
19/09/2023