The turnover of mining and quarrying in Europe reaches up to 224 billion Euros and has generated EUR 64.9 billion of value added, 1% of the non-financial business economy total. The rise of key enabling technologies and the urbanisation and industrialisation of emerging economies in combination with increase in population and living standards will continue to drive growing demand for raw materials. The need to extract raw materials in a profitable, environmentally sound, and safe way for both mining workforce and communities is driving the mining industry towards innovative approaches to transform operations. Even though Industry 4.0 offers a wide spectrum of solutions, and intelligent technologies to address respective challenges, the mining industry hesitates to adopt such innovative approaches when compared to downstream industries. In addition, the need for a human-centred, environmentally oriented and society-driven approach is emerging in developing Industrial Internet of Things technologies for mining. Dig_IT will address the needs of the mining industry to move forward towards a sustainable use of resources while keeping people and environment at the forefront of their priorities. In order to achieve that Dig_IT proposes the development of a smart Industrial Internet of Things platform (IIoTp) that will improve the efficiency and sustainability of mining operations by connecting cyber and physical systems. The platform will collect data from sensors at 3 levels: (i) human, (ii) assets, (iii) environment and will also incorporate both market real time and historical data. The impact of Dig_IT to the European Mining industry, but also the society itself, can be summarised in the following (with a horizon of 4 years after project ends): (i) increase of the mining efficiency by 17%, (ii) increased OEE for machines and loading by 20% and 18% respectively, (iii) 19% reduction of CO2eq, (iv) about 310 new jobs created and (v) over 28M EUR ROI for the consortium.

Nature uses foam or sponge-like structures in various organisms for purposes like shock absorption, noise reduction, and vibration compensation in a remarkable example of evolutionary adaptation and functional design. On the other hand, many products still rely on non-sustainable materials of fossil-based origin, for example foams and elastomeric used for vibratory motion, sound, harshness, energy, and shock-impact absorption in industries such as automotive, aerospace and marine. Example of such Noise Vibration and Harshness (NVH) materials are rubber and engineering resins. Bio.3DGREEN develops and demonstrates a novel manufacturing approach for a cost-effective bio-inspired platform of bio-based components based on graphene foam (GF) to meet the industrial needs, i.e. vibration, sound and shock-impact absorption and durability in extreme conditions. Bio.3DGREEN democratizes graphene technology and enables the unscalable fabrication of graphene-based components of complex geometries to be demonstrated at TRL 6 through a high throughput, laser-based Additive Manufacturing (AM) procedure. The procedure is bio-inspired, mimicking structures such as the human bone, and is based solely on bio-based graphene system with vegetable oil as the raw material, resulting in carbon-positive manufacturing of the new components. Bio.3DGREEN demonstrates the superior bio-based GF parts in four different industries, aiming to drive the optimization of the new manufacturing approach through an application-driven approach: Automotive suspension systems & isolation panels, aerospace applications and quiet shipping. Bio.3DGREEN achieves a multi-disciplinary approach to develop, optimize, and improve smart manufacturing application-driven, bio-based GF components, also considering the performance of current materials used, their cost, market size, wastage and recyclability, sustainability of manufacturing process, inclusion in Europe’s circular economy and LCA, LCC aspects.

TwinAIR aims to improve urban life by tackling the challenge of indoor air quality (IAQ) improvement by understating its complex interrelationship with external factors. This is achieved by introducing a novel set of tools for identifying sources and tracing a variety of pollutants and pathogens, for enhancing understanding of their effects and assessing their impact on health, for controlling building management systems and services in ways that mitigate part of the impacts and for helping citizens to develop better insights into pollution impacts, along with encouraging healthier, more sustainable choices. TwinAIR embraces bleeding edge innovation in urban sensing (chemical and environmental sensors), data analytics and visualisation (digital maps and real-time video analysis), smart buildings (digital twins and virtual sensors) and behavioural insights (citizen participation, gamification) to deliver a nascent solution. It is implemented across six diverse pilot sites in Europe (ES, IE, UK, SE, DE, EL) with demonstrations covering residential dwellings, public administration buildings, hospitals and schools, along with selected types of vehicles (buses, vans). TwinAIR?s toolsets will empower students and their parents, commuters, workers and residents to make more health-aware personal decisions about their everyday mobility options and use of indoor spaces, through access to insightful analytics and engaging visualisations of their data, as well as by their participation in educational events and activities. At the same time, it will provide rich evidence to transport planners, facility managers and policymakers about factors influencing IAQ and effective interventions for mitigating its effects on health and wellbeing. By democratising cutting edge innovation in sensors, digital twinning and visual analytics, TwinAIR will enable better decision-making about future mobility policies, built environment management and incentivisation of citizens. Project TwinAIR is part of the European cluster on indoor air quality and health.

As it is addressed by the European Plastics Strategy (European Green Deal & Circular Economy Action Plan 2.0), new methods to reliably calculate, verify and report the recycled content in products need to be developed, boosting the increase of recycled content in everyday products against the use of virgin materials. However, measuring the recycled content is complex, requiring product tracing to the production source. PRecycling aims to develop an easy-to-use methodology for sorting, sampling, tracing and recycling plastic waste streams, including detection and separation of legacy additives, along with standard analysis procedures for both plastic waste materials and recyclates (secondary raw materials) in order to produce consistently high quality, safe-to-use recyclates based on their degradation degree and added-value products with predicted lifetime. Smart tracing via digital systems will be developed in parallel, to ensure the quality and safety of reused materials, targeting a sustainable, transparent and functional Circular Economy Model for the recycling market. The environmental and financial viability of PRecycling solutions will be assessed throughout life cycle and cost analysis in order to reach competitive prices of recycled products. The above will be demonstrated, producing (I) home appliances components, (II) toys/learning resources, and (III) 100% recycled textile, starting from the same sector recyclates and different European regions. However, the proposed methodology in PRecycling could be adapted by many other sectors, i.e. packaging, vehicles, and electric/electronic equipment, triggering significant societal impact apart from commercial and industrial interest. Demonstration activities will serve as part of a community awareness initiative, showing that 'from waste to product' transformation is scalable, replicable, traceable, commercially viable and most importantly, safe to use, both within the same and new supply chain products.

A dramatic rise in the implementation of renewable energy sources is needed if we want to meet European climate protection targets. Photovoltaic (PV) costs have decreased spectacularly over time, turning photovoltaics into one of the most competitive sources of electricity in the EU. An economically feasible and space-saving approach to increase the capacity of renewable energy sources is to integrate PV systems into structures that already exist or to build new structures that originally integrate a PV function. Building-integrated and infrastructure-integrated PV are technologically proven solutions. Due to its multifunctionality, building-integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) installations can achieve a better economic and ecological balance over their lifetime than conventional building elements. New technologies for PV cells, electrical connections, and front and back covers allow a free choice of formats and colours for integrated PV modules. Likewise, infrastructure-integrated PV offers a large potential for PV integration, due to the unique advantages of somewhat standardized constructions, little emphasis on aesthetics and a small number of builders and owners compared to the building sector. However, integrated PV (IPV) is still a niche market. Several barriers are still preventing the massive integration of PV into buildings and infrastructure. The project MASS-IPV has been conceived as a multidisciplinary action that connects key players along the PV and construction value chains. The goal of the project is to demonstrate that suitable tools, technologies, and methods, combined with a collaboration framework among key stakeholders, can overcome the barriers preventing the mass deployment of IPV and deliver multifunctional and cost-effective IPV systems for buildings and infrastructure. Six different built objects will be used to demonstrate the technology, representing different construction typologies in five different locations in Europe.