The overall objective of AquaVitae is to increase aquaculture production in and around the Atlantic Ocean in a sustainable way by developing new and emerging low trophic species and by optimising production in existing aquaculture value chains. The value chains that AquaVitae will focus on include macroalgae production, integrated multi-trophic aquaculture, and production of new echinoderm species as well as existing shellfish and finfish species. A series of cross-cutting Work Packages (WPs) will include research on biosensors, Internet of Things (IoT), product characteristics, consumer attitudes, market potential, sustainability, environmental monitoring, risk assessment, analysis of value chains, profitability, and other socioeconomic aspects. AquaVitae will contribute to various policy dialogues and produce briefs on policy and governance issues. The AquaVitae consortium consists of 36 full partners from Europe and countries bordering the Atlantic Ocean, in addition to an Industry Reference group, a Policy Advice Group, and an External Advisory Group. AquaVitae supports extensive communication and outreach activities, employs a multi-actor approach to ensure stakeholder engagement in all phases of the project, and will set up a durable aquaculture industry and research network around the Atlantic Ocean. Industry partners are present in all case studies, and they have a special responsibility for exploitation and commercialization of the project research results and outcomes. AquaVitae will have a lasting impact on society through the introduction of new species, and through the development of new processes and products based on a circular economy / zero waste approach with improved sustainability. AquaVitae will produce Good Practice standards, facilitate industry apprenticeship and student exchange, support extensive training programs for industry, academia, and the public, and contribute to the implementation of the EU-Brazil-South Africa Belém Statement.

Non-smooth dynamical systems arise in many applications, in particular to model mechanical systems subjected to impact or electrical systems with switches. The main goal of the subject is to develop a qualitative theory similar to the one existing for smooth systems. A natural approach to study such systems is the regularization, which produces a family of smooth dynamical systems converging to the initial system in some suitable topology. One of the delicate issues is to establish under which conditions the dynamics of this regularizing family allows to deduce information about the dynamics in the limit non-smooth case. In 2006, Buzzi, Teixeira and da Silva proposed a geometric framework to study such regularization through blowings-up. This framework naturally relates the regularizing families mentioned above to singular perturbation systems defined on manifolds with corners; thus establishing a strong bridge between these two subjects. There is now a large literature on this subject, but mainly limited to the so-called systems of regular type, where the non-smoothness locus is a smooth hypersurface and a single blowing-up suffices. However, there are several cases of interest (such as systems with multiple switches) where such regularity condition fails. In a joint paper from 2018, Panazzolo and da Silva proposed a general theory of geometric regularization for systems of non-regular type. Many basic problems are still open, such as a complete qualitative study of germs of planar vector fields possessing a discontinuity locus of cross type. The main goal of this project is to further explore these subjects, by enhancing the collaboration between the Brazilian team (da Silva and Buzzi) and the French team (Panazzolo, Fruchard). One of our priorities will be to recruit and form a PhD student to work in this subject. We expect to supervise this student in a collaborative way, allowing him/her to make long stays on both universities during the project.

Biomass mapping has gained increased interest for bioenergy, climate research and mitigation activities, such as reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks (e.g. REDD initiative). However, continuous deforestation activity and forest management requires frequent and accurate monitoring which can be expensive and difficult to attain. In Brazil, optical satellite data is typically used by government but even such does not allow accurate enough mapping due cloud coverage, requiring combination of other sources such as in-situ and air-borne measurements. Furthermore, satellite radar signals can penetrate clouds but still today the spatial resolution is not sufficient. In COREGAL, a low cost unmanned fixed-plane Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) and service for biomass mapping will allow wide scale mapping in the Brazilian context of forest management. A first of a kind combined Position-Reflectometry Galileo receiver will be developed as main sensor for platform positioning and biomass estimation, the latter using reflected GNSS signals (also called GNSS-R) on tree canopies. High positioning accuracy (centimetre level) is required for surface point reflection determination, which is challenging for remote areas where no GNSS infrastructure is available as in the case of many forests in Brazil. However, Galileo AltBOC E5 signals offer unprecedented pseudorange measurement quality which can be used for novel high accuracy positioning. The UAV will be equipped and tested with a COREGAL receiver and optical cameras for aerial mapping and biomass estimation, enabling wide scale low cost mapping: UAV mapping is at least one order of magnitude lower cost than manned air-borne missions while GNSS-R can be seen as bi-static radar replacing expensive, heavy and power consuming radars. The consortium includes universities and companies for successful services and technology exploitation.