Advances in immersive technology are an important driver of the experience economy, enhancing the breadth, depth and intensity of the visiting experience at arts and cultural institutions. Yet, they usually are neither readily available nor broadly accessible. First, they require specific developments that can hardly be carried out by most institutions. Second, the inherent affordance of immersive propositions is questioned by the currently evolving world health situation. The objective of the Artcast4D project is to develop a technological framework and tools that will unleash the potential of EU CCIs for designing and developing cost-effective, non-invasive, immersive and interactive users experiences. Using both academic and industrial approaches, it relies on theoretical and experimental research, open source software and hardware development together with challenging case studies and onsite beta testing implementations. The innovation lies in the ability to create immersive environments in open spaces, with minimally intrusive projection technology, on the capability to design interactive applications with crowd movement and sensing capabilities, and on the open source availability and ability to extend the solutions. Artcast4D will technically and financially promote the implementation of the technology outside the cultural institutions, implementing 4 pilots in cities around the world (Issy-les-Moulineaux, Hounslow, Valencia, Athens), each one with different artistic topics and experiences, and bringing together creative actors and industrial partners with the civil society. All pilots will include training workshops, and open training modules will be designed for developers and artists. The projects outcomes will also help to derive policy guidelines on how to strengthen the competitiveness and innovation potential of CCIs on national level and EU-level.

PoliVisu is a Research and Innovation project designed to evolve the traditional public policy making cycle using big data. The aim is to enhance an open set of digital tools to leverage data to help public sector decision-making become more democratic by (a) experimenting with different policy options through impact visualisation and (b) using the resulting visualisations to engage and harness the collective intelligence of policy stakeholders for collaborative solution development. Working with three cities to address societal problems linked to smart mobility and urban planning, the intention is to enable public administrations to respond to urban challenges by enriching the policy making process with opportunities for policy experimentation at three different steps of the policy cycle (policy design, policy implementation, and policy evaluation). Experimentation of policy options will enable the cities to tackle complex, systemic policy problems that require innovative thinking to develop transformative solutions.

Wireless networks in buildings suffer from congestion, interference, security and safety concerns, restricted propagation and poor in-door location accuracy. The Internet of Radio-Light (IoRL) project develops a safer, more secure, customizable and intelligent building network that reliably delivers increased throughput (greater than 10Gbps) from access points pervasively located within buildings, whilst minimizing interference and harmful EM exposure and providing location accuracy of less than 10 cm. It thereby shows how to solve the problem of broadband wireless access in buildings and promotes the establishment of a global standard in ITU. Building landlords will be incentivized to find funding to realize this solution for their properties to increase their value resulting in a stimulated market for broadband networking products in buildings, benefiting society and stimulating the world Gross Domestic Product. IoRL project provides solutions to the two main barriers to develop this broadband networking solution in buildings because it: (i) Brings together a multi-disciplinary team of research institutions and industries in a collaborative project to develop and demonstrate this vision, who otherwise would not have assembled to achieve this goal; (ii) Develops a proof of concept demonstrator, which will act as the basis for standardization of a global solution. The starting point is the joint VLC demonstrator at Tsinghua University & ISEP, the mmWave at Cobham Wireless and the NFV/SDN at NCSR-Democratos. The challenges are to (i) Develop broadband communication solutions for buildings by integrating these technologies to exploit the pervasiveness and accessibility of the existing electric light access points, the broadband capacities of mmWave and VLC technologies and the flexibility of SDN/NFV; (ii) Industrially design a radio-light solution that can be integrated into the myriad of form factors of existing electric light systems and consumer products.

ELABORATOR uses a holistic approach for planning, designing, implementing and deploying specific innovations and interventions towards safe, inclusive and sustainable urban mobility. These interventions, consist of smart enforcement tools, space redesign and dynamic allocation, shared services, and integration of active and green modes of transportation. They will be specifically co-designed and co-created with identified “vulnerable to exclusion” user groups, local authorities and relevant stakeholders. The interventions will be demonstrated in 6 Lighthouse and 6 Follower cities across Europe with three principal aims: i) to collect, assess and analyse user needs and requirements towards a safe and inclusive mobility and climate neutral cities; ii) to collect and share rich information sets made of real data, traces from dedicated toolkits, users’ and stakeholders’ opinions among the cities, so as to increase the take up of the innovations via a twinning approach and iii) to generate detailed guidelines, policies, future roadmap and built capacity for service providers, planning authorities and urban designers for the optimum integration of such inclusive and safe mobility interventions into Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMPs). The Lighthouse cities are: Milan (Italy), Copenhagen (Denmark), Helsinki (Finland), Issy-les-Moulineaux (France), Zaragoza (Spain) and Trikala (Greece). The Follower cities are Lund (Sweden), Liberec (Czech Republic), Velejne (Slovenia), Ioannina (Greece), Split (Croatia) and Krusevac (Serbia).