EVELIXIA brings together 36 high profile organizations from 12 EU countries envisioning to realize Buildings as Active Utility Nodes (BAUNs), rendering the EU Building stock as: a) energy efficient; b) connected, by facilitating a two-way communication between the grid and the occupants, capitalizing on flexible technologies; c) smart, by utilizing analytics supported by sensors and controls to co-optimize efficiency, flexibility, and occupant preferences; and d) flexible, reducing, shifting, or modulating energy use according to occupant needs, while considering utility signals. EVELIXIA structures the advancement of its solutions along five Innovation Pathways: IP1: Building-to-Grid (B2G) Services; IP2: Grid-to-Building (G2B) Services; IP3: Human-to-Building Interfaces & Interactivity; IP 4: Systems Interoperability; and IP5: Innovative HW as Flexibility Enablers, which will be integrated, deployed, and validated at 7 large-scale, real-life pilots (GR, RO, FR, FI, ES, AT, DK). During the EVELIXIA platform deployment and validation, different actors (i.e., DSOs, DNOs, ESCOs, aggregators) from various sectors (electricity, heating/cooling, mobility) will exchange data for providing B2G and G2B services and they will participate in the development of Business Models showcasing the economic viability of the solutions proposed. EVELIXIA puts a large focus on social engagement empowering citizens as not only adopters of solutions, but also, as their co-creators applying methodologies for citizen and consumer engagement and advanced human to building interfaces. Key expected outcomes include: 14 scalable B2G/G2B services demonstrated including DSF (implicit, explicit, shifting, etc.), P2P energy trading, portfolio management (day ahead/intra-day), TSO/DSO/DHO, and system planning services; GHG emissions reduced by 17%, increase of flexibility by up to 25%, increase of self-consumption up to 100%, reduce energy consumption by 13.5%, and increase RE generation by 11%.

ENPOWER will design, develop and demonstrate SSH-driven methodologies, interactive and closed-loop tools, and data-driven services for energy-activated citizens and energy-secure cross-sector communities towards a citizen-centric energy system. We combine leading-edge ICTs with social/behavioural dimensions and with sharing economy and value stacking business models to deploy: 1) a Social Science Framework for energy citizens activation and innovative multi-dimensional incentives for citizens’ participation in energy markets; 2) AI-based consumers clustering and segmentation algorithms; 3) interactive tools and facilitation services for energy community planning; 4) Energy Data Space adaptation to support community-level data-driven activation and interoperable automated privacy and sovereignty-preserving Demand Response (DR); 5) P2P DLT/Blockchain digital marketplace for tokenized energy and non-energy assets reciprocal compensation; 6) data-driven services and apps for energy efficiency and activation performance management; 7) ICT services and Digital Twins for community-level energy optimization and aggregated flexibility management to trade off local self-consumption against grid service provisioning, while boosting a beyond-energy community social welfare; 8) Edge monitoring hubs for automated DR; 9) Business Sandbox for novel sharing economy and social innovation-based business models; 10) methodologies for evaluating different energy community setups, upscaling and replication. ENPOWER framework will be validated along 4 Front Runners energy communities pilots and further replicated in 2 Early Adopters, covering different levels of maturity of communities, to demonstrate increased RES local self-consumption and consumers participation to the energy markets, while nurturing increased local security of supply. ENPOWER Leadership Programme and blueprints will support EU-wide replication and advice regulatory bodies on communities-friendly enabling frameworks.

Funds are available to finance energy efficiency and renewable energy projects. Many islands are engaged in energy transition; however most of them haven’t the expertise to concretely launch investments, access finance and kick start the projects. NESOI aims at filling this gap through a hands-on approach allowing to get the expected financial leverage towards the effective implementation of islands’ energy transition plans. Starting with a broad survey gathering EU islands’ needs, NESOI provides a platform where islands can access both indirect and direct support: 1) Provided through a tailor-made digital platform, the indirect support consists in training material, best case examples, toolkit for technical and economic best practices and a cooperative space for islands, investors and technology developers; 2) Based on transparent technical, social, economic and environmental criteria, NESOI selects projects for customised direct support from consortium experts and from external ones for local aspects thanks to a cascade mechanism. NESOI supports projects at different stages of development, starting from early stage ones requiring a high-level technical & economic assistance, to more advanced ones asking for specific and detailed contributions on various fields (technical, legal, financial), putting forward a reality-check mindset, to make islands focus on solid projects with the potential to attract investors. NESOI implements capacity building and coaching activities to ensure raising awareness and capacity of public authorities' staff for developing investible projects with the aim to empower Local Communities in a success pursuit of the energy transition. Broad communication activities at EU level and links with other initiatives like BRIDGE and the Cities Facility are also foreseen. NESOI partners are strongly connected to investors, island communities and the energy innovation ecosystem, and intend to develop a sustainable business model for NESOI platform

First responders are the groups of people, services and organisations with specialised skills and qualifications whose duty is to arrive first to the emergency zone, search, save and rescue operations, and perform crisis management in natural or human-made disasters. Although first responders provide secure and safe societies by protecting the communities, responding to the disasters and rescuing lives, they often use inefficient, weak and obsolete technologies in the operations. With respect to the current situation, the operational capabilities of the first responders can be dramatically boosted by the advances in technology and engineering fields such as smart sensor systems, wearables, data processing, data fusion, data analytics, communication infrastructure, and artificial intelligence tools. The main objective of TeamAware Project is to develop an integrated and cost-efficient situational awareness system for first responders from different sectors with heterogeneous and hardly interoperable sensor units including drone mounted, wearable, and external sensor systems, existing first responder services, and operation centres. The purpose is to enhance crisis management, flexibility and reaction capability of first responders of different sectors through real-time, fused, refined, filtered, and manageable information by using highly-standardized augmented reality and mobile human machine interfaces.

Emergency Medical Services in Europe are characterised by a pluralistic landscape with diverse organisational setups, professional standards, coordination mechanisms and actors which result from different historical and institutional contexts in EU member states. However, diversity is united by the common aim, of providing timely care to victims of sudden and life-threatening injuries, emergencies or disasters within EU-member states (EUMS), in cross-border settings and international humanitarian missions. Fostering the response capacities and increasing the cooperation of the European Emergency Medical Services Systems (EMSS) is of decisive importance for strengthening the resilience of European societies in the light of multiple hazards: Climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of disasters, terrorism is becoming a very real scenario for mass causality events challenging both out-of-hospital as well as in-hospital emergency care, and health related hazards are calling for close cooperation of public safety and health authorities on an international level. Not only hazards but also the system’s diversity poses a challenge for preparedness planning and cooperation, which needs to involve the whole EMS system at regional and/or national level and integrate it into the whole health system and fully coordinate with the public safety system to be effective. The iProcureSecurity project seeks to identify the major challenges the system’s diversity poses to the ability to work together, stimulate R&I uptake with a view to increasing standardisation of operations across Europe, and deliver technical requirements for R&I activities to create a European system of Medical Emergency Teams that is more homogeneous and capable to work as singly unit. To achieve this aim, the project will engage in several exchange cycles with practitioners and other stakeholders in the innovation landscape as a preparation for major R&I activities as part of a PCP action.