The Oil&Gas (O&G) industry is one of the 8 most water-intensive industries; indeed, it could be conceived as a water industry which delivers oil as a by-product. Specifically, by 2020 it is expected that over 500 million barrels/day of produced water (PW) and about 15 million m³/day of refinery wastewater (RW) are generated. Despite the necessity and potential beneficial impacts of reusing the water involved in extraction and refining activities, several significant barriers are hampering this opportunity. Firstly, the existent commercial water treatment technologies cannot be used directly in the O&G sector without an extensive adaptation, and they are not flexible and reliable enough to bear the complexity and variability of PW/RW composition. Moreover, there is no expertise or experience in the O&G sector in the design and operation of water treatment systems. The INTEGROIL project aims to develop and demonstrate a robust but flexible integrated solution for treating O&G water flows with variable compositions to different water qualities depending on the final reuse objective. This new solution will be readily designed with different modules each comprising innovative water treatment technologies that will be operated and optimized in an integrated manner through a novel Decision Support System, in line with 3 priorities of the EIP Water. The INTEGROIL approach ensures minimal design and operational efforts involved from the O&G end-user side and that the energy and chemical costs are kept to an absolute minimum for a certain target water quality. Its feasibility and long-term application will be assessed through demo activities in 2 real operational conditions, that will provide critical information for the commercialisation actions to be undertaken. The INTEGROIL consortium brings together 10 entities (6 SMEs) covering the full value chain, including technology developers, O&G end-users, a Sustainability Assessment firm and a professional association.

iKaaS – (intelligent Knowledge-as-a-Service) Platform, will develop an intelligent, privacy preserving and secure Smart City Platform based on a Big Data resource and an analytics engine built atop heterogeneous cloud platforms with data collected from a variety of sensors from Internet of Things (IoT) environments deployed as mobile terminals, smart devices, and smart homes. We envisage that these data and the analytics engine – a knowledge base – would be fundamental building blocks for cross-border business-to-government (B2G), business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) applications, such as lifestyle recommendation, future city planning, academic research and analysis, location-and behaviour-specific targeted services and so on. The platform features will be demonstrated by means of Smart City applications promoting self-management of health and safety of citizens, as well as an information system improving data analysis for a smarter life in the city.

HUBiquitous is an Innovation Action aiming at creating a joint Africa-Europe Startup & Innovation Ecosystem for long-term collaborations and partnerships. The project has the ambition to increase the technology level and capacity building of 30 local DIHs/TechHubs in 5 African countries. The project proposes highly innovative concepts called Innovation Enablers (i.e. Solution Lab, Application Business Box, and MeetHub online platform). The purpose of these enablers is to provide technical (e.g. IoT, AI, and BigData disruptive technologies) as well as entrepreneurial development skills to DIHs and startups/entrepreneurs. Thanks to these Innovation Enablers, the project will further demonstrate and build the local innovation and ecosystem capacity through 3 programs: (i) Talent program, building digital skills for local talents, (ii) Accelerator program, creating innovative applications and products and (iii) Community program, developing the Africa-Europe start-up and innovation communities. HUBiquitous Innovation Enablers and Programs will, therefore, support and empower the startup and entrepreneurship ecosystems from both continents with the development of a rich and sustainable collaboration between African and European DIHs. HUBiquitous consortium is composed of a partnership of Ten (10) entities, five European and five African, coming from nine different countries. It builds on the existing cooperation and partnership stemming from two previous H2020 ICT International Collaborations with Africa projects (WAZIUP and WAZIHUB). The ultimate target of HUBiquitous is to pave the way for long-term and sustainable innovation for the African DIHs.

KijaniSpace (GreenSpace in Swahili) is a highly innovative initiative built on the foundation of previous successful AU-EU collaborations and partnerships in the fields of space, IoT, climate and agriculture. The vision of the project is to extend the use of Copernicus Earth observation data for the application of climate-smart agriculture in Africa to regional research and innovation development. To enhance the use of Copernicus data by local African stakeholders, we have proposed several practical but innovative approaches. First of all, Copernicus data should be integrated into the local IoT dataset to enhance the local context, users and market needs of the application. Therefore, the project proposed to develop a Space-IoT Solution Box (called KijaniBox, GreenBox in Swahili ) that integrates the existing platform, tools and dataset for simplified local availability and accessibility. Using the KijaniBox EO and IoT resources, the project will launch two programs, one called Training Program for skills development and creation of minimum viable products and another Innovation Program for SMS innovation experiments. In addition, the project will conduct the pilot demonstration of two agricultural applications (crop farming and fish farming). Finally, the project will engage the various local and international stakeholders and actors with a multi-stakeholder approach to co-create innovation and collaboration environments. KijaniBox is a highly innovation-oriented consortium composed of thirteen (13) companies, six European and seven African partners from seven (7) different countries. The concept of the KijaniSpace project is being piloted in the Great Lake Victoria basin region. The ultimate aim of KijaniSpace is to pave the way for long-term sustainable economic growth and green job creation in Africa and Europe through Copernius and IoT.

The WAZIUP project, namely the Open Innovation Platform for IoT-Big Data in Sub-Saharan Africa is a collaborative research project using cutting edge technology applying IoT and Big Data to improve the working conditions in the rural ecosystem of Sub-Saharan Africa. First, WAZIUP operates by involving farmers and breeders in order to define the platform specifications in focused validation cases. Second, while tackling challenges which are specific to the rural ecosystem, it also engages the flourishing ICT ecosystem in those countries by fostering new tools and good practices, entrepreneurship and start-ups. Aimed at boosting the ICT sector, WAZIUP proposes solutions aiming at long term sustainability. The consortium of WAZIUP involves 7 partners from 4 African countries and partners from 5 EU countries combining business developers, technology experts and local Africa companies operating in agriculture and ICT. The project involves also regional hubs with the aim to promote the results to the widest base in the region.