PCP-WISE aims to customize/pre-operationalize water management innovations from space for European climate resilience via pre-commercial procurement (PCP). The project, spanning phases from solution design to field validation, targets TRL 8. It addresses water-related crises (floods, fires, infrastructure impacts) using space and Earth Observation data. Objectives include common operational information products, interoperability mechanisms, and an active user network. With climate change impacting water availability and distribution, PCP-WISE seeks to enhance EO-based information for better regional water management, promoting resilience across EU borders. It focuses on local dynamics in water availability and aims to anticipate extreme climate conditions through an integrated water intelligence system. The project's significance lies in its potential to mitigate water-related crises, driven by a unified water taxonomy and Earth observation-based modeling. Through comprehensive research and development solutions, PCP-WISE aims to boost adaptation across the EU, targeting stakeholders in water management, environment, first responders, cities, and agriculture. The project's objectives are designed to adress business, technical, economic, and policy goals. Key results include capacity-building efforts, climate-related inputs, stakeholder engagement, and the dissemination of innovative solutions to advance water resilience both locally and globally.

PREVENT - PRocurEments of innoVativE, advaNced systems to support security in public Transport - focuses on pre-empting attacks in public transport by enabling earlier detection of terrorists and potentially dangerous objects, tracking of detected individuals or situations and coordinating the response of security forces. This focus is shared, from the start, by 22 organisations from 10 countries, public transport operators, security forces, public buyers, city authorities of which 12 are consortium partners and 10 are members of the PREVENT User Observatory Group (UOG). PREVENT implements a progressive and iterative process to deliver 6 jointly defined Common Security Scenarios that capture threats and vulnerabilities. It also delivers a vulnerabilities and threats taxonomy directly applicable to the public transport world. For these scenarios, PREVENT undertakes a gap analysis between available solutions, existing standards, on-going research and identified needs, from which it elaborates a multi-dimensional roadmap of innovations and solutions. The roadmap is an online interactive tool that feeds the sustainability of PREVENT’s community. The highest priority innovations in the roadmap are selected by practitioners and public buyers to define a Common Challenge. This Common Challenge serves as the basis for a PCP, for which the buyers’ group is created, the lead buyer is selected, tender documents are generated. PREVENT includes a governance mechanism that ensures that the different phases are open to additional practitioners and public buyers. PREVENT includes a Security Advisory Board to manage the confidentiality of the sensitive knowledge generated by its activities, and a GDPR advisor to guide the elaboration of a Common Challenge fully compliant with Europe’s privacy and data protection regulations. PREVENT structures its governance and results (public and confidential) to foster sustainability of the collaboration beyond the end of the project.

Hospital wastewater (HWW) poses a significant environmental and health risk due to the presence of pharmaceuticals, pathogens, and other hazardous substances that are administered in healthcare institutions. Unfortunately, current urban wastewater treatment (WWT) plants are not capable of effectively removing many of the pollutants generated by hospitals. As a result, these contaminants reach and accumulate in natural water bodies, threatening ecosystems and biodiversity, and public health through the contamination of drinking water or food. In addition, public health is also menaced by HWW as it contains important amounts of antibiotic-resistant microorganisms and genes. In fact, Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) is one of the greatest health threats of our times. While most common medicines are consumed in households, specialized drugs such as cytostatic drugs, some antibiotics, or X-ray contrast agents are mainly distributed in hospitals. Furthermore, HWW is a hotspot for the transmission of antibiotic-resistant bacteria (ARB) and antibiotic-resistant genes (ARG). To reduce the risk associated to these contaminants, it is key to remove them as close to their source as possible, and before they are discharged to the municipal water network. Despite the existence of different technologies that efficiently remove contaminants from HWW, currently, there is no single process that can be used for the comprehensive treatment of HWW regarding the elimination of a mix of pollutants to a high degree. Moreover, technology may be further developed to be more efficient, environmentally sustainable, and cost-effective for hospitals. In this context, the main objective of THERESA PCP is to launch a pre-commercial procurement process (PCP) based on the development of an environmentally sustainable on-site system to decontaminate HWW, being capable of effectively removing, among other contaminants, cytostatic drugs, X-ray contrast agents, antibiotics, ARB and ARG, from HWW.

IMPRESS (Interoperable electron Microscopy Platform for advanced RESearch and Services) aims to co-develop and deliver advanced transmission electron microscopy (TEM) instrumentation, methods and tools that will revolutionize the way in which TEMs are used by all new and well-established scientific communities, integrate them with other instrumentation at analytical research infrastructures (RIs) and create new business opportunities for small and medium-sized enterprises. The core of the project is the development of a standardized cartridge-based interoperable platform for TEM that is based on common interfaces and data formats, is flexible and adaptable and allows users to perform advanced correlative experiments using different instruments and to co-develop methodological options that are not yet satisfied by commercially available electron microscopes. The solutions will be delivered at technology readiness level 8 through a pre-commercial procurement. The project also involves the co-development of new electron sources, techniques based on adaptive optics and event-driven detectors, application-relevant in situ/operando sample environments and software for simulation of experiments and remote access based on artificial intelligence. By the end of the project, these developments will be integrated with the new cartridge-based platform, in order to make them available to all users of RIs and other TEMs owners. An open knowledge and innovation hub for TEM will be created and a training programme will promote the new solution, to initiate RI staff in their use and to provide both materials and life science communities with optimized tools for tackling societal challenges, especially in the energy and health sectors. The project will exploit synergies and collaboration with five RIs of European dimension for the benefit of users from diverse scientific communities and will pave the way towards a new cooperative model for the development and operation of RIs for TEM

PROTECT aims at levering innovation procurement to unlock the climate service (CS) market’s potential to support urgent climate adaptation and mitigation. The project will allow public and private organisations to build up and integrate their knowledge and skills about climate change, environmental observation (EO) and innovation procurement, notably enabling public authorities to shift to a proactive governance model, using innovative public procurement approaches to increase value and climate impact for money. It shall increase access of CS SME providers across Europe to public procurement markets and shape solutions that best address public demand, both specific and systemic. The initial focus will be on five encompassing application domains (Utilities, Green cities, Health, Land use & Marine environment, Security) and their contributions to the areas of sustainability in Horizon Europe’s Cluster 6. The project will source and assess existing and high-potential CS solutions and technologies that use EO data. It will engage with an extensive and varied community of procurers, inform the definition and aggregation of their needs and functional requirements for CS, explaining, fostering and supporting a ‘buying with impact’ approach. Clearer, less fragmented demand shall guide and support R&D for future CS. PROTECT will prepare the operational ground for one or more joint, cross-border or coordinated pre-commercial procurement (PCP) processes and identify short-term actions so that Public Procurement of Innovative Solutions (PPI) can be activated towards or right after the project’s end. At policy level, it will provide decision-makers for procurement, climate and policy, at EU, national, regional and local levels, with practical recommendations and guidelines to boost the use of innovation procurement for climate action.