Sustainable energy Positive & zero cARbon CommunitieS demonstrates and validates technically and socio-economically viable and replicable, innovative solutions for rolling out smart, integrated positive energy systems for the transition to a citizen centred zero carbon & resource efficient economy. SPARCS facilitates the participation of buildings to the energy market enabling new services and a virtual power plant concept, creating VirtualPositiveEnergy communities as energy democratic playground (positive energy districts can exchange energy with energy entities located outside the district). Seven cities will demonstrate 100+ actions turning buildings, blocks, and districts into energy prosumers. Impacts span economic growth, improved quality of life, and environmental benefits towards the EC policy framework for climate and energy, the SET plan and UN Sustainable Development goals. SPARCS co-creation brings together citizens, companies, research organizations, city planning and decision-making entities, transforming cities to carbon-free inclusive communities. Lighthouse cities Espoo (FI) and Leipzig (DE) implement large demonstrations. Fellow cities Reykjavik (IS), Maia (PT), Lviv (UA), Kifissia (EL) and Kladno (CZ) prepare replication with hands-on feasibility studies. SPARCs identifies bankable actions to accelerate market uptake, pioneers innovative, exploitable governance and business models boosting the transformation processes, joint procurement procedures and citizen engaging mechanisms in an overarching city planning instrument toward the bold City Vision 2050. SPARCS engages 30 partners from 8 EU Member States (FI, DE, PT, CY, EL, BE, CZ, IT) and 2 non-EU countries (UA, IS), representing key stakeholders within the value chain of urban challenges and smart, sustainable cities bringing together three distinct but also overlapping knowledge areas: (i) City Energy Systems, (ii) ICT and Interoperability, (iii) Business Innovation and Market Knowledge.

EU rural and remote areas demonstrate a wide range of qualities, while facing a unique set of challenges. To this end, EC put forward a “Long Term Vision for Rural Areas”, identifying specific challenges and opportunities, and proposing a Rural Action Plan. A major challenge is the diversification of economic activities beyond the traditional agriculture-farming-forestry sectors, as enabler for stimulating economic growth. Evidently, tourism could become an anchor for economic development of rural and remote areas. Motivated from the above considerations, TOURAL will focus on cultural & creative tourism as drivers for sustainable development, paying at the same time a premium to the EC Tourism Transition Pathway requirements, within the context of smart multi-destination and multi-dimensional tourism offerings empowered by macro-regional tourism cooperation and integrated local value-chains. TOURAL proposes a model to support the touristic development of participating rural regions, balancing the growth of their urban clusters with the untapped growth potential of their remote and rural grid cells. Our modelling approach will be multi-dimensional in terms of addressing complementary tourism verticals/niche sectors (underwater cultural & nature heritage tourism, cultural & creative tourism, cultural science tourism, silver tourism); participatory in terms of co-designing policy pathways and tourism offerings/services, co-creating business models and tourism products, and co-validating small-scale tourism services implementations; and integrated in terms of joint planning and business development with integrated value-chains, policymaking and cross-border cooperation, at macro-regions level. Our scope of interventions includes 3 regions from the Adriatic-Ionian macro-region (Italy, Croatia, Greece), and 3 regions from the Black Sea Basin (Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine).

CitiObs will consolidate and apply tools and practice-based knowledge for co-creating data, knowledge and local action via Citizen Observatories (COs): these tools will enhance existing and new citizen observatories to engage citizens and marginalised communities, add value to environmental observations in the urban context, increase and validate citizen observations of the urban environment as part of the existing in-situ Earth Observation systems, co-create inclusive local actions for sustainability and ensure that CO data contributes to research and policy development towards the objectives of the European Green Deal. To ensure broad use, the CitiObs tools and approaches will be developed in co-creation with COs in 5 Frontrunner cities, finetuned with 30 Implementer cities and showcased to 50 Fellow cities. The pressure on cities to speed up the process of emissions reduction from pollutants and climate gases is overwhelming. The required measures are likely to be found not only in technological development but also in the required social transformations. Theseis transformations includes increasing citizen involvement and engagement with science and policy, increasing awareness of the underlying issues and promoting societal actions to protect the urban environment. Technological innovations need to be considered within the context of multi-level vertical and horizontal governance structures where citizen participation is recognized and included. CitiObs will support citizen observatories in distinct cities to create/enhance/or scale up inclusive and diverse citizen observatories, fostering in particular an active role of citizens in the observation of the urban environment using low-cost sensor technologies and wearables, with a particular focus on air quality and related environmental measures. CitiObs will formalise, valorise and legitimise the role of citizen observations.

The Danube River has played a vital role in supporting both human and animal life for centuries. Since the late 19th century, human interventions have significantly altered the natural flow of the river to optimize its utility. These interventions have included actions such as straightening the riverbed, constructing hydropower plants, collecting freshwater, establishing nuclear power plants, engaging in agriculture, and facilitating navigation. The combined effects of climate change and extensive river regulation have led to a significant disruption in the natural balance of sediment in the Danube River, increasing flood risks, altering hydropower production, decreasing navigability of the river, and affecting in biodiversity within the Danube Basin. SUNDANSE will: • carry out a conceptual Driver-Pressure-State-Impact-Response with multiple levels of analysis (catchment level, water body level, etc.) to understand and address environmental issues of the uniqueness of Danube river lighthouse • realize maps for observation of critical points for excessive sedimentation and/or excessive erosion, sediment transport and flow restoration • perform innovative actions of measurements using cutting-edge portable on-vessel equipment prototypes for the direct analysis of microplastics and toxicity • achieve an advance numerical prediction model of sediment transport process in the Danube River basin, to have a comprehensive overview of river dynamics • develop an Innovative Sediment Management Framework for enhanced and sustainable sediment management within the Danube River basin • produce an Action plan and Roadmap for associated regions to upscale demonstrated sustainable and effective solutions for sediment management • fulfil interconnections synergies with DanubeSediment and SIMONA projects and ICDPR initiatives • improve the trans - national and cross - sectorial cooperation, contributing to a better governance in region and to implementation of EU strategi

MoRe4nature aims to trigger transformative change in conservation efforts regarding zero pollution, biodiversity protection and deforestation prevention by including citizens and communities as key actors in collaborative environmental compliance assurance (ECA). A key element in reversing the trend in environmental degradation is a change in environmental compliance assurance interventions. Citizen Science Initiatives (CSIs) present innovative ways of joint data and knowledge production and of empowering citizens in sustainable natural resource management. However, barriers to the uptake of Citizen Generated Data (CGD) and citizen actions in ECA have not been effectively tackled. MoRe4nature will use a socio-technical approach to address these challenges and deepen the role of citizens and communities in ECA by i) strengthening the capacity of existing CSIs to provide relevant and valid data and understanding the importance of ECA, ii) fostering and supporting collaboration and partnerships among citizen science initiatives and authorities to cover data gaps and shape policy monitoring frameworks, iii) developing and testing tools to validate data obtained from CSIs, thus contributing to the integration of such data sources in environmental governance and in European Open Science Cloud, iv) making CGD available as a node in the Green Deal Data Space and v) channeling the urgency for concrete and immediate action of many citizens and communities by creating synergies between citizen science initiatives and LivingLabs for EU Missions, partnerships and other initiatives such as Fab Labs which share the values of sustainability transitions and which can help co-design actions as part of green and digital transformations. MoRe4nature will ensure uptake and impact beyond the project duration by engaging 162 existing CSIs and 98 authorities and national agencies in 40 cases in Europe, Latin America, Asia and Africa as well as selected LivingLabs and Fab Labs in Europe.