ROCK aims to develop an innovative, collaborative and circular systemic approach for regeneration and adaptive reuse of historic city centres. Implementing a repertoire of successful heritage-led regeneration initiatives, it will test the replicability of the spatial approach and of successful models addressing the specific needs of historic city centres. ROCK will transfer the Role Models blueprint to the Replicators, adopting a cross-disciplinary mentoring process and defining common protocols and implementation guidelines. ROCK will deliver new ways to access and experience Cultural Heritage [CH] ensuring environmental sound solutions, city branding, bottom-up participation via living labs, while increasing liveability and safety in the involved areas. ICT sensors and tools will support the concrete application of the ROCK principles and the interoperable platform will enable new ways to collect and exchange data to facilitate networking and synergies. The added value is the combination of sustainable models, integrated management plans and associated funding mechanisms based on successful financial schemes and promoting the creation of industry-driven stakeholders’ ecosystems. A monitoring tool is set up from the beginning, running during two additional years after the project lifetime. Main expected impacts deal with the achievement of effective and shared policies able to: accelerate heritage led regeneration, improve accessibility and social cohesion, increase awareness and participation in local decision making process and wider civic engagement, foster businesses and new employment opportunities. Involving 10 cities, 7 Universities, 3 networks of enterprises, 2 networks of cities and several companies and development agencies, a foundation and a charity, ROCK is able to catalyse challenges and innovative pathways across EU and beyond, addressing CH as a production and competitiveness factor and a driver for sustainable growth.

Building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV) is currently an expansive market. Market analysts estimate a compound annual growth rate of 18,7% and a total of 5,4 GW installed worldwide between 2013 and 2019. One of the main drivers for BIPV market growth in the EU is the increasingly demanding legislation related to energy performance in buildings. The large potential for energy savings in buildings led the EU Commission to adopt the 2010/31/EU Directive on the energy performance of buildings with the objective that all new buildings are Nearly Zero Energy Buildings (NZEB) by 2020. Renewable energy technologies, and in particular the integration of photovoltaic systems in the building environment offer many possibilities to play a key role within the NZEB scenario. Despite this favorable framework for BIPV technology market uptake, initial estimations of BIPV market growth have been subsequently overestimated in the past few years. A series of demands from the stakeholders which have not been properly addressed by the BIPV value chain are the cause for this deviation. These key requirements are mainly related to the flexibility in design and aesthetics considerations, lack of tools integrating PV and building performance, demonstration of long-term reliability of the technology, compliance with legal regulations, smart interaction with the grid and cost effectiveness. Within this context: The objective of PVSITES project is to drive BIPV technology to a large market deployment by demonstrating an ambitious portfolio of building-integrated solar technologies and systems, giving a forceful, reliable answer to the market requirements identified by the industrial members of the consortium in their day-to-day activity. High impact demonstration and dissemination actions will be accomplished in terms of cost-effective renewable generation, reduction of energy demands and smart energy management.

AMALTEA’s main objective is to streamline the use of robotics, AI and data in the construction sector to reduce the energy use, resources and waste, increase safety, and improve processes’ reliability and product quality to adapt to the new demands from end users and Green Deal objectives. For that, the curtain-wall façade value chain will be reshaped by digitalizing the design, manufacturing, installation and disassembly/recycling phases. This approach is supported by the development and combination of several digital tools that will be integrated, together with technical solutions provided by SMEs and start-ups through FSTP, in Digital Solutions that will be validated in four pilots to improve the sustainability, efficiency, safety and automation of the façade value chain, and thus, building construction. The global solution will consider human in the loop for collaborative robotics and will use existing technologies to guarantee the safety use of the data across the entire process. Piloting will include: 1) AI parametric design and extended digital twin with all the data workflows along the façade value chain, 2) Digitalized façade manufacturing line in FDB facilities in Hungary, 3) and 4) Implementation of the solutions in operational construction environments (Residential/Hospital typology in the South of Europe and Offices/Tertiary typology in the Center of Europe). The project involves companies from all necessary disciplines, including: design, AI and data, robotics, manufacturing, construction, SSH (to have special care related to the communication between humans and the technologies developed). Additionally, the project will establish a collaboration with external SMEs (up to 25 projects) across Europe through a FSTP scheme to improve all the challenges defined.

inBETWEEN goes beyond currently available ICT technologies used for inducing the end User behaviour change towards more energy efficient lifestyles by simultaneously assisting Users to IDENTIFY energy wastes, LEARN how they could conserve energy and MOTIVATE them to act. Apart from detecting energy saving opportunities and offering various incentives for Users’ behaviour change, great part of the motivation aspect will also be associated with the provided ability and means to act through inBETWEEN solution. The overarching technological objective which is to deliver cost-effective solution that brings added value, without significant disruption of everyday activities, through the collaborative inBETWEEN cloud based platform offering advance energy services. It allows Users to integrate their building’s connected devices and systems with advance energy analytics and optimisation services to create a comprehensive recommendation and feed-back solution which will facilitate further the behaviour change towards more energy and cost efficient daily routines. A significant demonstration activity in a range of real life pilot locations in EU with diverse public set-ups, which differ in terms of size, type, climate and patterns of use, will offer the necessary technology validation.

Intelligent Energy Europe expects district heating to double its share of the European heat market by 2020 while district cooling will grow to 25%. While this expansion will translate into 2.6% reduction in the European primary energy need and 9.3% of all carbon emissions, it will not be achieved through modernization and expansion alone but requires fundamental technological innovation to make the next generation of district heating and cooling (DHC) systems highly efficient and cost effective to design, operate and maintain. E2District aims to develop, deploy, and demonstrate a novel cloud enabled management framework for DHC systems, which will deliver compound energy cost savings of 30% through development of a District Simulation Platform to optimise DHC asset configuration targeting >5% energy reduction, development of intelligent adaptive DHC control and optimisation methods targeting an energy cost reduction between 10 and 20%, including flexible production, storage and demand assets, and system-level fault detection and diagnostics, development of behaviour analytics and prosumer engagement tools to keep the end user in the loop, targeting overall energy savings of 5%. Development of a flexible District Operation System for the efficient, replicable and scalable deployment of DHC monitoring, intelligent control, FDD and prosumer engagement, development of novel business models for DHC Operators, Integrators and Designers, validation, evaluation, and demonstration of the E2District platform, and development of strong and rigorous dissemination, exploitation and path-to-market strategies to ensure project outcomes are communicated to all DHC stakeholders. E2District addresses specifically the call’s objective related to the development of optimisation, control, metering, planning and modelling tools including consumer engagement and behaviour analytics and supports the integration of multiple generation sources, including renewable energy and storage.