• Canada
• 2021-2021close
• OA Publications Mandate: Yes close
• 2023 close

euCanSHare will develop the first centralised, secure and sustainable platform for enhanced cross-border data sharing and multi-cohort personalised medicine research in cardiology. At its heart, the platform will contain the most comprehensive cardiovascular data catalogue ever assembled, which will facilitate data discoverability and exploitation in full alignment with the FAIR principles. The project will implement the interoperability of currently fragmented yet mature IT solutions developed by the consortium members for generating a comprehensive multi-functionality platform. It will also integrate major cardiovascular data sources from Europe and Canada, including the renowned MORGAM, BiomarCaRE and CAHHM initiatives. euCanSHare’s legal framework will be built through detailed ethical and legal interoperability analysis, while investigating innovative solutions for promoting responsible Open Science based on the emerging blockchain technology. Initially populated with 35 European and Canadian cohorts (corresponding to about one million records), the platform will provide extensive functionalities, including for data deposition, data harmonisation and quality control, which will support the integration of new cohorts beyond the duration of the project, thus ensuring its scalability. Moreover, sustainability will be targeted by leveraging through our multi-disciplinary partners the most established data infrastructures, namely ELIXIR, EGA, BBMRI and euro-BioImaging in Europe, as well as Maelstrom from Canada. The unique features of the platform will be demonstrated and adjusted through several use cases, including for biomarker validation, knowledge discovery, cardiovascular risk assessment, public health research and industry-driven studies. Furthermore, intensive outreach campaigns and hands-on workshops will be organised to attract a range of stakeholders, data providers and end-users from the academic, public health and industrial sectors.

Planet Earth faces unprecedented environmental changes that will affect all members of society. Arctic climate warming is more than twice the global rate and unpredictable extreme events cause major impacts on ecosystems and people. However, the Arctic atmospheric circulation causes extreme events and societal damage beyond the Arctic which need international research and monitoring to understand and predict. Furthermore, attitudes need to be changed throughout the world through outreach while the next generation needs to be equipped to live in a different world. INTERACT III innovates a pan-arctic network of 86 research stations in 16 northern countries to provide a fully integrated, advanced infrastructure now able to meaningfully address major societal challenges and provide services for 155 global and regional networks. Furthermore, the global reputation of INTERACT has attracted world-leading partners and enterprises to participate in reducing the impacts of hazardous change while maximizing the opportunities arising from new technologies. Specifically, INTERACT III provides comprehensive coordination of 64 partners and 86 research stations. The station managers design best practices to ensure excellent research, monitoring, education and outreach. INTERACT III builds on an extremely successful transnational access program that has already populated the Arctic with 900 researchers to further provide excellent science while reducing the environmental footprints of researchers through improving remote and virtual access. The access transnationality ensures new collaborations, innovative science and science diplomacy at a time of heightened geopolitical tensions. Station managers, transnational access and joint research activities cooperate to address major societal challenges in a fully integrated infrastructure while their data and understanding are made globally available through exceptional outreach and education and policy briefings to decision makers.

Most human activity in the Arctic takes place along permafrost coasts, making them a key interface. They have become one of the most dynamic ecosystems on Earth because permafrost thaw is now exposing these coasts to rapid change: change that threatens the rich biodiversity, puts pressure on communities that live there and contributes to the vulnerability of the global climate system. NUNATARYUK will determine the impacts of thawing coastal and subsea permafrost on the global climate, and will develop targeted and co-designed adaptation and mitigation strategies for the Arctic coastal population. NUNATARYUK brings together world-leading specialists in natural science and socio-economics to: (1) develop quantitative understanding of the fluxes and fates of organic matter released from thawing coastal and subsea permafrost; (2) assess what risks are posed by thawing coastal permafrost, to infrastructure, indigenous and local communities and people’s health, and from pollution; (3) use this understanding to estimate the long-term impacts of permafrost thaw on global climate and the economy. NUNATARYUK will be guided by a Stakeholders’ Forum of representatives from Arctic coastal communities and indigenous societies, creating a legacy of collaborative community involvement and a mechanism for developing and applying innovative evidence-based interventions to enable the sustainable development of the Arctic.

Despite efforts to reduce fragmentation across the European Research Area, the European scientific system is still facing challenges in achieving gender equality and gender mainstreaming in research and innovation. In this context, and in line with ERA policy goals and national contexts, the GENDER-NET Plus ERA-NET Cofund aims to strengthen transnational collaborations between research programme owners and managers, provide support to the promotion of gender equality through institutional change and instigate the integration of sex and gender analysis into research and funding programmes. To do so, project partners – a consortium of 16 committed organisations – will join forces to 1) Implement a joint co-funded call for proposals, 2) Design and implement transnational actions on the promotion of gender equality through institutional change and the integration of sex and gender analysis into research, 3) Update and enlarge the mappings and analyses carried out in GENDER-NET on the promotion of gender equality in research and innovation, 4) Carry out a joint assessment of gender differences and bias in access to research grants and define and develop appropriate conditions for promoting equal opportunities in research funding, 5) Promote and disseminate key findings. GENDER-NET will address these goals through 7 work packages and relies on a strong transnational cooperation between partner EU Member States, Associated Countries, and Third Countries, to contribute to the advancement of gender equality in the ERA.

COMFORT will close knowledge gaps for key ocean tipping elements under anthropogenic physical and chemical climate forcing through an interdisciplinary research approach. It will provide added value to decision and policy makers in terms of science based safe marine operating spaces, refined climate mitigation targets, and feasible long-term mitigation pathways. We will determine the consequences of passing tipping points in physical tipping elements for the marine carbon, oxygen, and nutrient cycles, as well as tipping points in biogeochemical tipping elements. The respective impact on marine ecosystems will be determined. Projections of the Earth system and impact studies have so far been carried out sequentially in a chain from scenarios to projections to off-line impact studies. This sequential workflow has hampered a quick response of the impact community back to revised scenarios and projections for tackling climate mitigation. COMFORT breaks new ground by bringing together experts from Earth system science, oceanography, fisheries science and ecology in a single integrated project who will work in parallel with a consistent set of analysis tools, scenarios, and interoperable models. The strength of COMFORT lies in the system-focused interdisciplinary approach as opposed to existing studies at the level of individual subsystems. The approach will be pursued with a firm link to stakeholders. COMFORT results will contribute to all four expected impacts for this call.

NAFTI will entirely cover the topic description. NAFTI will develop, test and qualify, up to safe for flight status, a FMS supporting complex noise abatement trajectories The entire FMS will comply with the safety requirements for HAZARDOUS failure conditions in a CS-29 certification context. NAFTI will make following advancements starting from Clean Sky 1 results owned by Airbus Helicopters: - From conventional to compound rotorcraft. - From manually flown to automatically flown complex trajectories. The FMS will be a CMC CMA-9000 which is currently used in the targeted avionics suites. The project will be done by ScioTeq, located in Kortrijk (Belgium, EU) in collaboration with CMC Electronics, located in Montreal (Canada). The activities in Montreal will not require any form of EU funding. This collaboration brings together cutting edge touch enabled display expertise from ScioTeq and top notch FMS expertise from CMC. Additionally, the two locations give access to complementary markets for future exploitation of the results. NAFTI will reduce weight, power and cost at helicopter level. This will result in lower cost of ownership, lower environmental footprint and better rotorcraft performance. This improves competitiveness for the helicopter manufacturer. The exploitation of the FMS will rely on production activities in Belgium using a supply chain with a large share in Europe.

Modern aeroplanes are well equipped to cope with most common icing conditions. However, some conditions consisting of supercooled large droplets (SLD) have been the cause of tragic accidents over the last three decades. It was proven that there are certain types of aircraft which are not robust against these conditions as ice can form on unprotected areas of the lifting surfaces leading to loss of control. Consequently, authorities addressed these safety concerns by issuing new certification rules under Appendix O to ensure that future aircraft remain controllable in these conditions and can exit safely upon detection. Hence, the key to increasing overall aviation icing safety is the early and reliable detection of icing conditions to allow the necessary actions to be taken by the flight crew. SENS4ICE (SENSors and certifiable hybrid architectures for safer aviation in ICing Environment) directly addresses this need for reliable detection and discrimination of icing conditions. It proposes that an intelligent way to cope with the complex problem of ice detection is the hybridisation of different detection techniques: direct sensing of atmospheric conditions and/or ice accretion on the airframe, combined with indirect techniques in which the change of aircraft characteristics with ice accretion on the airframe is detected. SENS4ICE will address the development, test, validation, and maturation of the different detection principles, the hybridisation - in close cooperation with regulators to provide an acceptable means of compliance - and the final airborne demonstration of technology capabilities in relevant natural icing conditions. The contribution of SENS4ICE to increase aviation safety will be achieved by an international consortium of 20 partners (13 EU, 7 non-EU) with contributions from Brazil, Canada, Russia and the US. The 4-year project requests an overall EU-funding of 6.6M€ and benefits from a further 5.4M€ of activities being provided by the non-EU partners.

The origin of oxygenic photosynthesis is one of the most dramatic evolutionary events that the Earth has ever experienced. At some point in Earth’s first two billion years, primitive bacteria acquired the ability to harness sunlight, oxidize water, release O2, and transform CO2 to organic carbon, and all with unprecedented efficiency. Today, oxygenic photosynthesis accounts for nearly all of the biomass on the planet, and exerts significant control over the carbon cycle. Since 2 billion years ago (Ga), it has regulated the climate of our planet, ensuring liquid water at the surface and enough oxygen to support complex life. The biological and geological consequences of oxygenic photosynthesis are so great that they effectively underpin what we think of as a habitable planet. Understanding the origins of photosynthesis is a paramount scientific challenge at the heart of some of humanity’s greatest questions: how did life evolve? how did Earth become a habitable planet? EARTHBLOOM addresses these questions head-on through the first comprehensive scientific study of Earth’s first blooming photosynthetic ecosystem, preserved as Earth’s oldest carbonate platform. This relatively unknown, >450m thick deposit, comprised largely of 2.9 Ga fossil photosynthetic structures (stromatolites), is one of the most important early Earth fossil localities ever identified, and EARTHBLOOM is carefully positioned for major discovery. EARTHBLOOM will push the frontier of field data collection and sample screening using new XRF methods for carbonate analysis. EARTHBLOOM will also push the analytical frontier in the lab by applying the most sensitive metal stable isotope tracers for O2 at ultra-low levels (Mo, U, and Ce) coupled with novel isotopic “age of oxidation” constraints. By providing new constraints on atmospheric CO2, ocean pH, oxygen production, and nutrient availability, EARTHBLOOM is poised to redefine Earth’s surface environment at the dawn of photosynthetic life.

Although the Ocean is a fundamental part of the global system providing a wealth of resources, there are fundamental gaps in ocean observing and forecasting systems, limiting our capacity in Europe to sustainably manage the ocean and its resources. Ocean observing is “big science” and cannot be solved by individual nations; it is necessary to ensure high-level integration for coordinated observations of the ocean that can be sustained in the long term. EuroSea brings together key European actors of ocean observation and forecasting with key end users of ocean observations, responding to the Future of the Seas and Oceans Flagship Initiative. Our vision is a truly interdisciplinary ocean observing system that delivers the essential ocean information needed for the wellbeing, blue growth and sustainable management of the ocean. EuroSea will strengthen the European and Global Ocean Observing System (EOOS and GOOS) and support its partners. EuroSea will increase the technology readiness levels (TRL) of critical components of ocean observations systems and tools, and in particular the TRL of the integrated ocean observing system. EuroSea will improve: European and international coordination; design of the observing system adapted to European needs; in situ observing networks; data delivery; integration of remote and in-situ data; and forecasting capability. EuroSea will work towards integrating individual observing elements to an integrated observing system, and will connect end-users with the operators of the observing system and information providers. EuroSea will demonstrate the utility of the European Ocean Observing System through three demonstration activities focused on operational services, ocean health and climate, where a dialogue between actors in the ocean observing system will guide the development of the services, including market replication and innovation supporting the development of the blue economy.

The vision of PROTECT is to discover ways of further advancing the international protection system within today’s turbulent political context. As a corollary to fluctuations in political cleavage systems of host countries, states’ policy approaches to international protection are drifting away from the humanitarian norms, objectives and methods provided by the current international law. The international refugee regime risks entering an era of decay because of declining citizen support, increasing party populism, growing government opportunism, and the subsequent scapegoating of international organizations. The United Nations’ Global Compact on Migration and the Global Compact on Refugees, which aim to introduce global governance and burden-sharing systems in the areas of migration and international protection, will have to be implemented in a context of international power relations between advocates of different visions of world order and notions international protection associated with them. In order to assess the challenges and opportunities that the Global Compacts pose, PROTECT will organize its research and dissemination efforts around three dimensions of international protection: (a) rights, (b) governance, and (c) public recognition. PROTECT aims to: (1) develop perspectives to international protection that address the challenges posed by the current politically turbulent context (2) assess the impacts of the Global Compacts on the right to international protection, discovering ways of reconstructing their relationships with the pre-existing legal frames that advance international protection (3) assess the impacts of the Global Compacts on the governance of international protection, discovering the most effective modes of global governance (4) assess the impact of the Global Compacts on the public recognition of the right to international protection, identifying the networks and discourses that hinder or facilitate support to international protection.