The overarching objective of COASTAL is to improve the rural-coastal synergies in strategic business and policy decision making and collaboration between coastal and rural actors. This is achieved by developing, demonstrating and applying a generic toolset and performance indicators by combining a multi-actor approach with system dynamics modelling. This allows us to understand the interactions with market, demographic, environmental and climate forecasts, and quantify the positive and negative externalities.

By combining local knowledge and scientific expertise in a co-creation process the COASTAL project engages actors and stakeholders at all levels to improve coastal-rural interdependence and collaboration by identifying problems and setting up evidence-based business roadmaps and policy solutions, focusing on economic growth, marine spatial planning, and environmental protection, including inland water quality.

The COASTAL project:

• contributes to integrated coastal-rural planning and coastal-rural synergy in the case study regions and the wider EU territory
• develops a durable, online platform for knowledge exchange about coastal-rural synergy with concrete examples and tools for supporting land-sea collaboration

Official website 

• Grant agreement ID: 773782
• Start date 1 May 2018 – End date 30 October 2022
• Coordinated By Vlaamse Instelling Voor Technologisch Onderzoek N.V., Belgium
• Partners 28
• Overall budget € 4 999 943,75

Principal Investigator is Prof. Koundouri. Members of the team are: Dr. Ebun Akinsete, Eleftherios Levantis, Alice Guittard.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s H2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement N^o 773782

Το άρθρο H2020 | COASTAL: Collaborative Land- Sea Integrated Platform εμφανίστηκε πρώτα στο Ae4ria.

OpenAIRE-Connect will adopt an end-user driven approach (via the involvement of 5 prominent research communities), and enrich the portfolio of OpenAIRE infrastructure production services with a Research Community Dashboard Service and a Catch-All Notification Broker Service. The first will offer publishing, interlinking, packaging functionalities to enable them to share and re-use their research artifacts (introducing “methods, e.g. data,software, protocols). This effort, supported by the harvesting and mining “intelligence” of the OpenAIRE infrastructure, will provide communities with the content and tools they need to effectively evaluate and reproduce science. OpenAIRE-Connect will combine dissemination and training with OpenAIRE’s powerful NOAD network engaging research communities and content providers in adopting such services. These combined actions will bring immediate and long-term benefits to scholarly communication stakeholders by affecting the way research results are disseminated, exchanged, evaluated, and re-used.

Project website 

• Grant agreement ID: 731011
• Start date1 January 2017 – End date30 June 2019
• Overall budget€ 1 997 837,50
• Project Coordinator: Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR), Italy
• Funded by: European Commission, DG Research and Innovation, H2020
• Call: H2020-EINFRA-2016-2017 (E-Infrastructures)

OpenAIRE has received funding from the European  Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation programme under Grant Agreements No. 777541 and 101017452.

Το άρθρο Horizon 2020 | OpenAIRE – CONNECTing scientific results in support of Open Science εμφανίστηκε πρώτα στο Ae4ria.

These outputs will be beneficial for

1. local, regional and national authorities by promoting the sustainability of marine ecosystems;
2. management agencies by enhancing their management toolbox;
3. non-governmental organizations (NGOs) by improving their activities through the suggested strategies; and
4. citizens, as their involvement during the project will increase their environmental awareness.

The transnational approach that will be used during the project will combine ecological and genetic methodologies for the biodiversity assessment, as well as socio-economic aspects, under the umbrella of a common DSS promoting joint policies and practices. The protection and conservation of areas with high ecological and economical value aims to harmonize the socio-economic and legal framework between the participating countries, something which could not be achieved individually at a national level. The design of new tools such as the DSS and the Handbook of management practices will be developed through the combination of multidisciplinary methodologies targeting to evaluate ecosystem quality and to promote the sustainable conservation of these vulnerable and fragile ecosystems. During its implementation, RECONNECT project will address consistently EU horizontal principles such as sustainable development, equal opportunities and non-discrimination and equality between men and women.  The project’s duration is 24 months, starting from 15 September 2017 and ending on 14 September 2019.

Find more at: https://reconnect.hcmr.gr

Project Researcher: Sotiri Mavrikis

Το άρθρο Interreg | RECONNECT: Regional cooperation for the transnational ecosystem sustainable development εμφανίστηκε πρώτα στο Ae4ria.

BRIGAID is a 4-year project (2016-2020) under EU Horizon2020 aimed to effectively bridge the gap between innovators and end-users in resilience to floods, droughts and extreme weather.

Project aims to provide structural, ongoing support for innovations in climate adaptation by developing an innovative mix of methods and tools, that should become a standard for climate adaptation innovations. Mission is to provide integral support for innovations for climate adaptation, focusing on climate-driven disasters like floods, droughts and extreme weather.

Project website

• Grant agreement ID: 700699
• Start date1 May 2016 End date30 September 2020
• Overall budget€ 8 817 445,10 – EU contribution€ 7 739 805,79
• Project Coordinator: Technische Universiteit Delft
• Participants (24)

Project Researchers: Professor Phoebe Koundouri, Petros Xepapadeas, Dr. Achilleas Vassilopoulos, Sotiri Mavrikis

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme 

under grant agreement No 700699.

Το άρθρο Horizon 2020 | BRIGAID: Bridges the Gap for Innovations in Disaster resilience εμφανίστηκε πρώτα στο Ae4ria.

The overall objective of DAFNE is to establish a decision-analytic framework (DAF) for Participatory and Integrated Planning (PIP). The DAF is a multi-step procedure that will enable the extensive, quantitative analysis of the anticipated effects of alternative planning options on the broad range of heterogeneous and often competing interests in transboundary river basins ultimately facilitating comparison and negotiation based on

• active engagement of stakeholders in the process from the outset of the project, and
• integration of multiple and diverse international and local academic expertise ranging from natural sciences, water engineering, and environmental economics, to water governance and laws in order to develop tools to facilitate social understanding of the impact and support comparative analysis of the alternative through negotiations.

The DAFNE decision-analytic framework incorporates a quantitative assessment tool, which allows the detection of feedback mechanisms between the WEF components. As outlined in the sections below, it will be established through the following steps:

1. Compilation of data to characterize the hydrologic, engineering developments, social systems, economic systems, and terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems;
2. Definition of the objectives of infrastructure and agricultural expansion;
3. Identification of stakeholders and their concerns, needs, and expectations, as well as their knowledge; and
4. Identification and assessment of robust water management alternatives, or temporal sequences thereof (pathways).

Project Website

• Grant agreement ID: 690268
• Start date1 September 2016 – End date31 October 2020
• Project Coordinator: ETH Zurich, Switzerland
• Overall budget € 5 420 222,68 EU contribution€ 3 408 658,75
• Call: H2020-WATER-2015-two-stage, Topic: WATER-5c-2015
• Funded by: European Commission, DG Research and Innovation, 2016.

Project Researchers: Professor Phoebe Koundouri, Dr. Xanthi-Isidora Kartala, Dr. Nikolaos Englezos, Dr Ebun Akinsete, Josef Adler.

Project funded by the Horizon 2020 programme WATER 2015 of the European Union, GA no. 690268.

Το άρθρο Horizon 2020 | DAFNE: Decision Analytic Framework to explore the water-energy-food Nexus in complex transboundary water resources of fast developing countries εμφανίστηκε πρώτα στο Ae4ria.

Social Innovation in Marginalised Rural Areas (SIMRA) is a project funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. SIMRA seeks to advance understanding of social innovation and innovative governance in agriculture, forestry and rural development, and how to boost them, particularly in marginalised rural areas across Europe, with a focus on the Mediterranean region (including non-EU) where there is limited evidence of outcomes and supporting conditions.

SIMRA’s overarching objective is to fill the significant knowledge gap in understanding and enhancing social innovation in marginalised rural areas by advancing the state-of-the-art in social innovation and connected governance mechanisms in agriculture and forestry sectors and in rural development in general. This objective will be achieved by blending diverse theoretical positions into a coherent explanation of spatial variability of social innovation, encompassing its empirical diversity (complexities and various dimensions), co-constructing a novel evaluative toolkit, and developing improved knowledge of determinants of success in order to answer the question of how to support enhanced governance and social innovations, addressing specificities and priorities of social needs and new social relationships and collaborations, especially in marginalised rural areas across the EU, Associated States and other countries, with a particular focus on the Mediterranean region, including non-EU Mediterranean countries. In this territorial context, the specific objectives of SIMRA include:

1. A systematic theoretical framework and a systematic operational framework developed for categorising, understanding, and operationalising social innovation in different settings and across scales.
2. A categorisation/classification (‘catalogue of diversity’) of the social innovations observable in rural areas considering the varying specificities in terms of social needs, priorities and social relationships/collaboration types etc.
3. An integrated set of methods developed for the evaluation of social innovation and its impacts in rural areas across the target region.
4. A co-constructed evaluation will be carried out (by academic and practice community) of success factors for social innovations across selected case studies (CSs),
5. New/improved knowledge of social innovations and novel governance mechanisms coming from the analysis (primarily CSs),
6. Collaborative learning and networking opportunities created and innovative actions (IAs) launched by integrating,

Official website

Partners – SIMRA Social Innovation in Marginalised Rural Areas (simra-h2020.eu)

• Project Coordinator: James Hutton Institute
• Duration: 2016 Apr –  2020 Mar

Το άρθρο Horizon 2020 | SIMRA: Social Innovation in Marginalised Rural Areas εμφανίστηκε πρώτα στο Ae4ria.

The BlueMed SRIA: The BLUEMED Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (BLUEMED SRIA) provides the tool for all public and private stakeholders involved in the development of the BLUEMED Initiative. The BLUEMED SRIA outlines a set of key challenges for the Mediterranean and particularly knowledge gaps, specific activities enabling the blue growth as well as measures for capacity creation and skills’ enhancement.

BlueMed Platforms: Public dialogue with concerned national stakeholders is essential for implementing the objectives of the BLUEMED Initiative and in particular for the monitoring and the update process of the SRIA. As a tool to ensure constant consultation, four thematic Platforms at Mediterranean level will be created.

The BLUEMED Coordination and Support Action (CSA) has been funded by the European Commission within the H2020 framework programme and it aims at supporting the implementation of the BLUEMED Initiative.

Project Website: www.bluemed-initiative.eu

Project Coordinator: Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR), Italy

Funded by: European Commission

Call: Horizon 2020 – BG-13-2016, grant agreement No 727453

Budget: € 3,000,000.00

Start date 1 October 2016 – End date 31 March 2021

Supported by the BLUEMED CSA (GA 727453) funded by the European Commission – DG Research and Innovation

Το άρθρο H2020 | BLUEMED CSA εμφανίστηκε πρώτα στο Ae4ria.

Funding body: Ministry of Agriculture, Rural Development and Environment, Cyprus

Coordinator: ALA Planning Partnership

Duration: 2016-2018

Project Researchers: Professor Phoebe Koundouri, Dr. Stella Tsani

Το άρθρο Integrated Management Plan for Cyprus Coastal Waters εμφανίστηκε πρώτα στο Ae4ria.