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Objective: Air quality in Europe is still facing a continued wide-spread of exceedances, particularly regarding PM, NOx and O3. The 2008 Air Quality Directive requests Member States (MS) to design local and regional plans and assess their impacts on air quality and human health. MS have therefore developed and applied a wide range of modelling methods to cope with these obligations. Today, with the revision of the EU air quality policy pending, there is the need to consolidate and assess the research results in the field and to make them accessible to policy makers. This is the main aim of APPRAISAL project, split in the following objectives: -Undertake on overall review of the methodologies used in different countries, from the simple (scenario analysis) to the more comprehensive (cost-benefit, cost-effectiveness analysis). This would include evaluating top-down and bottom-up approaches to systematically analyse their strengths and weaknesses and to identify key areas to be addressed by further research. The result would be captured in a readily updatable, user friendly relational data base. -Design an integrated assessment (IA) modelling framework where existing components are efficiently inter-connected, produce guidelines describing the key components of best practices. A number of test cases will be explored to confirm the robustness of the guidelines in practice. -Communicate with key stake-holders and in particular to policy-makers the state-of-the-art scientific knowledge on emission abatement assessment. APPRAISAL includes 15 highly experienced groups working on both air quality and health impacts assessment. Partners come from all over Europe to guarantee the review process representativeness. A group of stakeholders will closely be connected to the Consortium to ensure a direct line of communication with key policy makers. APPRAISAL will contribute to improved knowledge on regional and local IA methodologies and will support the revision of EU air quality policies.
The proposed regulation concerning the registration, evaluation, authorisation and restriction of chemicals (REACH) requires demonstration of the safe manufacture of chemicals and their safe use throughout the supply chain. There is therefore a strong need to strengthen and advance human and environmental risk assessment knowledge and practices with regard to chemicals, in accord with the precautionary principle. The goal of the project OSIRIS is to develop integrated testing strategies (ITS) fit for REACH that enable to significantly increase the use of non-testing information for regulatory decision making, and thus minimise the need for animal testing. To this end, operational procedures will be developed, tested and disseminated that guide a transparent and scientifically sound evaluation of chemical substances in a risk-driven, context-specific and substance-tailored (RCS) manner. The envisaged decision theory framework includes alternative methods such as chemical and biological read-across, in vitro results, in vivo information on analogues, qualitative and quantitative structure-activity relationships, thresholds of toxicological concern and exposure-based waiving, and takes into account cost-benefit analyses as well as societal risk perception. It is based on the new REACH paradigm to move away from extensive standard testing to a more intelligent, substance-tailored approach. The work will be organised in five interlinked research pillars (chemical domain, biological domain, exposure, integration strategies and tools, case studies), with a particular focus on more complex, long-term and high-cost endpoints. Case studies will demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the new ITS methodologies, and provide guidance in concrete form. To ensure optimal uptake of the results obtained in this project, end-users in industry and regulatory authorities will be closely involved in monitoring and in providing specific technical contributions to this project.
Knowledge of the solar energy resource has been generated over the past years within several European and national projects. Large steps forward have been made for the benefit of research, renewable energy industry, policy making and the environment. Nevertheless, these multiple efforts have led to a fragmentation and uncoordinated access: different sources of information and solar radiation products are now available, but uncertainty about their quality remains. At the same time, communities of users lack common understanding how to exploit the developed knowledge. The project MESoR aims at removing the uncertainty and improving the management of the solar energy resource knowledge. The results of past and present large-scale initiatives in Europe, will be integrated, standardised and disseminated in a harmonised way to facilitate their effective exploitation by stakeholders. This coordination action will contribute to preparation of the future roadmap for R&D and strengthening the European position in the international field. The project includes activities in user guidance (benchmarking of models and data sets; handbook; best practices), unification of access to information (use of advanced information technologies; offering one-stop-access to several databases), connecting to other initiatives (INSPIRE of the EU, POWER of the NASA, SHC and PVPS of the IEA, GMES/GEO) and to related scientific communities (energy, meteorology, geography, medicine, ecology), and dissemination (stakeholders involvement, future R&D, communication).
Objective: The overall goal of HySafe is to contribute to the safe transition to a more sustainable development in Europe by facilitating the safe introduction of hydrogen as an energy carrier of the future. The objectives of the network include: -To contribute to common understanding and approaches for addressing hydrogen safety issues; -To integrate experience and knowledge on hydrogen safety in Europe; -To integrate and harmonise the fragmented research base; -To provide contributions to EU safety requirements, standards and codes of practice; -To contribute into improved technical culture to handle hydrogen as an energy carrier; -To promote public acceptance of hydrogen technologies. These objectives are to be achieved by: -Developing, harmonising and validating methodologies for safety assessments; -Undertaking safety and risk studies; -Establishment of a hydrogen incident and accident database; -Creation of a set of specialised research facilities; -Identification of a set of specialised complimentary codes and models that can be used for safety studies; -Promoting fundamental research necessary to address hydrogen safety issues; -Extracting net outcomes from safety and risk assessment studies as input to EU-legal requirements, standards and codes of practice; -Organizing training and educational programmes on hydrogen safety, including on-line mode (e-Academy); -Disseminating the results through HySafe website, Annual Report on Hydrogen Safety, and Biannual International Symposium on Hydrogen Safety. HySafe network addresses the medium and long term objectives of the Priority 6.1 'Sustainable energy systems'. In particular, the HySafe NoE is directly relevant to the objectives of research area 6.1.3.2.2 concerning development of a robust and reliable framework for assessment of the safety of hydrogen technologies.
Objective: This project, as part of a cluster programme (Land Transport by Fuel Cell Technology), intend to develop a gasoline processing unit (composed of a dosing system, a reformer, a de-sulphuriser and a CO cleanup unit, with a proper control system based on CO and O2 sensors), capable of producing an H2-rich stream, pure enough for SPFC-feed purposes (low content of CO and sulphur compounds). Prime Contractor: Johnso Matthey plc, Technology Centre; Reading.
Objective: Human use and exploitation of the biosphere is increasing at such a pace and scale that the sustainability of major ecosystems is threatened, and may not be able to continue to function in ways that are vital to the existence of humanity. Re-framing environmental resource use has led to the emergence of the concepts of ecosystem services (ES) and natural capital (NC). This discourse indicates not only a change in our understanding of planetary functions at the ecosystem scale, but also a fundamental shift in how we perceive the relationship between people and the ecosystems on which they depend. OPERAs (OPERATIONAL POTENTIAL OF ECOSYSTEMS RESEARCH APPLICATIONS) aims to improve understanding of how ES/NC contribute to human well-being in different social-ecological systems in inland and coastal zones, in rural and urban areas, related to different ecosystems including forests and fresh water resources. The OPERAs research will establish whether, how and under what conditions the ES/NC concepts can move beyond the academic domain towards practical implementation in support of sustainable ecosystem management. OPERAs will use a meta-analysis (systematic review) of existing ES/NC practice to identify knowledge gaps and requirements for new policy options and instruments. New insights, and improved or novel tools and instruments, will be tested in practice in exemplar case studies in a range of socio-ecological systems across locales, sectors, scales and time. Throughout this iterative process, available resources and tools will be brought together in a Resource Hub, a web-based portal that will be co-developed by scientists and practitioners representing different interests and perspectives on the development, communication and implementation of the ES/NC concepts. The Resource Hub will provide the main interface between OPERAs and a Community of Excellence (CoE) for continued practice that will benefit from OPERAs outcomes.
Objective: The RAMSES project will develop a rigorous, analytical framework for the implementation of adaptation strategies and measures in EU and international cities. It will develop a set of innovative methods and tools that will quantify the impacts of climate change and the costs and benefits of adaptation to climate change and thus provide the evidence to enable policy makers to design adaptation strategies. It integrates the assessment of impacts and costs to provide a much more coherent approach than currently exists. As major centres of population, economic importance, greenhouse gas emissions and infrastructure, RAMSES focuses on adaptation issues in cities. RAMSES will deliver: 1. A strategic frame for evidence-based adaptation decision-making. A pragmatic and standardised framework for decision making using comparable climate change impact assumptions, impact and adaptation costs while taking account of uncertainty. This will apply and combine smart and unconventional scientific methodologies. 2. Multi-level analysis as local administrative units, cities will be used to develop adaptation (and more generally sustainable development) strategies from the bottom-up/top-down, that can be aggregated to consider costs at the national, EU and international levels. 3. Quantification of adaptation costs a framework for assessment of full economic costs and benefits of adaptation (to date a woefully under-researched area). 4. Policy relevance and acceptance of adaptation measures city case studies and stakeholder engagement will ensure the relevance of the framework for policy makers and ensure adaptation measures become better accepted by other stakeholders. The frameworks will be converted into a user-friendly guide for stakeholders who need to prioritize adaptation and mitigation decisions. This reduces costs and enhances understanding and acceptance of adaptation. The data will be fed into the European Clearinghouse Mechanism to increase transparency/stakeholder access.
Sustainable governance of our biological resources demands reliable scientific knowledge to be accessible and applicable to the needs of society. The fact that current biodiversity observation systems and environmental datasets are unbalanced in coverage and not well integrated brings the need of a new system which will facilitate access to this knowledge and will effectively improve the work in the field of biodiversity observation in general. In light of the new Intergovernmental science-policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), such a network and approach are imperative for attaining efficient processes of data collation, analysis and provisioning to stakeholders. A system that facilitates open access to taxonomic data is essential because it will allow a sustainable provision of high quality data to partners and users, including e-science infrastructure projects as well as global initiatives on biodiversity informatics. EU BON proposes an innovative approach in terms of integration of biodiversity information system from on-ground to remote sensing data, for addressing policy and information needs in a timely and customized way. The project will reassure integration between social networks of science and policy and technological networks of interoperating IT infrastructures. This will enable a stable new open-access platform for sharing biodiversity data and tools to be created. EU BONs 30 partners from 18 countries are members of networks of biodiversity data-holders, monitoring organisations, and leading scientific institutions. EU BON will build on existing components, in particular GBIF, LifeWatch infrastructures, and national biodiversity data centres.
Objective: Despite improved understanding of the links between ecosystem health, provision of ecosystem services and human well-being, further conceptual and empirical work is needed to make the ideas of ecosystem services (ESS) and natural capital (NC) operational. OpenNESS will therefore develop innovative and practical ways of applying them in land, water and urban management: it will identify how, where and when the concepts can most effectively be applied to solve problems. To do this, it will work with public and private decision makers and stakeholders to better understand the range of policy and management problems faced in different case study contexts (ranging across locales, sectors, scales and time). OpenNESS will consolidate, refine and develop a range of spatially-explicit methods to identify, quantify and value ecosystem services, and will develop hybrid assessment methods. It will also explore the effectiveness of financial and governance mechanisms, such as payments for ecosystem services, habitat banking, biodiversity offsetting and land and ecosystem accounting. These types of interventions have potential for sustaining ESS and NC, and for the design of new economic and social investment opportunities. Finally, OpenNESS will assess how current regulatory frameworks and other institutional factors at EU and national levels enable or constrain consideration of ESS and NC, and identify the implications for issues related to well-being, governance and competitiveness. OpenNESS will analyse the knowledge that is needed to define ESS and NC in the legal, administrative and political contexts that are relevant to the EU. The work will deliver a menu of multi-scale solutions to be used in real life situations by stakeholders, practitioners, and decision makers in public and business organizations, by providing new frameworks, data-sets, methods and tools that are fit-for-purpose and sensitive to the plurality of decision-making contexts.
Objective: The recycling business is traditionally dominated by SMEs. In the last 5 years a general trend in the electronics recycling sector to bigger companies is very visible. Multinational, multi-sector companies are buying several smaller recyclers every year. Hence the previous project HydroWEEE (03/200902/2012) dealt with the recovery of rare and precious metals from WEEE. The idea has been to develop a mobile plant using hydrometallurgical processes to extract metals like yttrium, indium, lithium, cobalt, zinc, copper, gold, silver, nickel, lead, tin in a high purity. By making this plant mobile several SMEs can benefit from the same plant. By making the processes universal several fractions (lamps, CRTs, LCDs, printed circuit boards and Li-batteries) can be treated in the same mobile plant in batches. This reduces the minimum quantities and necessary investments. In addition these innovative HydroWEEE processes produce pure enough materials that can be directly used for electroplating and other applications. The objective of HydroWEEE Demo is to build 2 industrial, real-life demonstration plants (1 stationary and 1 mobile) in order to test the performance and prove the viability of the processes from an integrated point of view (technical, economical, operational, social) including the assessment of its risks (incl. health) and benefits to the society and the environment as well as remove the barriers for a wide market uptake. Finally the previously developed processes of extracting yttrium, indium, lithium, cobalt, zinc, copper, gold, silver, nickel, lead, tin will be improved and new processes to recover additional metals which are still in this fractions (Cerium, Platinum, Palladium, Europium, Lanthanum, Terbium, ) as well as the integrated treatment of solid and liquid wastes will be developed. Summarized HydroWEEE Demo will boost European competitiveness by applying novel processes for improved resource efficiency by extracting rare and precious metals.
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