This section presents all past projects related to Ca' Foscari's Global Challenges. To discover the on-going projects, please visit the page Projects.
ESG Factors and Climate Change for Credit Analysis and Rating
The aim of the ESG-Credit.eu project is to implement a methodology to include ESG (Environmental, social, and corporate governance) criteria and climate change factors into credit analysis and ratings. Given that ESG factors measure the firm’s sustainability and its ethical skills, the project investigates how those factors affect the creditworthiness of a firm measured by credit ratings over time. Moreover, we include in the analysis the impact that climate change could exert over a firm belonging to a certain industry. The expected result of the ESG-Credit.eu project is to introduce augmented credit ratings which include ESG factors and climate change scenarios.
Website
Researcher: Monica Billio
Duration: 01/12/2019 - 30/11/2022
REBALANCE - Reframing the mutual influence among large companies and democracies
Rebalance project seeks to provide new insights, resources, events, and learning materials to help foster a rebalancing of capitalism and democracy. Democracy is under threat from capitalism. Companies are undermining democratic processes both at home and abroad. Among other things, they engage in excessive lobbying, violations of basic human rights, and collusion with repressive governments. But businesses and their leaders can also help promote democracy. Indeed, companies can have a positive influence on authoritarian governments, they can protect minorities, or even produce democracy-enhancing products and services. Big and small companies can therefore play a significant part in enabling democratic participation and restoring the rights of citizens.
Project website / EU Cordis database
Researcher: Francesco Zirpoli
Duration: 01/10/2022 - 30/09/2025
Funding: Horizon Europe - Culture, creativity and inclusive society
Monitoring and preventing online hate speech
"IMSyPP – Innovative Monitoring Systems and Prevention Policies of Online Hate Speech" aims to automatically detect hate speech in several languages, to identify triggers, to recommend effective counter narratives, and to propose policies to the European communication regulators. The data will be manually annotated for types of hate speech, and quality carefully controlled. We will develop hate speech models by applying advanced machine learning methods. The models will be deployed in online settings and used to analyze the large amounts of data already collected. This will allow to analyze mechanisms and trends in hate speech, and identify different types of triggers. We will conduct a pilot study on possible counter narratives and develop recommendations.
Website
Researcher: Fabiana Zollo
Duration: 01/03/2020 - 28/02/2022
PollinAction - Actions for boosting pollination in rural and urban areas
The objective of the LIFE funded project PollinAction is to mitigate the pollination crisis by creating a green infrastructure (GI) network, made up of natural and semi-natural areas, in rural and urban landscapes in North-East Italy. This will involve habitat restoration and the implementation of nature-based solutions. The project is mainly aimed at converting arable crops and rural or urban marginal areas into key habitats for pollinators. To reach this objective, it will improve species-poor grasslands and landscape heterogeneity by creating connectivity among rural and urban areas as well as along road infrastructure and riverbanks. LIFE PollinAction will assess the ecosystem conditions and services and will implement payments for ecosystem services (PES) schemes. The definition of an urban planning of compensation measures at local scale will be also considered as well as the design of circular economy processes and close-to-market solutions to boost farmer competitiveness. The project will be replicated in a marginalised and abandoned area in the Aragon region of Spain. This will allow the effectiveness of GI to be evaluated in two areas with opposite dynamics (i.e. specialisation/intensification vs. marginalisation/abandonment).
Project website / EU LIFE Public database
Researcher: Gabriella Buffa
Duration: 01/09/2020 - 31/03/2025
Funding: LIFE
Optimised personalised drug therapies for renal pathologies in type II diabetes
Diseases, co-morbidities, and patients responses to certain therapies are the result of a complicated interplay of numerous factors. The relationships defining how this intricate network of inputs leads to various outputs is extremely difficult to derive using conventional means. Thanks to Big Data, high-level applied mathematics and computers, the EU-funded DC-Ren project (Drug combinations for rewriting trajectories of renal pathologies in type II diabetes) is developing a tool that will take all this and more into account, and enable optimised personalised drug therapies for significantly enhanced outcomes. The team is focusing on diabetic kidney disease, a common co-morbidity of type 2 diabetes often accompanied by cardiovascular disease. Currently, the drug cocktails targeting it produce highly varied responses. Thanks to its vast patient database, advanced experimental techniques and dynamical systems theory, DC-ren is developing a completely new and widely applicable computational framework for decision support.
Website
Researcher: Debora Slanzi
Duration: 01/01/2020 - 31/12/2024
EeMMiP - Energy efficient Mortgage Market Implementation Plan
EeMMIP responds to the objectives of the EU in the areas of sustainable finance and climate change and aims to influence the entire value chain, from consumer to bond investor, stimulating mentality change and securing energy efficiency in market attitudes and best practices both in Europe and globally. The Project conducts an analysis of the current market systems relevant to the development of an EEM market and establishes demonstrators to support the demonstration of the end-to-end customer journey and EEM life-cycle. It will establish market-based governance and an EEM Label to support recognition of and confidence in EEM and facilitate access to quality information for market participants.
Website
Researcher: Monica Billio
Duration: 01/09/2020 - 31/08/2022
NewTechAqua: A sustainable, resilient and innovative European aquaculture
"NewTechAqua - New Technologies, Tools and Strategies for a Sustainable, Resilient and Innovative European Aquaculture" intends to expand and diversify EU production of finfish, molluscs and microalgae by developing and validating technologically advanced, resilient and sustainable new solutions. The organizational approach of NewTechAqua is to group the solutions in 6 different categories: feed, Industry 4.0, sustainable farming, genetics, new species and new products. They are validated on conventional (Atlantic salmon, rainbow trout, seabass and seabream) and emerging (greater amberjack, meagre, Senegalese sole and grey mullet) finfish species, molluscs (Pacific oyster, mussel) and microalgae.
Project website / EU Cordis database
Researcher: Roberto Pastres
Duration: 01/01/2020 - 31/12/2023
Funding: Horizon 2020 Societal Challenges - Food security, sustainable agriculture and forestry, marine, maritime and inland water research, and the bioeconomy
Transparent assessment of energy efficiency in ESG ratings
TranspArEEnS (Mainstreaming transparent assessment of energy efficiency in environmental social governance ratings) objective is to enhance standardized disclosure of EE and ESG information at firm level, to foster access to long term financing (e.g. via securitization) and better risk assessment, while taming the risk of greenwashing. TranspArEEnS will achieve its goal by means of five measurable objectives that foresee the collaboration of project partners from academia, financial policy and industry: 1. develop a standardized large-scale EE-ESG database; 2. develop a standardized EE-ESG SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises) survey; 3. develop standardized EE-ESG rating; 4. support long term EE-securitization; 5. dissemination and capacity building.
Project website / EU Cordis database
Researcher: Monica Billio
Duration: 01/06/2021 - 30/11/2023
Funding: Horizon 2020 Societal Challenges - Secure, clean and efficient energy
Reconstructing the Past: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics meet Cultural Heritage (RePAIR)
The main goal of the RePAIR project is to develop innovative technology to virtually eliminate one of the most laborious and frustrating steps in archaeological research, namely the physical reconstruction of shattered artefacts. In fact, countless vases, amphorae, frescoes and other ancient artifacts, around the world, have not survived intact and have been extracted from excavation sites as large collections of fragments, many of which are damaged, worn out or entirely missing.
Project website / EU Cordis database
Researcher: Marcello Pelillo
Duration: 01/06/2021 - 31/12/2024
Funding: Horizon 2020 Excellent Science - Future and Emerging Technologies (FET)