This section presents all past projects related to Ca' Foscari's Global Challenges. To discover the on-going projects, please visit the page Projects.
Cohesion in further developing and innovating SHARE across all 28 member countries
The population ageing issue represents a key challenge in the EU since it affects ageing-related policies such as those for pensions, healthcare and long-term health reforms. The EU-funded SHARE-COHESION project is a research infrastructure that aims to better understand the challenges of the ageing process in the EU Member States. The main purpose of the project is to collect excellent data combining transdisciplinary, longitudinally and strict cross-national comparability that can be used for research. The results will allow a cross-national comparison of the social, health and economic status of EU citizens over 50 years of age and permit a comparative estimation of ageing-related policies that will support development and innovation programmes.
Website
Researcher: Agar Brugiavini
Duration: 01/10/2019 - 30/09/2023
Cultural-E: Plus Energy Buildings
Cultural-E is a EU-funded project, which aims to define modular and replicable solutions for Plus Energy Buildings (PEBs), accounting for climate and cultural differences, while engaging all key players involved in the building life cycle. Cultural-E will develop technologies and solution sets that are tailorable to specific contexts and energy demands, as well as performing a comprehensive optimisation of the value/cost ratio of Plus Energy Buildings. Sets of design-for-assembly technologies will be developed through a careful mapping of European climates, building archetypes, and cultural energy habits. We are going beyond the state-of-the-art by maximising the share of the demand covered by renewable sources, towards zero emissions in the operational phase.
Project website / EU Cordis database
Researcher: Wilmer Pasut
Duration: 01/10/2019 - 30/09/2024
Funding: Horizon 2020 Industrial Leadership - Leadership in enabling and industrial technologies - Advanced manufacturing and processing
RECEIPT - REmote Climate Effects and their Impact on European sustainability, Policy and Trade
As the world warms and extreme weather becomes unpredictable, a globalised Europe may be exposed to highly unexpected impacts from climate extremes anywhere on the planet. And the economic impact will be devastating. Europe could pay a heavy price for its globalised climate exposure. The EU-funded RECEIPT project will map connections between European socio-economic activities and remote climatic hazards. The aim is to provide quantitative information on the European risks from remote climatic events. The project’s key deliverables include a map of global hotspots of remote areas with climatic features relevant for Europe, and scientific narratives describing the impact on Europe’s food security, financial sector, international development and coastal infrastructure. It will deliver a Europe-wide socio-economic risk assessment showing the differences between high-end and moderate climate change conditions.
Project website / EU Cordis database
Researcher: Antonio Marcomini
Duration: 01/09/2019 - 31/08/2023
Funding: Horizon 2020 Societal Challenges - Climate action, Environment, Resource Efficiency and Raw Materials
Beyond EPICA Oldest Ice Core
The project "BEYOND EPICA - Beyond EPICA Oldest Ice Core: 1,5 Myr of greenhouse gas – climate feedbacks" will recover the first ever ice core record reaching beyond 1 million years (1 Myr) ago, extending our knowledge on climate and greenhouse gas forcing to 1.5 Myr, past the change in climate dynamics known as the Mid-Pleistocene Transition, where glacial/interglacial cycles changed from a 40,000 to a 100,000 yr cyclicity. This is a longstanding aim of international ice core science, and is eagerly awaited by the entire palaeoclimate discipline and the wider climate community. The overarching scientific goal driving BE-OIC is to obtain the first stratigraphically undisturbed, high-resolution ice-core record of climate and environmental changes over the last 1.5 Myr, and use it to elucidate the role of slow parts of the climate system (carbon cycle, ice sheets) in climate change. By obtaining for the first time ever a continuous ice core extending up to the last 1.5 Myr, we will cover the Mid Pleistocene Transition (MPT, from approximately 1.2 Myr to 0.9 Myr before present).
Project website / EU Cordis database
Researcher: Barbara Stenni
Duration: 01/06/2019 - 31/05/2025
Funding: Horizon 2020
PARIS REINFORCE - Delivering on the Paris Agreement: A demand-driven, integrated assessment modelling approach
PARIS REINFORCE aims to underpin climate policymaking with authoritative scientific processes and results, and enhance the science-policy interface, in light of the Paris Agreement and associated challenges. In particular, the aim is to develop a novel, demand-driven, IAM-oriented assessment framework for effectively supporting the design and assessment of climate policies in the EU as well as in other major emitters and selected less emitting/developed countries, in respect to the Paris Agreement objectives. Building on an exhaustive facilitative dialogue and a strong ensemble of complementary -in terms of mathematical structure, geographical, sectoral and focus coverage- integrated assessment, energy system and sectoral models, we will create an open-access and transparent data exchange platform, I2AM PARIS, in order to support the effective implementation of Nationally Determined Contributions, the preparation of future action pledges, the development of 2050 decarbonisation strategies, and the reinforcement of the 2023 Global Stocktake. The project also seeks to enhance the legitimacy of the scientific processes in support of climate policymaking, by introducing an innovative stakeholder inclusion framework and improving the transparency of the employed models, methods and tools. PARIS REINFORCE will introduce innovative integrative processes, in which IAMs are further coupled with well-established methodological frameworks, in order to improve the robustness of modelling outcomes against different types of uncertainties.
Project website / EU Cordis database
Researcher: Carlo Carraro
Duration: 01/06/2019 - 31/05/2025
Funding: Horizon 2020 Societal Challenges - Climate action, Environment, Resource Efficiency and Raw Materials
Building resilience of society to natural disasters
There has been an explosion of resilience-based methods and tools in the literature and practice to address community resilience, but the development of comprehensive taxonomy and quantification tools to value chains is still lacking. Moreover, understanding the barriers to the adoption of resilience thinking through project life cycle is of crucial importance. Thsi is the aim of teh project "Building resilience of society to natural disasters: improved methodologies and solutions for Italy and USA". The ultimate result is a resilience based approach that quickly and efficiently improves cognitive decision making and trust with institutional players who must address a wide scope of adverse events. Both PIs are part of significant national and international projects, including chairing the 2019 Fifth World Congress on Risk, in Cape Town, and will be able to use their projects to build significant new collaboration of the two countries.
Researcher: Andrea Critto
Duration: 18/04/2019 - 31/12/2022
Cross-sectoral cooperation in culture and creative industry
The Culture and Creative Industry (CCI) sector lacks a transnational and cross-sectoral shared vision on what could be its contribution to economic and social growth in central Europe, along with a cooperation system to foster innovation processes. COCO4CCI project (Culture and Creative Industries Cooperation Collider) will build capacities for cross-sectoral cooperation in advanced manufacturing (AVM), by mapping CCI potentials aimed to create a transnational CCI collider network. A training programme will accompany facilitators in technology development, future trends setting and a mind-set definition in advanced manufacturing.
Website
Researcher: Giovanni Vaia
Duration: 01/04/2019 - 31/03/2022
Time Machine: Big data of the past for the future of Europe
The project Time Machine will give Europe the technology to strengthen its identity against globalisation, populism and increased social exclusion, by turning its history and cultural heritage into a living resource for co-creating its future. The FET Flagship will develop a large-scale digitisation and computing infrastructure mapping millennia of European historical and geographical evolution, transforming kilometres of archives, large collections from museums and libraries, and geo-historical datasets into a distributed digital information system. To succeed, a series of fundamental breakthroughs are targeted in Artificial Intelligence and ICT, making Europe the leader in the extraction and analysis of Big Data of the Past.
Time Machine will bring a new era of open access to sources, where past and on-going research are open science. A dissemination programme aims to further strengthen the rapidly growing ecosystem, currently counting 95 research institutions, most prestigious European cultural heritage associations, large enterprises and innovative SMEs, influential business and civil society associations, and international and national institutional bodies.
Project website / EU Cordis database
Researcher: Dorit Raines
Duration: 01/03/2019 - 29/02/2020
Funding: Horizon 2020 Excellent Science: Future and Emerging Technologies (FET)
Nano-region: innovation through nanotechnologies
Nano-Region ("Una rete aperta per l'innovazione attraverso le nanotecnologie") aims at developing a network of research centres and parks with a nano-technological vocation focused on promoting technology transfer. The network, aimed at businesses, will offer access to enabling technologies and contribute to creating a new culture of innovation, through a programme of targeted open events, a consultancy service, and feasibility studies, responding to the needs expressed by individual businesses and stimulating the creation of new products, markets and businesses.
Website
Researcher: Alvise Benedetti
Duration: 01/02/2019 - 31/03/2022