Cities are places of social innovation and engines of economic growth. They attract dynamic groups of society, they provide vast opportunities of inter-action, communication and exchange of knowledge, and they thereby lay the foundation for attracting large shares of R&D investment and an innovative service sector. Thus, social integration is directly linked with economic prosperity of cities. This is true for European and Chinese urban development but especially relevant for China as, promoted by vari-ous levels of governments, the country is transitioning from a less urban to a more urbanized society with increasingly intensified land use and higher quality of life. One of the greatest challenges facing Chinese urbanisation is how to best design and turn cities into intelligent, socially integrative and sustainable environments. TRANS-URBAN-EU-CHINA addresses this key challenge. According to the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20120), China will “redouble” its “ef-forts to improve urban planning, development, and management” and to “improve living environments so that people can enjoy a more secure, relaxing, and satisfying city life”. The (Chinese) National New Urbanisation Plan (2014-2020) provides strong policy support for strategic decision-making and implementation of sustainable development approaches, aiming to be innovative, coordinated, green, open and shared. Good practices and methods from Europe in terms of social inclusiveness, cultural dynamics and eco-nomic viability have proven to be very significant to China, but Chinese cities need new insights to implement, scale up and transfer these practices in their own operational realities. This can also pro-duce positive learning effects on the European side, and will influence the European research agenda on sustainable urbanisation. On this background, the key objective of TRANS-URBAN-EU-CHINA is to help policy makers, urban authorities, real estate developers, public service providers and citizens in China to create socially inte-grative cities in an environmentally friendly and financially viable way. Moreover, it will help urban stakeholders in Europe to reflect and eventually reconsider their approaches towards sustainable ur-banisation. In order to achieve the main objective, the project will • Develop a systematic knowledge base on transition experiences in Europe and China in a com-parative way, and make key results publicly available as a book addressing practitioners, the scien-tific community and students; • Advance tools and measures to support transition in cooperation with local stakeholders and citi-zens, and test them in two Living Labs located in Chinese cities with the purpose to derive opera-tional and evidence-based knowledge about urban transformative capacity; • Elaborate related recommendations to support transition towards socially integrative cities, discuss them with representatives of 60 Reference Cities and a wider stakeholder community, and dissem-inate them through a variety of channels, including a web-based compendium of tested tools and measures adapted to local socio-economic, cultural and political specificities; the compendium will include policy briefs, guidelines, methods, and good practice examples for the development of so-cially integrative cities and for strengthening transformative capacities of local stakeholders. The project focuses on: (a) community building and place-making in neighbourhoods; (b) bridging the planning-implementation gap in eco and smart cities; (c) land use planning and land management in new urban expansion and urban renewal areas, and (d) transition pathways to sustainable urban plan-ning and governance. With 8 European and 6 Chinese expert organisations on socially integrative cities, TRANS-URBAN-EU-CHINA will combine the best of both worlds to create new insights, practices and role models in sustainable urban transitions in China. The Chinese team of partners from government ag

The RRI-Practice project will bring together a unique group of international experts in RRI to understand the barriers and drivers to the successful implementation of RRI both in European and global contexts; to promote reflection on organisational structures and cultures of research conducting and research funding organisations; and to identify and support best practices to facilitate the uptake of RRI in organisations and research programmes. The project will review RRI related work in 22 research conducting and research funding organisations and will develop RRI Outlooks outlining RRI objectives, targets and indicators for each organisation. It will involve comparative analysis of the five EC keys of RRI locating these within broader, evolving discourses on RRI. Within each identified RRI dimension the project will analyse how the topic has developed in particular social and institutional contexts, how the RRI concept and configuration meshes, overlaps and challenges existing organisational practices and cultures, leading to an analysis of the barriers and drivers associated with operationalising and implementing RRI. 12 national case studies will allow for in depth studies of, and dialogue with, the included organisations, and will form the basis for systematic analysis and comparison of drivers, barriers and best practices on each dimension of RRI. The project design also allows analysis of such drivers, barriers and best practices related to national and organisational characteristics, safeguarding the need to take into account diversity and pluralism in regional RRI programs. These analyses will ultimately end up in recommendations to the EC about effective, efficient and targeted strategies for increasing RRI uptake in different kinds of organisations and national cultures, in Europe and in selected major S&T intensive economies worldwide. The project will also develop user-friendly guidance aimed directly at research and funding organisations themselves.

AIOLIA gives a robust 3-tier response to the complex challenges posed by the need to operationally interpret the EU AI Act and global AI regulation. (1) Recognizing the gap between ethical values and their practical application in engineering, AIOLIA pioneers a bottom-up approach to operationalize AI ethics with regard to human condition and behaviour. Following a selection of real-world use cases, AIOLIA translates high-level principles into actionable and contextual guidelines co-created by leading academic, policy, and ethics-aware industrial partners who represent diverse professional and geographic European and international contexts. (2) AIOLIA's commitment to context-sensitivity is deepened by crafting modular, inclusive training materials following the ADDIE methodology designed to cater to diverse learning needs. Hosted on the Embassy of Good Science, AIOLIA materials will range from lectures, videos, and mock reviews to such innovative formats as podcasts, Tiktoks, and a chatbot teaching AI ethics. (3) AIOLIA's outreach is amplified by encompassing 7 research ethics and integrity networks and 3 prominent computer science networks. This strategic alignment enables us to effectively recruit training participants and disseminate human-centric ethics guidelines to a wide spectrum of stakeholders, from ethics experts to early-stage researchers and policymakers worldwide. Resolutely European, AIOLIA's vision propagates beyond EU, embracing global cooperation with leading universities and think tanks in China, South Korea, Japan, and Canada. Utilizing UNESCO platform with its reach to Africa and South Asia, AIOLIA’s guidelines evolve into an analytic toolbox for key international AI dialogues and processes. This global perspective ensures that AIOLIA's impact is not only significant but also sustainable, contributing to fair scientific cooperation and providing concrete and culturally informed ethics instruments to shape the next generation of AI systems.