The northern coast of Peru has been experiencing anomalously warm (4-5C) sea surface temperatures (SST). These high SSTs have produced intense and prolonged rainfall that has resulted in extensive flooding, and on the 26th March 2017, the Rio Piura in northern Peru burst its banks leading to loss of life, displacement of people and damaged infrastructure. Peru is intimately linked to the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO): fishermen first identified El Niño in the late 19th Century off the north coast of Peru. The phenomenon driving this current acute rainfall event has been dubbed 'El Niño Costero' or Coastal El Niño, but is not El Niño per se as it is not being driven by anomalous SSTs in the central Pacific (Niño 3.4), which generally defines the onset of El Niño. Rather it represents more local (Niño1+2) El Niño-like conditions last known to have occurred in 1925, which is considered the most intense flooding of the 20th Century. Despite Peru's preparedness for the global El Niño in 2016, the country appears to be overwhelmed by the sudden shift from La Niña drought to the intense rainfall of El Niño Costero, suggesting this type of locally driven El Niño event has hitherto been overlooked. It is essential to establish a record of El Niño Costero alongside ENSO, especially as the 1925 event was the most extreme on record. If local SSTs cause El Niño-like conditions and play an important part in climate dynamics in northern Peru, but have so far been overlooked, then we don't have a full understanding of tropical Pacific climate change. Critical to understanding equatorial Pacific climate change are records of extreme flood events that reflect El Niño-type behavior, and in particular how El Niño Costero fits within the wider climate picture. This proposal is based on a unique opportunity to quantify and determine the dynamics and evolution of a large magnitude flood, and to use its sedimentary signature, coupled to climatological data over the last 120 years, to unequivocally fingerprint and calibrate past El Niño-type events in recent lake sediments. We will (a) undertake a geophysical survey of lakes in the Rio Piura catchment that act as repositories of flood-waters and sediments, and we will identify modern flood sediments and determine their depth and extent; (b) recover and survey surface sediments related to flooding to characterize their flood signature using grain size, geochemistry and mineral magnetics; (c) recover and date short sediment cores from our survey lakes and directly compare the flood signature of the 2017 El Niño Costero to the 1925 event, as well as putting it in the context of 20th Century ENSO variability. Our study will provide a framework for reconstructing El Niño-related flood events from lake sediments over the recent past in northern Peru, but has the potential to establish a much longer-term (Holocene and older) history of all El Niño variability in the region.

INCHIPE addresses the needs of third partner countries (Chile and Peru) to foster the internationalisation of its Universities (HEI). Its main objectives are: to increase the capacities of non-European countries (NEC) HEI in international cooperation, to contribute to the improvement of international networking; and increase and exploit the potentials in Teaching, Learning & Research (TLR).The activities within the project foresee the strengthening of strategic, infrastructure and human capacities in the 4 HEI of NPE as a model for the development and modernisation of institutional management of internationalisation in NEC.Specific objectives will be achieved through carefully planned actions at an institutional, national and multi-regional level, including the implementation of training and strategic infrastructure; comparative studies and the development of National Recommendation to boost internationalisation in TLR; the creation of a best practice book for HEI on how to improve International Relations policies and management. These actions will be complemented throughout the project life by dissemination and networking activities, including National Roundtables, seminars, networking conferences and a multi-regional educational fair. The consortium includes 8 institutions, of which 3 are European HEI with a vast experience in internationalisation and 4 are HEI in NEC that face challenges on the development of internationalisation strategies.The Project also foresees a library gateway, the creation of Strategic Development Plans for HEI of NEC and the testing of products through cooperation and a pilot mobility framework. The results will be easily transferrable at a regional, national and international level.

Advances in ICTs are opening up new opportunities that impact teaching & learning (T&L) methods in Higher Education (HE). An increasing reliance on “blended models” combining elements of face to face & online modalities in different proportions is emerging, which subsequently have transformed the roles of teachers, students & universities. Despite this wave of innovation over the last decade, many universities around the world are not yet ready for this change and fully prepared for e-learning. For instance, traditional HE’s model in Latin America is still predominant: face to face learning represents 65% of its HE offer.InnovaT aims to modernise HE, enhancing innovation in T&L experiences by promoting the integration of new pedagogies and technologies in LA HEIs; equipping teachers and students with relevant skills for the digital transformation of HE and society worldwide.Expected results & Impact envisaged:• Enhanced teaching capacities in innovative T&L pedagogies and digital skills by delivering training in blended model, combining face to face teacher training with MOOCs and E-learning;• Modernised technical infrastructure of LA HEIs by creating, equipping and putting in operation the InnovaT offices (Innovative Teaching offices): to offer state of art tools to develop digital learning content as well as counseling services on the topic of innovative T• Increased HE-Enterprise cooperation and students learning experience by developing Pilot Classes with real projects with entrepreneurs, preparing the students for innovative thinking in “real life” contexts;• Greater awareness and reach of high-quality training material & publications by providing access to Open Educational Resources and E-Learning to regional and international academic community;• Extended networks between Europe and Latin America, and among Latin American neighbor countries in the topic of teaching & learning innovation by organizing an open International E-Conference.

Peru, Mexico, and Bolivia, as well as other Latin-American countries, hold a vast and rich documentary and bibliographic collections. Preserving and enhancing those collections are key drivers to highlight the complex process to gather and create them, and to further know and maintain the identity and culture of different peoples. However, most of these collections are not well kept, due partly to the lack of specific skills of personnel in charge of keeping it. This differs from Europe where Universities have developed specific curricula to cover this need, and are actively cooperating with other institutions such as libraries to preserve all the document heritage. Hence, our project CODICIS seeks to design, implement and test a specialization course to preserve and manage heritage documentary collections. CODICIS also intends to create or improve labs at the HEIs to preserve and restore document and archive collections. We have set several specific objectives: - To develop a pedagogical and scientific methodology to analyse and intervene the state of documents and bibliographic collections with heritage content- Knowledge transfer from EU HEIs about preserving bibliographic heritage- Capacity building on criteria to preserve, describe, classify and catalogue documentary and library heritage materials. - Providing equipment to the partner HEIs for the correct preservation and academic use of cultural heritage materialsThe project will last 36 months. It will be coordinated by Universidad Católica San Pablo from Arequipa (Peru), involving other 9 partners from Italy, Spain, Mexico, Peru and Bolivia.

UMETECH aims to strengthen the role of Latin American Universities as instruments of social and economic development in the cultural heritage sector through the design and implementation of 4 competence centers on cultural heritage specialised in: smart computing, 3d, big data and human-machine interaction. The competence centres will work in an inegrated network called UMETECH. The network will be developed on the model of NEMECH (New Media for Cultural Heritage competence center) implemented by the University of Florence and will exploit the experiences and researchs results carried out by the University of Bucharest (Big data) and Telecom Lille (3d) and the University of Florence (Smart computing and human-machine interaction). The competence center is conceived asa bridge between HEIs and the territory, in particular with the productive system. It connects research activities with the market and works on the following issues:- Development of products, services and projects in the ICT field applied to cultural heritage enhancement for the local and infra-regional markets and public authorities in charge of cultural heritage policies and cultural sites management- Support and development of business start-ups in the cultural heritage / tourism sector- Promotion of know-how integration on cultural heritage enhancement researches among all HEIs operating in the same geographical area. Each competence center will focus on a specific subject as follows: - Cordoba (Argentina): Mobile, wearable and cloud - Misiones (Argentina): 3D technology- Itapua (Paraguay): SensorsThe major impact of the project is the strengthening of HEIs engagement with the civil society and industry. In particular, the competence centre will promote self-entrepreneurship in the cultural/tourism sector exploitoing the skills/competences/knowledge developed within each competence centre and in the UMETECH network.