<< Background >>Man-made or natural disasters can cause severe damage to individuals, communities, economies, supply chains, and the environment. Moreover, they may trigger secondary disasters, aggravating initial impacts. Such type incidents in the previous decades, clearly illustrate the urgent need to tackle these hazards within the overall frame of inclusive disaster risk management. Furthermore, the cost of disasters worldwide has risen from previous years and continues to grow due to increasing disaster risk as a result of factors such as climate crisis, rapid urbanization, and industrialization. This project will contribute to improving the management of these risks and strengthening resilience. We would like this effort to offer a targeted set of both scientific and practical activities for implementation at national and local levels contribution and to support training and capacity building and to raise awareness of the risks and impacts of man-made and natural disasters.Civil Protection Personnel face important challenges due to the complexity and incidents’ increased demands, while private sector Safety and Security Personnel face relatively same challenges in protecting the indoor estate. Under these circumstances, both Civil Protection and private sector personnel need to be able to evaluate critical issues under complex conditions and make quick and reasonable judgments based on sound scientific knowledge and former experience in order to reduce possibly occurring errors. Therefore, it is important to provide more and diverse training and seek new and improved ways to train target groups that optimize the actual task performance, while minimizing physical danger and financial cost.<< Objectives >>SETOFF Project aims to improve the readiness and occupational safety of both civil protection and private sector Safety and Security Personnel against future crises and emergencies by developing an innovative e-training curriculum based both on a successfully tested and implemented simulation model combined with the latest scientific knowledge and on comprehensive needs analysis. In detail: • Provide high quality training for both civil protection and private sector Safety and Security personnel to increase readiness and actionability• Facilitate and support professionals by validating practices acquired in the field• Identify knowledge and performance gaps through various comprehensive training needs assessments• Develop a common e-training curriculum resulting the cooperation between 4 countries (Greece, Republic of North Macedonia, Belgium & Spain) based on findings gathered from simulations (Discussion Exercises) that will address existing knowledge and performance gaps• Develop an e-platform, accessible from any portable device to host the training modules and develop a community of demanders • Generate new and better simulation scenarios to improve the knowledge database through collaboration of experienced professionals from different countries • Mitigate the resource availability issues, sharing already existing installations among participants of the Project, both on-site and through distance learning• Further use and mainstreaming of a successful training modelNUMBER AND PROFILE OF PARTICIPANTSThe partnership consists of 8 partners from 4 countries: universities and training organizations with expertise in civil protection issues, municipalities, and non-profit research organizations as well as technical consulting service companies. Furthermore, twelve (12) associated Partners recognize the need and potential of this project to enable structured knowledge sharing and facilitate collaboration between practitioners, civil society, and stakeholders in the field of disaster management via the proposed SETOFF online platform and express their interest in support and their intention to actively participate in SETOFF.<< Implementation >>The activities are the following• Comprehensive training needs analysis through literature review, including good practices, target audience, and topic analysis. • Validation of the Partner countries’ needs in terms of knowledge and skills gaps. • Development of training methodology: design and development of collaborative, evidence-based curriculum on simulations, integration of contemporary learning theories and practices, development of learning/training scenarios and lesson plans. • Design and development of the e-training platform.• Conversion of the training material into e-training, hosted in the e-learning segments of the platform.• Validation of the e-training usability and efficiency• Development of retention service skills• Training the appointed trainers on the methodology, modules, and training tools.• Organization and implementation of pilot projects in the 3 Partner countries.• Implementation of the ECVET tools• Assessment of pilots and adjustment of the Project outcomes.METHODOLOGYThe consortium will design, develop, test, implement and disseminate an innovative disaster management training programme/curriculum for both Civil Protection and private sector Safety and Security personnel supported by the e-training platform and the Skills Retention Service. The Project will follow a systematic approach to outcomes development: cycles of design, development, testing, and evaluation to assess usability and functionality. The development of the training program will be based on the adoption of a user-centered approach which requires the target groups’ representatives been involved in all project stages. In addition, it is expected that involving users in the design of the training and of the platform functionalities from the beginning will not only increase the efficiency and usability of e-learning training but will also moderate any resistance to change in adopting the proposed innovative training framework.SETOFF fully respects gender and age representation, as proved by the number of male/female consortium key-personnel, as well as the civic and civil protection Safety and Security Personnel involved in the training.Furthermore, two organizations, the Hellenic Federation of the Deaf and the Panhellenic Association of Paraplegics are associated to SETOFF in order to provide input and experience on Safety and Security procedures of invalid/disabled people at risk. SETOFF is in accordance with EU digital transformation priority as it’s curriculum and training techniques request enhancing digital skills and competences and scale up those already trainers and trainees practice. In accordance with the EU green Deal Communication, the SETOFF Project will tackle green goals related to reduced energy by: -hosting virtual meetings where possible-for the in-person training, travelling green and staying at hotels that respect building and renovating policy -reducing CO production and saving energy through the appropriate webtools, use of drives to reduce emails, reducing printed documents and using upcycled or recycled materials where possible SETOFF been an international Project aspires to respect language diversity and promote multilingualism by:-translating curriculum in all Partners languages-assuring press releases and social media presence in all Partners languagesThe SETOFF training will be based on ECVET approach and the certification will be built in accordance to levels 6, 7 of the European Qualifications Framework.<< Results >>Using the simulation facilities and online technology, the SETOFF Project will develop an e-training curriculum based on the real needs and the cognitive profile of the target groups, which can be applied in different stages of both civil protection and private sector Safety and Security training personnel: • e-learning educational platform • e-training modules• online technologies to bring remote training closer to face-to-face training• Skills Retention Service• ECVET supporting toolsIMPACT & LONG-TERM BENEFITS• Provide a high-quality innovative, flexible, and affordable training curriculum for both civil protection and private sector Safety and Security personnel • SETOFF will raise skill and performance levels and will serve the digitalization efforts of the field• Enhance VET providers offer online training with remote control practices• Improve collaboration between Partners and sharing of best practices and resources• Establish simulation training as mainstream methodology• Provide visibility of EU innovative and effective disaster management practices• In order to maximize impact, SETOFF curriculum will be available for consultation and to be included in future disaster management training. Moreover, Trainees will be accredited to perform in their turn as future trainers.

The overarching objective of the PATH2LC project is to support policy makers and public authorities at local level in the transition process towards a low carbon society. Through a holistic network approach, stakeholders in public authorities are linked among municipalities in order to enable peer-to-peer learning and increase the engagement in energy and climate transition. The network approach shall also accelerate the implementation of Sustainable Energy (and Climate) Action Plan (SE(C)AP) measures. The PATH2LC project will foster the exchange of existing knowledge and experiences among municipalities, enhance coordination among different administrative bodies within the municipalities and improve cooperation with local stakeholders and civil society. It will furthermore provide stakeholders in public authorities with the necessary planning and monitoring tools to implement transition roadmaps. The following five existing networks are the starting point of the project: UCSA - Joint Office for Environmental Sustainability (Italy), Sustainable City Network (Greece), OesteSustentável (Portugal), Cities Northern Netherlands (NL), Rhône Network (FR). They benefit from a well-established network process of the so-called learning energy efficiency networks (LEEN), supplemented with in-depth capacity building and support regarding heating and cooling topics. Due to the international composition of the networks, cross-country experiences can be shared. The project is accompanied by a socio-scientific evaluation in order to make the results transferable to other municipalities as well as by a dissemination strategy in order to make network activities visible.

The main objective of POWERPOOR is to develop support programmes/schemes for energy poor citizens and encourage the use of alternative financing schemes (e.g. establishing energy communities / cooperatives, crowd funding). POWERPOOR will facilitate experience and knowledge sharing, as well as the implementation of small-scale energy efficiency interventions and the installation of renewable energy sources, increasing the active participation of citizens. Pilot energy poor support programmes/schemes will be designed, developed and implemented in eight countries across Europe, led by a network of certified Energy Supporters and Energy Communities Mentors. The Energy Supporters / Mentors will support (more than 22,000) energy poor households to plan and implement energy efficiency interventions, as well as participate in joint energy initiatives. Energy poor citizens will be engaged through various planned activities, such as Info Days, Local Energy Poverty Offices, and ICT-driven tools (Energy Poverty Mitigation Toolkit). The establishment of the Stakeholders Liaison Groups will also facilitate the engagement and the provision of support to energy poor households. Guidelines on how to tackle energy poverty in Sustainable Energy and Climate Action Plans will also be developed. Based on the experience gained and the lessons learnt from implementing POWERPOOR, EU policy recommendations and 8 National Roadmaps will be elaborated, so that policy makers at all governance levels can learn from the project. The project results will be broadly disseminated, and synergies will be pursued with global and EU initiatives, such as the EU Energy Poverty Observatory and the (EU and Global) Covenant of Mayors on Energy and Climate. The participation of networks in the Consortium will strengthen the dissemination and exploitation of POWERPOOR outputs across Europe during and beyond the project implementation.

RISKADAPT will provide, in close cooperation with the end-users/other stakeholders, a novel, integrated, modular, interoperable, public and free, customizable user-friendly platform (PRISKADAPT), to support systemic, risk-informed decisions regarding adaptation to CC induced compound events at the asset level, focusing on the structural system. PRISKADAPT will explicitly model dependencies between infrastructures, which, inter alia, will provide a better understanding of the nexus between climate hazards and social vulnerabilities and resilience. Moreover, this project will identify gaps in data and propose ways to overcome them and advance the state of the art of asset level modelling through advanced climate science to predict CC forcing on the structure of interest, structural analyses, customized to the specific structure of interest, that consider all major CC induced load effects in tandem with material deterioration, novel probabilistic environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle cost (LCC) of structural adaptation measures and a new model to assess climate risk that will combine technical risk assessment with assessment of social risks. PRISKADAPT will provide values to a set of indicators for each asset of interest, quantifying primary parameters and impacts, in the form of a Model Information System (MIS) that will provide all required information for adaptation decisions. PRISKADAPT will be implemented in the case studies in the pilots that involve specific assets, however, it will permit customization with local values of parameters and data, so it can be applicable throughout Europe for CC adaptation decisions involving assets of similar function, exposed to multiple climate hazards.

ENVESOME aims to elucidate mechanistically the role of air, noise, light, and hazardous waste pollution in non-communicable disease development. The project addresses the need to strengthen the knowledge available to policymakers regarding pollution-disease associations and causal mechanisms at different phases throughout the human lifecycle. ENVESOME proposes to develop an exposome and citizen-science-based framework for assessing the risks of emerging environmental health stressors. This will be achieved by fusing environmental monitoring and personal exposure data and models through AI tools. Human and cell biology knowledge, human biomonitoring, and in vitro data will be used to determine adverse outcome pathways and networks associated with environmental stressors. Particular focus will be paid to intersecting pathways relevant to cardiorespiratory disease; metabolic syndrome; neurotoxicity; immunotoxicity; sleep, and mental health disorders. We aim to elucidate the main sources of environmental exposure and drivers of the adverse outcomes above. This will allow for the articulation of cost-effective mitigation strategies that will be applied in select case studies. Their efficacy will be evaluated using environmental and exposure indicators together with early effect biomarkers (EEB). Methodological and technical innovations and the respective scientific evidence regarding the causal links between emerging environmental stressors and human health will be translated into policy proposals supporting the articulation of strategies for country- or city-specific, targeted and cost-effective interventions, thus promoting effective public health protection, as well as guidelines and updated limit values as needed. Environmental management for public health protection will be supported by a decision support system (for policy makers), a chatbot (for health practitioners), and a mobile app (for citizens). Training on novel tools will be given to all relevant actors.