SMEs often struggle to adopt circular economy practices and advanced manufacturing technologies due to a lack of knowledge, resources, and tailored support. They face barriers such as limited access to expertise, high costs of implementation, and difficulty in navigating the complex landscape of circular economy solutions. CIRC-2-ZERO offers three innovative solutions to overcome these barriers. Firstly, the project will develop a Digital Twin Demo Platform, enabling SMEs to simulate and optimize their processes for circularity. Secondly, it will provide tested solutions for circular product design and value chain optimization, empowering SMEs to create sustainable products and processes. Lastly, the project will establish a network of Resilience Transformation Hubs, offering SMEs access to training, mentoring, and collaborative innovation support.CIRC-2-ZERO will equip SMEs with the necessary tools, knowledge, and support to successfully transition towards circular economy and advanced manufacturing practices. The project's outcomes will not only benefit SMEs but also will contribute to reducing waste, conserving resources, and mitigating climate change.  

SMEs frequently face difficulties in adopting circular economy practices and advanced manufacturing technologies, primarily due to a lack of specialized knowledge, limited resources, and insufficient technical support. The main constraints include restricted access to technical expertise, high implementation costs, and the complexity of the circular solutions ecosystem. CIRC-2-ZERO addresses these challenges through three key initiatives. First, a Digital Twin–based platform for simulating and optimizing circularity-oriented processes. Second, the provision of validated solutions for circular product design and value chain optimization. Third, the establishment of a network of Resilience Transformation Hubs to support training, mentoring, and collaborative innovation. Together, these solutions aim to equip SMEs for an effective transition toward the circular economy and advanced manufacturing, while also promoting increased competitiveness, reduced waste, and more efficient resource use.

This project aims to study the determinants of sustainability that impact business performance in Madeira’s hospitality sector. Not only are there a considerable number of decision-makers with different and conflicting values and preferences involved in this issue, but there is also a significant number of sustainability determinants to be considered. While this makes the integration of sustainability into business strategies and decisions more challenging, it is also true that this is an increasingly pressing issue for hospitality companies in Madeira. A better understanding of sustainability determinants and their interconnections will assist city planners and decision-makers in enhancing value creation through better-informed decisions. Simultaneously, this will contribute to advancing sustainability objectives.  

ImAFUSA focuses on quantifying a variety of understudied factors influencing societal acceptance of UAM in urban, peri-urban and inter-urban areas, especially when these are deployed using U3 and U4 services. The Project will deliver an “Impact and capacity Assessment Framework for U-space Societal Acceptance” (ImAFUSA) to assist Local Authorities and other U-space stakeholders and users with the delivery of socially acceptable and beneficial UAM deployment in cities. The framework and its tools will provide insights into 3 major areas influencing societal acceptance: environmental impact (including noise, visual pollution and air quality), safety and socioeconomic impact (including affordability, accessibility, economic development, public space use and connectivity). In each area, innovative performance indicators will be described while mathematical formulas and algorithms will be developed to quantify them. Data on citizen noise perceptions, perceptions of visual pollution, safety perceptions and overall UAM acceptance will be collected during 3 immersive citizen experiences of UAM applications in the city of Athens, Greece. The usability of the developed indicators will be tested in a simulation environment simulating real future use cases with a varying volume and configuration of movements in U-space.

Within the framework of the European OSIRIS project (Interreg Baltic Sea), the study aims to enhance silver economy growth opportunities in the Baltic Sea Region by improving the capacity of innovation actors to apply smart specialization approaches for tackling the challenge of the region’s ageing society. It seeks to boost market uptake and scaling of user-driven technology innovations that accommodate age-specific needs and preferences, and demonstrate a significant impact on the quality of life of the ageing population, including age-friendly living environment, health, safety, and leisure. The project consortium consists of 13 direct partners and 8 associated partners from Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania and Russia, representing the business, government and academic actors of the Triple Helix model for economic growth and regional development. Among the direct partners, six public universities represent the academia helix actors, two private companies and three business support organizations correspond to the business helix actors and one local authority and one public innovation agency are the government helix actors.

Silver economy is the part of the economy that concerns older citizens. It includes economic activities relevant to the needs of older adults, and studies their impact on many sectors (e.g., health and nutrition, leisure and wellbeing, finance and transport, housing, education and employment). Within the framework of the European OSIRIS project (Interreg Baltic Sea), the study aims to enhance silver economy growth opportunities in the Baltic Sea Region by improving the capacity of innovation actors to apply smart specialization approaches for tackling the challenge of the region’s ageing society. The project consortium consists of 13 direct partners and 8 associated partners from Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania and Russia, representing the business, government and academic actors of the Triple Helix model for economic growth and regional development. Among the direct partners, six public universities represent the academia helix actors, two private companies and three business support organizations correspond to the business helix actors and one local authority and one public innovation agency are the government helix actors.

Blight intervention typically follows three stages: (1) identifying blighted properties; (2) characterizing their effects on local neighborhoods; and (3) assessing the costs and benefits of remediation strategies to strengthen sustainability in urban areas. Because team members have worked together previously on the first stage (see Ferreira et al. (2018)), the current study will focus on the last two stages, by proposing decision-making processes and proactive measures that allow the causes and consequences of urban blight to be identified and analyzed. We believe that this project will offer useful insights both on the blight issue and urban sustainability in the Portuguese territory that may assist involved stakeholders in forming strategies for addressing urban blight.