TOKYO
DESIGN
European Projects
Research and Innovation projects that 21c have helped to win and deliver research, communications and dissemination include:
Otters
HORIZON-MISS-2021-OCEAN-05-03 - Piloting citizen science in marine and freshwater domains - GO No: 101094041
01 January 2023 - 30 June 2025
OTTERS will aim at promoting and scaling up successful citizen science (CS) initiatives in the marine and freshwater domains via 1) accelerating the co-creation of standards in data collection, semantics, data quality, and data management making sure to abide by all ethical and legal standards; 2) promoting and scaling up successful water-related CS initiatives by clustering them under co-designed Spring-to-Sea campaigns to foster agency and increase ocean literacy; 3) connecting the citizen-generated data to other EU-funded projects and portals, including the European Marine Observation and Data Network (EMODnet) and Digital Twins of the Ocean (ILIAD) to ensure the accessibility and reuse of the data and abide by all FAIR principles; 4) demonstrating the effectiveness of citizen science in participatory research, environmental monitoring and changing people’s behaviors to ensure the sustainability of water ecosystems and reach the goals of the EU Water Framework Directive and UN Decade of the Ocean.
PERMAGOV
HORIZON-CL6-2022-GOVERNANCE-01-03 - Multi-layer governance performance of marine policies - GA No: 101086297
01 January 2023 - 31 December 2026
PERMAGOV aims to contribute to the realization of the EU Green Deal objectives by improving implementation and performance of EU marine policies. PERMAGOV’s project objectives are: 1) co-developing and applying a Marine Governance Performance Assessment Framework to assess how institutional barriers, formal and informal collaborations and e-governance tools enable and constrain the capability of actors to implement EU marine policies within the areas of Marine Energy, Maritime Transport, Marine Life and Marine Litter; and 2) co-producing Multi-Layered Collaborative Marine e-Governance Strategies which enhance the capability of end-users to contribute to the implementation of EU marine policies related to the four marine issue areas to achieve the EU Green Deal goals. PERMAGOV will contribute to the improved performance of marine polices and a successful implementation of the EU Green Deal objectives, by an assessment of 9 cases (De-carbonizing shipping, Motorways of the Sea (Maritime Shipping), Seabed integrity, Sustainable fisheries in MPAs (Marine Life), Floating Wind, Energy island, Offshore Wind (Marine Energy), Marine litter (Baltic and Mediterranean Seas)(Marine Plastics)), focusing on the enabling and constraining conditions of institutional barriers and the possibilities for multi-layered collaborative and e-governance. Characteristics for PERMAGOV is co-production and co-creation from the start to the end of the project and beyond. Together with end-users and stakeholders from maritime industries, NGOs, researchers and policymakers the Performance Assessment Framework will be developed and applied, in co-production the cases will be assessed, innovative Governance Strategies will be developed and digital tools will be improved in order to overcome the barriers hampering the performance of marine policies and the successful implementation of the objectives of the European Green Deal.
TITAN
HORIZON-CL4-2021-HUMAN-01-27 - AI to fight disinformation - GA No: 101070658
01 September 2022 - 31 August 2025
TITAN delivers an open, distributed and citizen engaging ecosystem which empowers the citizen itself to conduct effective and efficient investigations for understanding whether statements at hand are true. Empowerment is achieved by means of intelligent coaching on the process of investigation. AI-driven, intuitive and personalised ‘question-and-response’ interaction will set the attention of the investigating citizen on the logical interpretation and critical assessment of the implied reasoning and arguments in the statement at hand while directing the citizen in the appropriate use of suitable fact-checking and media literacy tools and services. By being part of the TITAN ecosystem, the citizen is intelligently coached on how to conduct effective investigations either on his/her own or in collaboration with other concerned citizens. Intelligent coaching conversational schemes are personalised according to the investigating citizen’s profile, digital skills, media literacy skills, possible difficulties in thinking critically as well as the linguistic characteristics of the statement under investigation. At the end of such an ‘question-and-response’ interaction cycle, the citizen will have his/her critical thinking and media literacy skills advanced so as to better detect disinformation he/she may encounter in the future at scale. The TITAN Ecosystem will be developed following a human-centered approach which will engage diverse groups of citizens in productive co-creation sessions at all project implementation phases.
COMPAIR
H2020 Programme H2020-LC-GD-2020: Building a low-carbon, climate resilient future: Research and innovation in support of the European Green Deal - GA No: 101036563
01 November 2021 - 31 October 2024
The COMPAIR innovation project is designed to bolster citizens' capacity to monitor, understand, and change their environmental impact, both at a behavioural and policy level. It unlocks the power of the wider public, including people from lower-socio economic groups, to provide broad granular data around a central theme of air quality, complementing and improving the quality of official datasets and making new information useful for helping to meet environmental aims.
The project will achieve its aim by empowering people using a Citizen Science Lab - with a special focus on women, young people, and hard-to-reach groups to provide the skills to co-design and undertake environmental scientific experiments around needs and challenges in their locality. By providing innovative, self-assembly, low-cost sensors, dynamic dashboards, and augmented reality tools for collecting, visualising and extracting actionable intelligence from data, anyone regardless of their background, can understand their impact on the environment and explore immediate actions to improve it. Beyond helping to mitigate bad environmental habits at an individual and community level, CS (Citizen Science) data will also be used to mutually enrich other public and private data sources in official city decision making platforms. Thereby helping to increase civic engagement and influence more effective long-term environmental policy.
Piloted in the Region of Flanders and the major cities of Athens, Berlin and Sofia, communities, businesses, researchers and public administrations will, for the first time, adopt and benefit from a technology-enabled, collective approach to evidence gathering that fills gaps in existing data sources, and provides new routes to innovation. COMPAIR will raise awareness of, and provide a CS Lab Toolkit, to ensure CS is a trusted approach to tackling complex, systemic and environmental problems that require different perspectives.
URBANAGE
H2020 Programme DT-TRANSFORMATIONS-02-2018-2019-2020: Transformative impact of disruptive technologies in public services - GA No: 101004590
01 February 2021 - 31 January 2024
URBANAGE assesses the potential benefits, risks and impact of implementing a long-term sustainable framework for data-driven decision-making in the field of urban planning for aging well in cities. This model will be developed through an inclusive co-creation strategy with relevant stakeholders (public servants) and users (older adults) and based on a decision-support Ecosystem that integrates multidimensional Big Data analysis; modelling and simulation with Artificial Intelligence algorithms, visualization through Urban Digital Twins, and gamification for enhanced engagement purposes. Based on a thorough understanding of users’ needs, it will be validated by piloting use-cases in three local planning systems in Europe (Helsinki, Santander and Flanders).
DUET
H2020 Programme DT-GOVERNANCE-12-2019-2020: Pilot on using the European cloud infrastructure for public administrations - GA No: 870697
01 December 2019 - 30 November 2022
DUET leverages the advanced capabilities of cloud and high-performance computing, in the form of Digital Twins, to help public sector decision-making become more democratic and effective. By creating digital replica's of a city, people, no matter their background, can use the Digital Twins 3D and 2D interfaces for easy policy impact exploration and experimentation across entire cities and regions. DUET's use of Digital Twins truly changes the policy game, disrupting the field of Smart Cities and transitioning to a new age of Responsive Cities. With Responsive Cities, solutions are not designed around citizens, they are designed with the citizen placed firmly at the center of the action. Where Smart Cities are technology-driven and produce large amounts of data from fixed or centrally controlled sensors, Responsive Cities recognise that citizens are also a major player in data generation which helps to shape real-time city decisions.
easyRights
H2020 Programme DT-MIGRATION-06-2018-2019: Addressing the challenge of migrant integration
through ICT-enabled solutions - GA No: 870980
01 January 2020 - 30 June 2022
The overarching objective of easyRights is to develop a co-creation eco-system in which different actors belonging to the local governance system can cooperate in increasing the quantity and quality of public (welfare) services available to immigrants. The specific aims are to improve the current personalisation and contextualisation levels, empower the prospective beneficiaries of existing services in getting better access and fruition opportunities, and to engage Quadruple Helix stakeholders in joint, purposeful co-creation efforts, facilitated by the use of hackathons. An easyRights platform - with the twin meaning of “aggregation of local stakeholders” and “collection of online and offline services” - will be developed and deployed in four pilot locations (Birmingham, Larissa, Palermo and Malaga). In so doing, easyRights can support immigrants in their search for responses to different needs, making them more autonomous - at least to some extent - from discretionary street level bureaucracies, saving time for both migrants and for social service staff and cutting costs for the public administration.
PoliRural
H2020 Programme H2020-RUR-2018-2 Building moderin rural policies on long-term vision and societal engagement - GA No: 818496
01 June 2019 - 31 May 2022
PoliRural is a research and innovation project designed to advance rural policy development in the age of disruptive data and technologies in order to deliver a trusted, scalable and transferable solution for policy co-creation. It brings together decision makers, experts and rural inhabitants using advanced policy simulation tools to better understand and tackle regional challenges, ultimately making rural areas and professions more attractive and liveable for established populations and recent or potential newcomers. PoliRural achieves this aim by breaking down research silos and leveraging available data to understand current challenges and impact of existing rural policy interventions. PoliRural combines new quantitative and qualitative epistemological approaches, previously unused unstructured data with traditional research information, grassroot perspective with expert knowledge, current situation analysis with forward looking activities to create innovative and complex rural policy simulators that can be applied by any region to gain insights on the effectiveness of existing measures, as well as the potential impact of new co-designed interventions in a broader context of factors that affect rural places and people. The project is being implemented in 12 regional pilots.
PoliVisu
H2020 Programme H2020-SC6-Co-Creation-2017- Research and Innovation Actions Programme - GA No: 769608
01 November 2017 - 31 October 2020
PoliVisu is a Research and Innovation project designed to evolve the traditional public policy making cycle (outlined by Patton & Sawicki1) using big data. The aim is to enhance an open set of digital tools to leverage data to help public sector decision-making become more democratic by (a) experimenting with different policy options through impact visualisation and (b) using the resulting visualisations to engage and harness the collective intelligence of policy stakeholders for collaborative solution development. Working with three cities to address societal problems linked to smart mobility and urban planning, the intention is to enable public administrations to respond to urban challenges by enriching the policy making process with opportunities for policy experimentation at three different steps of the policy cycle (policy design, policy implementation, and policy evaluation). Experimentation of policy options will enable the cities to tackle complex, systemic policy problems that require innovative thinking to develop transformative solutions.
Study on Detection and Take-Down of Illegal Content
SMART 2016/0039
20 February 2017 - 31 December 2017
21c is part of the research team conducting a study on intermediary liability and notice-and-action procedures for DG CONNECT. In its Communication on a Digital Single Market Strategy, European Commission committed to undertake a comprehensive assessment of online platforms, including the role internet intermediaries play in tackling illegal content on the web. As part of this commitment, the Commission wants to analyse the need for a formal, EU-wide flagging and removal mechanisms for illegal content, and whether there is a need for guidance on liability rules and support for platforms that proactively put in place voluntary measures to fight illegal content. Seeking to collect the best evidence to inform decision-making process, DG CONNECT has contracted a study to ICF International and its partners, 21c Consultancy and Grimaldi Studio Legale and, to support the process. The study will provide an in-depth analysis of the potential challenges raised by the current set-up of the liability regime for online hosting service providers and the existent notice-and-action practices for taking down illegal content.
SELECT for Cities
H2020 Programme H2020-ICT-2015- Research and Innovation Programme - GA No: 688196
01 December 2015 - 30 November 2019
SELECT for Cities is a development project funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. The project will run between 2015 and 2018. SELECT formed under two premises (1) that cities around the world are constantly seeking effective ways to foster open innovation to solve urban challenges, and (2) the advancement of the Internet of Everything (IoE) will transform the way we manage and live in our urban environments. With the extension of the Internet connecting physical spaces, objects and data, unlimited opportunities for new solutions, services and businesses are unleashed across a range of domains. SELECT is therefore searching for new technologies to create a state-of-the-art, large-scale, citywide, ‘Internet-of-Everything lab’ to assist cities in developing, testing and validating innovative smart services and solutions. The new IoE platform is sought by using a Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP) process, which provides R&D funding to a number of suppliers to help develop innovative ideas.
#ASK: Augmenting Social Knowledge
ERASMUS+ Prospective Initiatives, Policy Networks, Programme and Linguistic Support - GA No. 562262-EPP-1-2015-1-EL-EPPKA3-PI-FORWARD
01 November 2015 - 30 April 2018
Project #ask address Erasmus KA3 Strand 2 (Youth), Priority 7 – using eParticipation as an instrument to foster young people’s empowerment and active participation in democratic life – by turning the traditional model of stand-alone eParticipation platforms on its head. Instead of expecting youth to search for and find pre-existing discussion platforms, #ask will go directly to the conversations that young people and politicians are already having – in isolation from each other – on the popular online social media network Twitter – which has been described as “the SMS of the Internet’’ and boasts more than 284 million users.
OpenTransportNet
Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme (CIP) – ICT Policy Support Programme (ICT PSP) - GA No: 620533
01 February 2014 - 31 January 2017
OpenTransportNet is an innovative European Commission project designed to revolutionise the way transport related services are created across Europe. By bringing together open geo-spatial data within City Data Hubs and enabling it to be viewed in new easy to understand ways, OpenTransportNet will enable: (a) Anyone to have fun with data, by viewing data mash-up's in maps and graphs and be able to use and embed these maps in their own websites; (b) Public Sector users to gain insights from linking and visualising different data sets and be able to make better public service decisions based on the findings; (c) Businesses and entrepreneurs to use the data to enhance existing services and build new transport-related services; (d) The wider open community to benefit from the project outputs and findings to advance geospatial data standards such as INSPIRE
GLN: Green Learning Network
Lifelong Learning Programme (LLP), KA3 Multilateral networks - no. 543464-LLP-1-2013-1-FR-KA3-KA3NW
01 November 2013 - 31 October 2016
Green Learning Network (GLN) addresses the gap between educational approaches in the Agriculture, Biodiversity and Rural Affairs (ABR) fields and the everyday practices of farmers and agricultural professionals. The project is dedicated to creating a network of educators, agriculturalists, institutions, learners and user communities in Lifelong Learning. GLN will be a focal point for those involved with all aspects of ABR to access, contribute and use rich learning resources drawn from the experiences and insights of farmers, rural professionals and experts in the ABR field.
ECIM: European Cloud Marketplace for Intelligent Cities
Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme (CIP) – ICT Policy Support Programme (ICT PSP) - GA No: 621058
01 January 2013 - 30 June 2016
ECIM (European Cloud Marketplace for Intelligent Mobility) is a flexible, cloud-based solution for public and private sector actors who seek innovative yet costeffective web services to address mobility related needs of their cities. The marketplace is a unique environment where service providers, data providers and developers can come together and engage in the co-design and co-creation of mobility applications for citizens. To service providers the solution offers an effective distribution channel as well as opportunities to enter new markets and expand their user base. Developers, for their part, benefit from easy access to common APIs of different mobility services.
ODS: Open Discovery Space
Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme (CIP) – ICT Policy Support Programme (ICT PSP) - GA No: 297229
01 April 2012 - 31 March 2015
ODS addresses various challenges that face the eLearning environment in the European context. The interface has been designed with students, teachers, parents and policy makers in mind. ODS will fulfill three principal objectives. Firstly, it will empower stakeholders through a single, integrated access point for eLearning resources from dispersed educational repositories. Secondly, it engages stakeholders in the production of meaningful educational activities by using a social-network style multilingual portal, offering eLearning resources as well as services for the production of educational activities. Thirdly, it will assess the impact of the new educational activities, which could serve as a prototype to be adopted by stakeholders in school education.
Citadel: Citadel on the Move
Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme (CIP) – ICT Policy Support Programme (ICT PSP) - GA No: 297188
01 February 2012 - 31 January 2015
Citadel on the Move is a European Commission funded (CIP PSP) project which aims to make it easier for citizens and application developers from across Europe to use Open Data to create the type of innovative mobile applications they want and need.
Open Government Data is often difficult to access and use by the developer community, let alone the average citizen. Citadel on the Move aims to overcome this challenge by:
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Defining strategies that make it easier for local government to release data in useable, interoperable formats;
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Creating and providing templates that make it easier for developers and citizens to create mobile applications that can be potentially used and shared across Europe;
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Pooling tools and resources into an Open Data Commons that facilitates access to data in different formats by shared templates and applications.
MyNeighbourhood
Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme (CIP) – ICT Policy Support Programme (ICT PSP) - GA No: 297188
01 February 2012 - 31 January 2015
MyNeighbourhood was designed by people for people. We are also neighbours, we also feel the same pains and share the same ambitions for our communities. With this is mind, using our experience being neighbours and listening to communities across several countries, MyNeighbourhood was created from the bottom-up, listening to the streets and the people that share the same space. We tried to design the MyN Platform to be simple to use and direct to understand. In a world of social networks, you will find most of the tools and concepts very familiar. The features are there, but it is up to you to make the best use of them for your community. Nevertheless, being simple can be quite subjective. Although the features in the MyN Platform look very similar to other social networks, we know that some citizens could use some guidelines on how to use the Platform. Even community leaders probably would like to get guidance on how to make the best of the platform for their communities. And we are working on it.
agINFRA: A data Infrastructure for Agriculture
7th Framework Programme (FP7) – Data Infrastructures for eScience - GA No: 283770
15 October 2011 - 31 January 2015
agINFRA is an innovative Integrated Infrastructure Initiative (I3) project that will introduce agricultural scientific communities to the vision of open and participatory data-intensive science. To achieve this aim, agINFRA will design and develop a scientific data infrastructure for agricultural sciences that will facilitate the development of policies and services that promote the sharing of data among agricultural scientists in a manner that develops trust within and amongst their communities. Through the establishment of an open and interoperable data e-Infrastructure, agINFRA will remove existing obstacles concerning sharing, processing and accessing scientific information and data in agriculture, as well as it will improve the preparedness of agricultural scientific communities to face, manage and exploit the ever-increasing abundance of multi-disciplinary data that is available to support agricultural research.
EPIC: The European Platform for Intelligent Cities
Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme (CIP) – ICT Policy Support Programme (ICT PSP) - GA No: 270895
01 November 2010 - 31 August 2013
The European Platform for Intelligent Cities – EPIC – is a European Commission-funded project (ICT PSP) that has been in operation since 2010. The project was desigend to combine state-of-the-art cloud computing technologies with fully researched and tested e-Government service applications to create the first truly scalable and flexible pan-European platform for innovative, user-driven public service delivery. The resulting EPIC solution combines the industrial strength of IBM’s ‘Smart City’ vision and cloud computing infrastructure with the knowledge and expertise of the Living Lab approach (which expressly engages citizens in service design) and has produced a platform for sustainable, user-driven web-based services for citizens and businesses.
Puzzled by Policy: Helping you to be part of the EU
FP7 eParticipation Framework - GA No: 256261
01 October 2010 - 30 September 2013
Puzzled by Policy aims to reduce the complexity of decision making within the EU and reconnect citizens with politics and policymaking by combining successful pre-existing eParticipation tools with new widget technologies to bring policymaking on the hot topic of immigration and migration ‘to the people’ in a manner that is both fun and engaging.
OurSpace
FP7 eParticipation Framework - GA No: 620533
01 February 2010 - 31 January 2013
OurSpace is an open source, easy-to-use tool designed to support anyone who needs to consult with large groups of young people, regardless of nationality or language boundaries.
OurSpace is an attractive tool that uses social networking and Web 2.0 features to encourage young people and members of the European and National Parliaments to share ideas and engage in debates about issues that affect their everyday life.
WAVE: Welcoming Argument Visualisation to Europe
DG INSO eParticipation Preparatory Framework
2009 - 2010
WAVE aimed to improve the inclusiveness and transparency of EU decision making at the national and European level by using highly integrated, state-of-the-art Argument Visualisation techniques to make the impact of complex EU environmental legislation on climate change more accessible and easy to understand for citizens, special interest groups and decision makers alike
PEP-Net: Pan European eParticipation Network
DG INFSO ICT Policy Support Programme
2008 - 2010
PEP-NET established The EU pan-European eParticipation network with nodes in all EU Member States (target: 70 members organizations – reached: 100 member organizations). This community will support the emergence of an eParticipation market by acting as a catalyst for the widespread use of eParticipation, encourage positive public perceptions of the benefits thereby accelerating take up and creating a demand for innovative ICT solutions to support implementations.
MOMENTUM: Monitoring, Coordinating and Promoting the European Union eParticipation Projects and Initiatives)
DG INFSO ICT Policy Support Programme
2008 - 2010
MOMENTUM is the Specific Support Action of the EU eParticipation Preparatory Action, which aims to monitor the existing 20 eParticipation pilot projects co-funded by European Commission and European Parliament, to consolidate their results and provide feedback to them and to the respective EC bodies and other designated stakeholders, advancing the high-level political and institutional engagement