Projects

The big aim is to enhance sustainable cities through the creation of a disruptive smart learning environment, sustained by a mobile app with active location games based on challenges, with AR educational resources, such as simulations based on data from environmental sensors, 3D animations, informative spots, among others. These games are co-created by the school, academic and wider community, and comprise enjoyable and interdisciplinary challenges to be explored by any citizen while touring the city. This innovative pedagogy uses real-world pervasive and familiar technology (mobile devices) for ‘learning by doing’, where the AR games allow environmental awareness in the city – a living laboratory of experimentation – as citizens are “active scientists” and agents in sustainable changes, in a citizen science logic.

Emerging remote sensing technologies for real-time support of navigation safety in harbour areas has as main purpose develop innovative monitoring technologies, in almost real time, for harbour inlets. The developed system collects sea bottom data as bathymetric indicators and local hydrodynamics, namely, physical parameters like wave height, wave period, predominant direction and tide height. The NAVSAFETY project, by using remote sensing technologies and innovative image processing methodologies, enables make available information for a wide range of ocean wave conditions, including extreme (storm) events, conditions for which maritime safety issues become particularly pertinent.

The MixMyVisit project aims to develop a solution for the automatic creation of memory videos of visits to public and cultural places (e.g., museums, parks, …). These videos will be generated from pre-recorded videos and indexed to different locations in that space and content shared by the user (e.g., photos and videos). The videos generated can then be shared by users, for example, on social networks.

The eMental project aims to finalize and evaluate digital interventions, addressed to young people, structured in transmedia digital contents, to promote literacy in depression and suicide.

The purpose of FairFood for a Smart Life project is to contribute to the improvement of health through a nutritional education inspired by the way our ancestors ate, with natural products, typical of the territory, treated in a simple way and consumed in its season, while contributing to preserve a European culinary cultural heritage and to stop climate change. The rich European gastronomic culture counts on the Mediterranean diet, an intangible heritage of Humanity.
Disseminating these guidelines is a benefit for the entire population as well as for the environment. The consortium of this project, formed by 6 partners from 4 countries (Spain, Italy, Portugal and Belgium) among which are the maximum exponents of the Mediterranean diet, brings together universities, experts in the agro-food sector, consultants and educators, for a triple objective:
– Identify and preserve ancestral knowledge about products and traditional modalities of production, conservation and consumption of food at risk of disappearing, in the regions of the project, as a way to preserve this cultural legacy.
– Disseminate this knowledge among the population in general and especially among the youngest, through face-to-face and online training programs, and being present in social networks, with the collaboration of opinion leaders and influencers.
– Encourage entrepreneurship and business continuity of this type in rural areas, respectful of the environment, to improve their appeal and competitiveness, attract and fix population.

The project promotes the engagement of young individuals in environmental conservation by means of game design. The objective of Gamers4Nature is to develop a mobile game creation toolset that can be utilised in educational institutions to motivate individuals of diversified proficiency levels to engage in game jams.

Working with cohorts of youth aged 9 to 12 in Portugal and Austin, Texas, the project builds on field-tested research to address the need for student awareness and skill in managing their digital identities with gameplay and production.

In a time when academics and citizens are increasingly concerned with surveillance capitalism, Europe takes on a leadership role in the global transformation towards a digital future that treats users fairly. It fosters initiatives such as the right to repair, pushes privacy and security policies such as the GDPR, and highlights citizens’ digital rights. These developments have their historical precedents in the 1980s and 1990s, when enthusiasts across Europe started to take part in grassroots culture of creative computing, or the participatory use of computers for experimentation, self-expression, or activism. Besides laying the groundwork for commercial successes, these communities created important specimens of digital cultural heritage (e.g. the demoscene or seminal computer games) and universally adopted technical solutions (e.g. the Linux operating system). To successfully implement the values of participation, social inclusion, and bottom-up innovation in today’s technology policy, we need to understand these historical developments. However, the historical knowledge about creative computing in Europe has so far been fragmented and lacking in transnational and interdisciplinary dialogue. GRADE aims to build a robust and diverse network of researchers from across Europe who will integrate the existing knowledge and work on new transnational projects. Within its working groups, the Action will focus on investigating user communities, their interaction with state and European-level policies, and the preservation of digital cultural heritage. Together, GRADE will contribute to a participatory technological agenda for Europe that is informed by historical research and sensitive to the cultural contexts of the various regions of Europe.

Happy is a cancer prevention mobile app that uses personal information data and instant contextual data to tailor the contents provided to the user in the form of daily suggestions (notifications/short messages). This app acts in real-life settings in terms of behaviour change and cancer prevention knowledge as it aims to persuade users to change their behaviour, making healthier choices, thus reducing their personal risk of developing several types of cancer. The main focus is based in the persuasive power of triggers, and several strategies based on different behaviour change techniques such as barrier identification, prompting, social support, social comparison, and behaviour modelling.

CoVIVE Social is a project that aims to develop a prototype of a technological solution to improve the communication between the Hospital and the COVID-19 patients’ family. The tool will follow and support all the patient journey during all the hospitalization. This platform will offer update notices about the current patient state to family. Besides that, the social rights will be supported by this tool.

This new observatory will focus its research on five lines of work. First, it will investigate the characteristics and trends of the Iberian digital media ecosystem. It will also develop computational technologies for the early detection of misinformation. In addition, it will verify and refute disinformation in the Iberian territory, reporting to the European Commission. It will prepare strategic reports on disinformation threats, both for public knowledge and for the authorities in Spain and Portugal. Finally, it will work on media literacy initiatives aimed at journalists, young people and society as a whole.

The ILLIANCE Agenda incorporates a complex ecosystem of integrated projects that aims to address the goal of carbon neutrality in the building sector, which accounts for 40 per cent of global CO2 emissions.

The approach adopted is based on the development of complementary technologies associated with 3 central pillars: health, comfort and sustainability. ILLIANCE’s functional structure, developed in an integrated logic of specialisation, focuses on the design, development and industrialisation of new technologies in the field of electrification of the economy and exploitation of sustainable and/or renewable electrical energy (e.g. heat pumps); exploitation of green hydrogen as an energy source (e.g. hybrid H2 combustion equipment); exploitation of new models and intelligent technological platforms for energy management; intelligent solutions for the efficiency, functionalisation and performance of buildings.