European Union-funded Projects Research Articles

Research and Innovation Supporting the European Sustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy: A Technology Perspective from Recent European Union Projects

Many concepts and innovations aim to improve transport and mobility, while helping to decrease the externalities that transport imposes on society. Research and innovation monitoring tools are important to assess the current state of development so that research funding and policy making efforts can be aligned optimally. This paper presents a comprehensive approach which links technological developments in the transport sector in Europe to the objectives of the most recent policy developments, in particular, the 2020 European Sustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy. It does so by identifying and evaluating technologies from European Union-funded projects between 2007 and 2020, by means of a technology taxonomy. Information is provided at an aggregated level on funding characteristics of both projects and the technologies, while at the same time, the level of maturity of researched technologies in the most recent projects is identified. This study can aid policy makers to support the future development of transport technologies as part of pertinent policy strategies and identify research gaps.

Evaluating the development of transport technologies in European research and innovation projects between 2007 and 2020

Numerous transport innovations promise to improve how people and goods move, while simultaneously decreasing the externalities that transport imposes on society. Public institutions offer large amounts of funding to make these concepts become reality. Yet fragmented and partial insights into technology development impede the efficient allocation of funds and may slow down innovation. This study contributes to a holistic and coordinated understanding of transport research and innovation by evaluating 3381 European Union-funded projects between 2007 and 2020. A technology taxonomy is built through a Grounded Theory approach, comprising 867 technologies that fall under 45 technology themes. Information is provided on funding characteristics and the technology development phase for each technology. The paper expands our understanding on the role of funding to innovate transport and offers suggestions to further improve research funding allocation.

Innovative financing mechanisms for government to leverage private sector investment in infrastructure for sustainable development in South Africa: case study in the water sector

The research article presents catalytic and innovative mechanisms for the use of fiscal grant funding to crowd in private sector investment for water infrastructure projects in the Republic of South Africa. Chapter Two of the South African Constitution (1996) includes a series of socio-economic rights, of which the right of access to water is one of those afforded its people, but this access is not currently provided to the entire population. The study uses a mixed methods approach, utilizing both quantitative and qualitative data sequentially. The data gathered involved a non-random purposive sample of best practice from European Union-funded projects internationally, South Africa-based projects, and qualitative interviews with officials from international development finance institutions and the National Treasury. It was found that the strategic targeting of grant funding to mitigate project risks, better enabled investor confidence. Through the use of three innovative financing tools, specifically investment grants, interest rate subsidies and technical assistance, government was able to leverage further investment into projects. The research concluded that blended grants for debt financing should be a consideration in South Africa. Specifically, as the current challenges in the water sector relate to constrained financial gaps, as well as capacity and skills deficits, these could be addressed strategically and deliberately through the use of blended fiscal grants targeting innovative financing tools. To allow for blending as recommended, budget reforms in South Africa are necessary.

The ethical framework for performing research with rare inherited neurometabolic disease patients

The need for performing clinical trials to develop well-studied and appropriate medicines for inherited neurometabolic disease patients faces ethical concerns mainly raising from four aspects: the diseases are rare; include young and very young patients; the neurological impairment may compromise the capability to provide ‘consent’; and the genetic nature of the disease leads to further ethical implications. This work is intended to identify the ethical provisions applicable to clinical research involving these patients and to evaluate if these cover the ethical issues. Three searches have been performed on the European regulatory/legal framework, the literature and European Union-funded projects. The European legal framework offers a number of ethical provisions ruling the clinical research on paediatric, rare, inherited diseases with neurological symptoms. In the literature, relevant publications deal with informed consent, newborn genetic screenings, gene therapy and rights/interests of research participants. Additional information raised from European projects on sharing patients’ data from different countries, the need to fill the gap of the regulatory framework and to improve information to stakeholders and patients/families.Conclusion: Several recommendations and guidelines on ethical aspects are applicable to the inherited neurometabolic disease research in Europe, even though they suffer from the lack of a common ethical approach.What is Known:• When planning and conducting clinical trials, sponsors and researchers know that clinical trials are to be performed according to well-established ethical rules, and patients should be aware about their rights.• In the cases of paediatric patients, vulnerable patients unable to provide consent, genetic diseases’ further rules apply.What is New:• This work discusses which ethical rules apply to ensure protection of patient’s rights if all the above-mentioned features coexist.• This work shows available data and information on how these rules have been applied.

In Ukraine, mistrust of doctors remains high

Dr. Richard Styles was used to being trusted as a doctor in Britain, but that changed when he moved to Ukraine a decade ago, after working in a number of European Union-funded projects there. “There is nearly no trust in doctors at all, even amongst doctors,” says the chief medical director at

The effect of stakeholder inclusion on public sector project innovation

The delivery of public services in collaborative agency networks has given rise to an increasing use of projects in administering policy and service delivery. Projects are assumed to provide mechanisms by which flexibility can be achieved and innovative solutions produced. The aim of the article is to advance the understanding of collaboration between stakeholders and its effect on innovation. It analyses stakeholders’ influence on the creation of project innovations in 275 European Union-funded projects by using content analyses and logistic regression analyses. The results show that projects can act as hubs where valuable information is produced but that few projects produce innovations. Project stakeholder network, knowledge dissemination and project influence, as well as sources of advice, play a role in predicting project innovations. The article concludes that the overly optimistic view of collaboration as a remedy for a lack of innovation in the public sector can be questioned.Points for practitionersThe results of the article help practitioners to compose public sector development projects that foster innovation. The results suggest that it pays to include representatives of research and education facilities among project staff as their inclusion predicts the possibilities of achieving innovations. The empirical findings provide insight into project innovation and indicate which practices to avoid. It is suggested that when managed correctly, stakeholder inclusion has an effect on public sector project innovation.

Assessment of European Union Funded Projects Finalised by the Ministry of National Education based on the Opinions of Administrators and Experts

The main purpose of this study is to assess European Union Training Projects (Support to Basic Education Program (SBEP), Strengthening Vocational Education and Training Project, (SVET) Modernisation of the Vocational and Technical Education Project, (MVET)) finalised by the Ministry of National Education in terms of their purpose, process, outcomes and sustainability dimensions based on opinions of Turkish and foreign administrators as well as the managers and experts taking part in the decision-making and implementation processes. Participants of this study are Turkish and foreign administrators and educational experts who were engaged in European Union funded projects. Taking into account general qualifications of the participants of this study, the most common feature is that they are effectively involved in decision making and implementation processes of SBEP, SVET, and MVET projects. Not only were the opinions of decision takers but also of those who carried out the pilot practices at local level considered for this study. In order to ensure objectivity, opinions of all Turkish and foreign experts participated in the preparation and implementation processes of SBEP, SVET and MVET projects were received. Data of this study was collected in two ways. First of all, face to face interviews were held with several participants voluntarily agreed on giving opinions and accordingly, the data was recorded. Semi-structured interview forms were developed in order to get comments of those who accepted to give their opinions. Later, these interviews were analysed. The participants who were/could not attend interviews were asked to present their opinions in writing and semi-structured interview forms were submitted. Later on, these opinions were analysed. The main conclusions of the study are as follows: It was observed that the outcomes of SBEP, SVET and MVET Projects funded by the European Union were extended throughout the country. Considering the preparation, implementation and outcomes of SBEP, SVET and MVET projects, the common strengths of these projects were mostly related with strong embrace of the project by the parties, well designed TORs and aims, and having adequate budgets, while the weaknesses of these projects were related with long implementation periods, having very different components, procedures of procurement envisaged in the legislation, lack of experienced staff and difficulties faced by local administrations in terms of sustainability of these projects. SBEP, SVET and MVET projects have had a significant impact on the change of the MoNE's vision since these projects were the first ones under the institutional structure of the MoNE. SBEP helped Turkey to undertake its commitments under the “Education and Culture” chapter and those related with the “Fundamental Human Rights” during EU accession process. Thanks to these projects, Government of Turkey has proved its decisiveness on educational reforms and caught up with the European Union norms and contributed a lot to its accession process to the EU. SVET Project has solved such issues as what kind of discussions on vocational training and how should be held. Experience of the European Union on vocational education has been deemed as an important comparison tool. However, at the end, it has been concluded that it is essential to develop a system specific to Turkey.

Challenges in Designing and Scaling up Community Services

ABSTRACTThis paper is based on two European Union-funded projects: Life 2.0, which was recently completed, and My Neighbourhood, which is still ongoing. The goal of the former was to create location-based and socially networked services to support elderly people in living independently. The aim of the latter is to develop a platform to activate hidden or latent resources in neighbourhoods. Both of the projects are an application of service design to the public sector and together provide useful insights about designing and scaling up highly localized and personalized services and service platforms. While several analogies can be found between the existing generation of social networking platforms and the services proposed in these projects, there are also several important differences that challenge the way local and individual services should be designed in the perspective of being scaled up to larger contexts.This paper reflects on the lesson learned from the work undertaken so far and proposes criteria and hypotheses for the diffusion of these types of services.

The UniversAAL Platform for AAL (Ambient Assisted Living)

AbstractThis article describes the UniversAAL platform, an open platform intended to facilitate the development, distribution, and deployment of technological solutions for Ambient assisted living (AAL). The platform is intended to benefit end users (i.e., assisted persons, their families, and caregivers), authorities with responsibility for AAL, and organizations involved in the development and deployment of AAL services. It consists of an extensive set of resources (some are software and some are models/architectures) aimed at these different groups. The resources are classified into three main groups: runtime support, development support, and community support. The article presents the benefits that can be expected from the widespread adoption of the platform. The article also describes progress on prototype implementations of some of the software resources, and the results of initial evaluations of the platform. The work is partially based on results from earlier European Union-funded research projects in the area.

Electronic discharge summaries in cross-border care in the European Union: How close are we to making it happen?

Introduction The political drive for cross-border care within the European Union and an increasing focus on integrated care both have implications for electronic health records. The hospital discharge summary is a critical component of systems to ensure quality and continuity of care, and in a cross-border setting would particularly benefit from an electronic version. We have explored the extent to which European Union level policy and practice on electronic health records address issues pertinent to the development and implementation of electronic discharge summaries for patients treated outside their own country. Methods We approached the topic by analysing data from two different sources: European Union policy documents on topics relevant to electronic health records and deliverables of European Union-funded electronic health record-focused research and development projects. Elements pertinent to different aspects of interoperability – legal, semantic and technical – were extracted from both sources and their content compared to assess the degree of consistency between policy and implementation targets. Results We identified 25 policy documents and 14 European Union-funded projects. Our results show that European legislation is increasingly aligned with projects funded through European Union sources and substantial progress has been accomplished in achieving electronic communication across European health systems. Nevertheless, the achievement of a European level interoperable discharge summary is still a distant goal, while inadequate attention has been paid to the coordination of current discharge summary practices in Member States. Discussion If the harmonized European Union patient summary is also to function as an electronic discharge summary, further specific steps are needed that address issues of both content and processes related to communication.

Editorial

Dear Readers Welcome to the sixth issue of the Journal of Project, Program & Portfolio Management. This issue is late for very good reasons. We started out with a call to emerging researchers in project management to submit a paper and offered them guidance as well. We thank all the reviewers who spent more time than they normally would have to provide detailed comments and suggestions to the authors to get the papers into shape. We also achieved one more aim of the journal by being able to publish papers from authors from around the world. Thus we have articles from Poland, Brazil and India and a case study form India as well. The first paper in this issue is by Beata Jalocha, who has recently completed her PhD from Jagellionian University, Poland. She has reflected on the concept of projectification and its impact on public organisations in Poland. Her research concludes that while European Union-funded projects are successfully completed in Poland they are still falling behind in creating the value expected by the communities they were intended to benefit. The second paper from four researchers in Brazil proposes that knowledge management can contribute to project management by helping in project integration and thus contributing to corporate sustainability. The third paper from India by Shah and Janardhanan addresses an important concern that educational institutions offering programs in project management are faced with — how to provide superior student experiences to students both with and without experience to acquire leadership competencies that require hard and soft skills. The case study by Nag, Singh and Tiwary addresses the issue of the contribution of transport capacity as an economic lever by examining a dedicated freight corridor conceived by Indian Railways. Enjoy! Daniel Adler & Shankar Sankaran

Laser-Based Head-Tracked 3D Display Research

The construction and operation of two laser-based glasses-free 3D (autostereoscopic) displays that have been carried out within the European Union-funded projects MUTED and HELIUM3D is described in this paper. Both use a multi-user head tracker to direct regions viewer's referred to as exit pupils to viewer's eyes. MUTED employs a direct-view LCD whose backlight comprises novel steering optics and in HELIUM3D image information is supplied by a horizontally-scanned fast light valve whose output is controlled by a spatial light modulator (SLM). The principle of operation, construction and results obtained are described.

ENLIGHT and other EU-funded projects in hadron therapy

Following impressive results from early phase trials in Japan and Germany, there is a current expansion in European hadron therapy. This article summarises present European Union-funded projects for research and co-ordination of hadron therapy across Europe. Our primary focus will be on the research questions associated with carbon ion treatment of cancer, but these considerations are also applicable to treatments using proton beams and other light ions. The challenges inherent in this new form of radiotherapy require maximum interdisciplinary co-ordination. On the basis of its successful track record in particle and accelerator physics, the internationally funded CERN laboratories (otherwise known as the European Organisation for Nuclear Research) have been instrumental in promoting collaborations for research purposes in this area of radiation oncology. There will soon be increased opportunities for referral of patients across Europe for hadron therapy. Oncologists should be aware of these developments, which confer enhanced prospects for better cancer cure rates as well as improved quality of life in many cancer patients.

The Finnish Experience

Water and wastewater services in Finland are, according to international comparisons, exceptionally well organised. In Finland, as in industrialised countries in general, the public sector and particularly the municipalities have played a central role in the development of these services. Although municipalities are legally responsible for water and wastewater service provision, they do not have to produce these services themselves, and there are several alternatives for the ownership and operational management. There is no single model for how water and wastewater services should be organised—not even within a single country. Water and wastewater services should be looked at as multi-dimensional activities within a wider institutional context considering the roles of all stakeholders.1 1 This paper is based on several studies, especially on case studies produced by the European Union-funded projects PRINWASS (http://users.ox.ac.uk/∼prinwass/) and WaterTime (http://www.watertime.net/), the UNRISD project ...

Scales of Place and Networks

Much has been made of the spacetransforming and spacedefying characteristics of information and communications technologies. This focus tends to separate the spatial characteristics of these technologies from those of the Euclidean world; it also takes the spatial characteristics of the Euclidean world for granted. Yet anthropologists have shown that place making in any spatial context is a complicated process, always involving an entanglement of imagination, politics, and social relations. This paper, by focusing on the promotion of the development of information and communications technologies through the public sector in Europe, shows that these technologies have become as much a part of political place making as other transportation and communication technologies in the past. Using our ethnographic research on several European Unionfunded projects based in Manchester, we argue that many of the perceived difficulties experienced in projects which envision these technologies as holding the potential for social change derive from a tension between imagined communities and imagined networks as two different forms of place making. The paper illustrates this tension by tracing the political, institutional, and social development of what we term an imperative to connect, which constitutes a moral and social imperative as much as an economic one.

An Operational European Global Ocean Observing System for the Eastern Mediterranean Levantine Basin: The Cyprus Coastal Ocean Forecasting and Observing System

The countries surrounding the Mediterranean Sea have joined together in several multinational initiatives to conduct long-term, integrated, operational oceanographic observations and modelling of this important region. Some of these initiatives and the country members involved are discussed in this paper. Particular emphasis is given to long-term observing systems and modelling conducted in the Eastern Mediterranean Levantine Basin and the region around the island of Cyprus. A complete operational oceanographic forecasting and observing system has been developed in Cyprus, and has been operational since early 2002. The system is called CYCOFOS—Cyprus Coastal Ocean Forecasting and Observing System—and is a component of the Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS), and its European (EuroGOOS) and Mediterranean (MedGOOS) modules. CYCOFOS is the result of several years of research activities all carried out within the framework of European Union-funded projects including: (1) Mediterranean forecasting system, both pilot project and towards environmental predictions (MFSPP and MFSTEP), (2) Mediterranean network to Access and upgrade Monitoring and forecasts Activities in the region (MAMA), (3) European Sea level Service Research Infrastructure (ESEAS-RI), (4) Mediterranean network of Global sea Level Observing System (MedGLOSS), and (5) Marine Environment and Security in the European Areas (MERSEA strand 1). CYCOFOS at present consists of several operational modules, including flow and offshore waves forecasts, satellite remote sensing, coastal monitoring stations and end user-derived applications. All these operational modules provide regular near-real-time information, both to local and sub-regional end users in the Eastern Mediterranean Levantine Basin. This paper discusses these as well as additional ocean observation stations and features soon to be added to CYCOFOS.