Flagship Project Research Articles

One Belt, One Road between Three Seas: China’s soft-power policy towards ‘new’ EU members

China’s soft-power practice in its international activity boils down to four areas: culture, education, diplomacy, and economy. The most important element of China’s soft-power policy seems to be the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Announced in 2013, the BRI is a complex, long-term and large-scale strategic political and economic project by the Chinese government with an infrastructure character. In this way, China is seeking to invest its capital surpluses in resurrecting the ancient Silk Road to create railroad and maritime networks with its most important trading partner – the European Union. In these circumstances, in September 2015, the presidents of Central and Eastern EU member states announced the establishment of the separate Three Seas Initiative (TSI), a political and economic project bringing together 12 EU states, including 11 ‘new’ members and Austria. These entities constitute an informal bloc of states between the Adriatic, Baltic and Black seas, though without a permanent secretariat but with rotating leadership. In addition to the lack of a formal structure, the TSI region, located mainly in the EU’s eastern part, is characterized by a weaker infrastructure network than Western Europe, lower GDP (except Austria), and high dependence on gas supplies from Russia (except Croatia). To overcome these disparities, the TSI has developed a catalogue of 48 investment priorities in three economic areas: energy, transport, and digitalisation. China’s soft-power policy towards the ‘new’ EU members may be decided by the American patronage of the TSI and the fact that one of the flagship projects is the North-South Gas Corridor, which will enable the sale of American LNG in Central Europe, which has been dependent on gas supplies from Russia, China’s partner in the BRI. In the context of the US-China trade war, White House planners recognise Central Europe as both a peripheral and key area for their policy and seek to strengthen the Three Seas project, which may lead to limiting areas of cooperation under the ‘17+1’ format, involving CEE countries and China. On the other hand, the development of better energy, transport and digital connections in the EU’s east clearly intersects with China’s idea of building a New Eurasian Land Bridge under the BRI to connect the most economically developed edges of Eurasia. The new US strategy towards the countries of the CEE seems to boil down to involvement in specific energy-related projects. Instead of blocking or diminishing BRI-related infrastructure projects in China, they seem in fact to complement the Chinese activity in the CEE. Increased investment by American enterprises in the region may allow the administration in Washington to maintain control of Chinese infrastructure investments, and the US involvement may even lead to the participation of American companies in projects originally started by Beijing.

Urban Entrepreneurialism and Sustainable Development: A Comparative Analysis of Chinese Eco-Developments

ABSTRACTIn recent years, state entrepreneurialism and the notion of (urban) sustainability have become ever more closely intertwined in China and there has been a proliferation of eco-/low-carbon and other similar sustainability-themed urban initiatives that have helped local states to achieve a favorable position in city competitions. Nevertheless, existing studies do not explain why Chinese sustainability projects are planned/implemented with divergent emphases and different development trajectories. Through three Chinese flagship projects, the real-estate-centric Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-City (SSTEC), the environmental-construction-led Chongming Eco-Islands (CEIs), and the industrial development-focused Shenzhen International Low-Carbon City (ILCC), we argue that the formulation and implementation of urban sustainable developments are subject to local particularities and different extra-local political-economic contexts. We highlight how both vertical administrative governance and horizontal coordination between territorial jurisdictions underlie the Chinese entrepreneurial planning system, which results in different types of urban entrepreneurships: (1) scalable startup urban entrepreneurship (SSTEC); (2) asset-replacement urban entrepreneurship (CEIs); and (3) urban expansion entrepreneurship (ILCC). This study also reveals that all three cases experience a development paradox as they strive to reconcile mutually competing economic and environmental imperatives.

Open Psychology: transparency and reproducibility

I describe the attempt by a group of psychologists to reform the discipline into an Open Science (which I will call 'Open Psychology'). I will first argue that their particular version of Open Science reflects the problems that gave rise to it and that it tries to solve. Then I will describe the infrastructure that this group of people is putting in place to facilitate transparency. An important function of this infrastructure is to restrict what are called 'researcher degrees of freedom'. In Psychology, transparency is as much about closing down as it is about opening up. I will then focus on the flagship project of Open Psychology, the Reproducibility Project. According to the Open Psychologists, the neglect of replication is at the core of Psychology's current problems, and their online infrastructure offers the perfect framework to facilitate replication and give it a place in the field's research process. But replication, I will argue, is not just an epistemological, methodological issue: it implies a particular ontology and tries to enact it. The Reproducibility Project, and Open Psychology generally, can be considered as social experiments, that attempt not only to reform Psychology, but also to perform a new psychological object.

Swiss Stakeholder Workshop for the SUNRISE H2020 FET-Flagship Project.

On 27 September 2019, a workshop for the Swiss stakeholders for the SUNRISE flagship project was held at Empa in Dübendorf. The workshop had the aim of community building and was attended by over 30 participants from Switzerland, France, and South Africa. The secondary purpose of the workshop was the inclusion of the previously competing ENERGY-X flagship project into a future joint project from SUNRISE and ENERGY-X. The workshop program had 20 technical presentations including posters, a panel discussion and an interactive session.

The iron Silk Road: how important is it?

ABSTRACT Container transport by railway between Europe and China is a flagship project of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Trade, economic and geopolitical aspects of the BRI have been widely analysed, but data on real traffic flows are scarce. A variety of data sources are examined to identify the structure and evolution of cargo volumes along the Eurasian Land Bridge in the light not just of the development of new railway freight services between Chinese cities and Europe but also of trade between Japan and South Korea and European countries. The roles of subsidies and new infrastructure investments in shaping past, present and futures trends are also examined.

Estimating 2009–2017 Impervious Surface Change in Gwadar, Pakistan Using the HJ-1A/B Constellation, GF-1/2 Data, and the Random Forest Algorithm

The China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is the flagship project of the Belt and Road Initiative. At the end of the CPEC, the Gwadar port on the Arabian Sea is being built quickly, providing an important economical route for the flow of Central Asia’s natural resources to the world. Gwadar city is in a rapid urbanization process and will be developed as a modern, world-class port city in the near future. Therefore, monitoring the urbanization process of Gwadar at both high spatial and temporal resolution is vital for its urban planning, city ecosystem management, and the sustainable development of CPEC. The impervious surface percentage (ISP) is an essential quantitative indicator for the assessment of urban development. Through the integration of remote sensing images and ISP estimation models, ISP can be routinely and periodically estimated. However, due to clouds’ influence and spatial–temporal resolution trade-offs in sensor design, it is difficult to estimate the ISP with both high spatial resolution and dense temporal frequency from only one satellite sensor. In recent years, China has launched a series of Earth resource satellites, such as the HJ (Huangjing, which means environment in Chinese)-1A/B constellation, showing great application potential for rapid Earth surface mapping. This study employs the Random Forest (RF) method for a long-term and fine-scale ISP estimation and analysis of the city of Gwadar, based on the density in temporal and multi-source Chinese satellite images. In the method, high spatial resolution ISP reference data partially covering Gwadar city was first extracted from the 1–2 meter (m) GF (GaoFen, which means high spatial resolution in Chinese)-1/2 fused images. An RF retrieval model was then built based on the training samples extracted from ISP reference data and multi-temporal 30-m HJ-1A/B satellite images. Lastly, the model was used to generate the 30-m time series ISP from 2009 to 2017 for the whole city area based on the HJ-1A/B images. Results showed that the mean absolute error of the estimated ISP was 6.1–8.1% and that the root mean square error (RMSE) of the estimation results was 12.82–15.03%, indicating the consistently high performance of the model. This study highlights the feasibility and potential of using multi-source Chinese satellite images and an RF model to generate long-term ISP estimations for monitoring the urbanization process of the key node city in the CPEC.

Building ‘brotherhood’: John D. Rockefeller Jr. and the foundations of New York City’s International Student House

In 1924, American industrialist John D. Rockefeller Jr. inaugurated the flagship project of the International Student House movement. Located in Manhattan’s Morningside Heights, the ‘I-House’ was presented as the western hemisphere’s first residence to accommodate foreign students regardless of their nationality or religion. Analysing the architectural and urban-spatial design of this project, I argue that Rockefeller’s advocacy for secular ‘brotherhood’ supported a complex theopolitical ideology, contemporaneously known as ‘Protestant Modernism’, which positioned America and a modernised Christianity as the only viable models for world peace: ones that would demonstrate how to syncronise morality, scientific thinking, and capitalist expansion. Given that architectural historians uphold stylistic modernism as the aesthetic of progress in early twentieth-century buildings, the I-House’s prosaic Italianate façade and Beaux-Arts setting have discouraged rigorous analysis of the spaces within and around it. I show how the project was designed to create future world leaders who would reject ‘savage’ nationalism and embrace instead a moral and politico-economic internationalism led by Protestant America. To do this, I situate the I-House’s spatial layout and urban engagement in the larger context of two now shuttered foundations Rockefeller financed in the same period. The first, the Bureau of Social Hygiene, used criminology and eugenicist thinking to create a society resistant to ‘vice’ and dangerous emotions. The second, the Institute of Social and Religious Research (ISRR), employed social-scientific and business methods to modernise American Protestantism, thus strengthening its hegemony in a secular age; the ISRR’s work contrasted with orthodox organisations, such as the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), which focused instead on proselytisation. The article shows how Rockefeller’s drive for a theologically modern nation and ‘improved’ citizens at home was internationalised in soft ways through the architecture and cultural programming of the I-House and the physical re-arrangement of its site.

“Exhibiting in spite of all”: mediating interests and producing meaning in Donostia–San Sebastián European Capital of Culture 2016

ABSTRACTThanks to the expectations that made it the flagship project of San Sebastián European Capital of Culture 2016 and its relevance to the achievement of a lasting peace (the most pressing issue on the Basque political agenda), the exhibition Tratados de Paz was promoted as an artistic event of unprecedented dimensions in the city. Taking as a starting point the controversy it generated in the public and press, this article analyzes the exhibition’s production process: the bringing together of a set of human and nonhuman agents whose attempts to reconcile their respective interests generated meaning. To this end, the article explores the conflictive relationship between two different approaches to art that pervaded the exhibition project: art as sublime object and as archive. This opposition helps not only to explain the artistic and cultural limits of the exhibition proposal but also to identify the sociopolitical categories underpinning it. These opposing logics were not preestablished but resulted from a combination of practices and materials shaping a project that did more to stir up controversy than to solve problems. For this reason, the exhibition failed to meet many of the expectations placed on it, while at the same time opening up new lines of discussion in the city’s artistic sector.

Gwadar Port as the Socioeconomic Pivot to China Pakistan Economic Corridor: Prospects and Repercussions

China is emerging as an economic power of the world and correspondingly it has unleashed a strategy of its sustained economic growth alongside socioeconomic development of the region and beyond, through implementation of its envisaged grand Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). In this regard, Pakistanis accommodating China’s flagship project, China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). The success of CPEC hinges on the unhindered development and sustenance of Gwadar Port for assured uninterrupted sea - land linkage of CPEC. Besides supporting CPEC, Gwadar Port has gigantic potential to contribute towards Pakistan’s socioeconomic development and improving socioeconomic stature of landlocked Central Asian States. Geopolitics always play its role in all regional and international developments which embody clash of interest among stakeholder states and development of Gwadar Port is no exception. Alongside enormous prospects of payoffs, Gwadar Port encounters serious challenges to its development and sustenance, which have not been much deliberated in academic discourses. This paper, besides ascertaining the socioeconomic impacts of Gwadar Port on Pakistan, China, regional states and CPEC, identifies international repercussions and domestic challenges to Gwadar Port’s success; thus help the policy makers to draw pertinent conclusions.

The use of citizen science for marine biodiversity surveys: from species identification to ecologically relevant observations

The current development of citizen science is an opportunity for marine biodiversity surveys to use recreational SCUBA diver data. In France, the DORIS project is extensively used for marine species identification, while many initiatives offer volunteer divers the means to record their observations. Thanks to the scientific synergy generated by the flagship project of the artificial reefs (ARs) of Prado Bay, located off the coast of Marseille (France), a multi-annual biodiversity survey was performed by a team of recreational divers certified by the French Federation for Submarine Sports and Education (FFESSM). The analysis of their observations with other citizen science data showed a good taxonomic coverage for fishes and mollusks. These observations also allowed (1) to follow AR colonization over the study period, with the increasing number of taxa and the growing occurrence of large fishes, and (2) to characterize taxa distribution between the different AR types, revealing the inefficiency of one type of AR which failed to provide the results expected from its design. This example demonstrates that the transition from species identification to ecologically relevant observation is perfectly feasible using volunteer naturalist SCUBA divers, on condition that both the protocols and the data are validated by professional scientists.

Past, Present and Future of Libraries in the Mirror of Rumyantsev Readings — 2019

International scientific and practical conference “Rumyantsev readings — 2019” was held on April 23—24 in the Russian State Library. The conference covered a wide range of issues: “Libraries and museums in the context of history”; “History of the Russian State Library”; “Disclosure of universal and specialized collections of libraries: forms and methods”; “Future of libraries: evaluations, studies, forecasts”; “Libraries as centres of information-bibliographic activities”; “Library collections and library-information services in the age of electronic communications”; “Professional development of library staff: demands of time. Library as educational centre”; “International cooperation of libraries. Library as a platform for intercultural dialogue”. The conference was attended by specialists from libraries, museums, archives, universities and research institutes, representatives of professional associations and organizations from various regions of Russia and from Australia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Latvia, the United States of America, Tajikistan and Ukraine. Among the sections and round tables of “Rumyantsev readings” were both traditional, held within the framework of the conference on annual basis, and timed to the memorable dates and visits of foreign colleagues of the year. In 2019, the following sections were held: “Art editions in the collections of libraries: issues of study, preservation and promotion”, “Library classification systems”, “Rare and valuable books, book monuments and collections”, “Manuscript sources in the collections of libraries”, “Specialized collections in libraries”, “Collectors, researchers, keepers. Libraries in the context of history”, “Continuing education as a competence resource of library staff”, “Theory and practice of librarianship development at the present stage”, “Library digitalization: trends, problems, prospects”, “Effective library management: problems and solutions. (Pre-session meeting of the 32nd Section of the Russian Library Association on library management and marketing)”. Seminar from the series “Role of science in the development of libraries (theoretical and practical aspects)” “N.M. Sikorsky: scientist, organizer of book science and librarianship. To the 100th birth anniversary” took place. There were organized Round tables: “The new National standard for bibliographic description GOST R 7.0.100—2018 in the modern information environment”, “Library terminology in the context of digital space”, “Cooperation of libraries of the CIS countries: strategic directions”, “Flagship projects that shape the future of libraries”. The growing number of participants, the breadth of topics, the steady interest of specialists in traditional sections and the annual organization of new events in the form and content of the “Rumyantsev readings” allow the conference to stay among the largest scientific and practical events of library research in the country. The search for new topics and the introduction of topical issues on the agenda contribute to both activation of historical research and the search for ways of innovative development and intercultural interaction.

Review and performance of the Dose Profiler, a particle therapy treatments online monitor

Particle therapy (PT) can exploit heavy ions (such as He, C or O) to enhance the treatment efficacy, profiting from the increased Relative Biological Effectiveness and Oxygen Enhancement Ratio of these projectiles with respect to proton beams. To maximise the gain in tumor control probability a precise online monitoring of the dose release is needed, avoiding unnecessary large safety margins surroundings the tumor volume accounting for possible patient mispositioning or morphological changes with respect to the initial CT scan. The Dose Profiler (DP) detector, presented in this manuscript, is a scintillating fibres tracker of charged secondary particles (mainly protons) that will be operating during the treatment, allowing for an online range monitoring. Such monitoring technique is particularly promising in the context of heavy ions PT, in which the precision achievable by other techniques based on secondary photons detection is limited by the environmental background during the beam delivery. Developed and built at the SBAI department of “La Sapienza”, within the INSIDE collaboration and as part of a Centro Fermi flagship project, the DP is a tracker detector specifically designed and planned for clinical applications inside a PT treatment room. The DP operation in clinical like conditions has been tested with the proton and carbon ions beams of Trento proton-therapy center and of the CNAO facility. In this contribution the detector performances are presented, in the context of the carbon ions monitoring clinical trial that is about to start at the CNAO centre.

Belt and Road Initiative in Africa: The Impact of Standard Gauge Railway in Kenya

China’s Belt and Road has been billed as the single most significant undertaking by the country on the international stage. In Africa, Kenya is a core part of both the Maritime Silk Road and the Belt. The authors have examined the flagship project of this initiative in Kenya, the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) from the port of Mombasa to Nairobi, with a view to analyse the impact so far. Issues of employment, debt sustainability, neocolonialism and specific aspects of the project were looked at. Although our findings indicate that the SGR so far has both positive aspects as well as challenges, for the project to be successful both China and Kenya need to create a synergy towards solving concerns that have arisen from the completion of phase 1 of the project.

Artificial intelligence moving serious gaming: Presenting reusable game AI components

This article provides a comprehensive overview of artificial intelligence (AI) for serious games. Reporting about the work of a European flagship project on serious game technologies, it presents a set of advanced game AI components that enable pedagogical affordances and that can be easily reused across a wide diversity of game engines and game platforms. Serious game AI functionalities include player modelling (real-time facial emotion recognition, automated difficulty adaptation, stealth assessment), natural language processing (sentiment analysis and essay scoring on free texts), and believable non-playing characters (emotional and socio-cultural, non-verbal bodily motion, and lip-synchronised speech), respectively. The reuse of these components enables game developers to develop high quality serious games at reduced costs and in shorter periods of time. All these components are open source software and can be freely downloaded from the newly launched portal at gamecomponents.eu. The components come with detailed installation manuals and tutorial videos. All components have been applied and validated in serious games that were tested with real end-users.

Towards integrating the ecosystem services cascade framework within the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) cause-effect methodology

The assessment of ecosystem services (ES) is covered in a fragmented manner by environmental decision support tools that provide information about the potential environmental impacts of supply chains and their products, such as the well-known Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology. Within the flagship project of the Life Cycle Initiative (hosted by UN Environment), aiming at global guidance for life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) indicators, a dedicated subtask force was constituted to consolidate the evaluation of ES in LCA. As one of the outcomes of this subtask force, this paper describes the progress towards consensus building in the LCA domain concerning the assessment of anthropogenic impacts on ecosystems and their associated services for human well-being. To this end, the traditional LCIA structure, which represents the cause-effect chain from stressor to impacts and damages, is re-casted and expanded using the lens of the ES ‘cascade model’. This links changes in ecosystem structure and function to changes in human well-being, while LCIA links the effect of changes on ecosystems due to human impacts (e.g. land use change, eutrophication, freshwater depletion) to the increase or decrease in the quality and/or quantity of supplied ES. The proposed cascade modelling framework complements traditional LCIA with information about the externalities associated with the supply and demand of ES, for which the overall cost-benefit result might be either negative (i.e. detrimental impact on the ES provision) or positive (i.e. increase of ES provision). In so doing, the framework introduces into traditional LCIA the notion of “benefit” (in the form of ES supply flows and ecosystems' capacity to generate services) which balances the quantified environmental intervention flows and related impacts (in the form of ES demands) that are typically considered in LCA. Recommendations are eventually provided to further address current gaps in the analysis of ES within the LCA methodology.

The Human Brain Project-Synergy between neuroscience, computing, informatics, and brain-inspired technologies.

The Human Brain Project (HBP) is a European flagship project with a 10-year horizon aiming to understand the human brain and to translate neuroscience knowledge into medicine and technology. To achieve such aims, the HBP explores the multilevel complexity of the brain in space and time; transfers the acquired knowledge to brain-derived applications in health, computing, and technology; and provides shared and open computing tools and data through the HBP European brain research infrastructure. We discuss how the HBP creates a transdisciplinary community of researchers united by the quest to understand the brain, with fascinating perspectives on societal benefits.

The Human Lung Cell Atlas: A High-Resolution Reference Map of the Human Lung in Health and Disease.

Lung disease accounts for every sixth death globally. Profiling the molecular state of all lung cell types in health and disease is currently revolutionizing the identification of disease mechanisms and will aid the design of novel diagnostic and personalized therapeutic regimens. Recent progress in high-throughput techniques for single-cell genomic and transcriptomic analyses has opened up new possibilities to study individual cells within a tissue, classify these into cell types, and characterize variations in their molecular profiles as a function of genetics, environment, cell-cell interactions, developmental processes, aging, or disease. Integration of these cell state definitions with spatial information allows the in-depth molecular description of cellular neighborhoods and tissue microenvironments, including the tissue resident structural and immune cells, the tissue matrix, and the microbiome. The Human Cell Atlas consortium aims to characterize all cells in the healthy human body and has prioritized lung tissue as one of the flagship projects. Here, we present the rationale, the approach, and the expected impact of a Human Lung Cell Atlas.

Chinese World Order and Pakistan: Emerging Trends and Prospects

Economic recession of 2009 marked the end of the US dominance in the world. The subsequent period brought transition in the global order. China stepped forward by taking “Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)”, establishing Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and creating alternative forums to engage various regions by assuming a global role. Chinese World Order here is not aimed at referring to the world dominated by China but Chinese sphere of influence with its greater role. Pakistan’s profile has improved with success against terrorism, Chinese investment and interest by other countries to invest under China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). CPEC is a flagship project of BRI which enables Pakistan’s growth and extend it economic integration with China. Pakistan’s close partnership with China enables it to play a greater political role in South Asia, Central Asia, Middle East, the Islamic world and the world at large.

A Case Study of the Korean Government’s Preparation for the Fourth Industrial Revolution: Public Program to Support Business Model Innovation

The Fourth Industrial Revolution caused by innovative technologies is an irresistible megatrend, and many companies, institutions, and major countries are making efforts to participate. The World Economic Forum took the lead in discussing the Fourth Industrial Revolution, adding the issue to its 2016 agenda, and found that many governments, including that of Korea, were concerned about how to support their nation’s participation in the Fourth Industrial Revolution and were pursuing programs to support such efforts. In this study, we describe one of those programs, the Korean government’s Flagship Project Support Program (FPSP), which supports latecomers in creating open platforms and creating new business ideas in innovative technological industries. The program helps businesses overcome entry barriers to existing business ecosystems established by big technological players in growing fields such as smart cars, the Internet of Things (IoT), virtual reality (VR), etc. The purpose of this study is to determine whether latecomers and small- and medium-sized companies that are experiencing difficulties in their own innovation can succeed in innovation through the Korean government’s FPSP. This study performed a comprehensive and qualitative analysis based on the Logic Model Framework consisting of an investigation of business ecosystems before and after the FPSP, assessment of outcomes, and evaluation of the effectiveness of the FPSP. This study shows that open platforms resulting from the FPSP successfully innovated business models in Korea. Our study, therefore, has implications for other governments seeking to play a role in supporting the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

(Invited) Applications and Safety of 2D Materials

The organic functionalization of 2D materials, including graphene and MoS2, offers several advantages: 1) Improved solubility and easier handling of otherwise intractable materials; 2) Additional functions can be implanted on the carbon skeleton, such as chromophores, electroactive units, drugs, etc.; 3) Potential toxicity of the carbon materials can be at least partially lifted by organic functionalization, thanks to improved solubility and debundling in physiological media. During this talk, we will discuss the various approaches to organic functionalization and will also analyze other important challenges in graphene chemistry, such as the toxicological impact and the limitations in translating graphene into advanced materials. This work was supported by the European Commission, Graphene Flagship project (no. 696656 and 785219).