FP7 – Environmental research – calls for proposals:
FP7-ENV-2007-1: The evaluation of eligible proposals is now completed
and the resulting Evaluation Summary Report has been sent to applicants
at the beginning of August. The Commission services drafted the lists of
proposals suggested for funding and will initiate before mid-September the
internal selection procedure. It is expected that the negotiations with
successful applicants will start by the end of September.
FP7-ENV-2008-1: The next call for proposals will be published on 20
November 2007 with the 19 February as deadline for submissions. An
indicative budget of about €216 million is allocated to the 2008 work
programme, where more than 50 topics for research have been identified
so far in the following areas:
•
pressures on environment and climate;
•
environment and health;
•
natural hazards;
•
conservation and sustainable management of natural and man-made
resources and biodiversity;
•
management of marine environments;
•
environmental technologies for observation, simulation, prevention,
mitigation, adaptation, remediation and restoration of the natural and
man-made environment;
•
protection, conservation and enhancement of cultural heritage,
including human habitat;
•
technology assessment, verification and testing;
•
earth and ocean observation systems and monitoring methods for
the environment and sustainable development;
•
forecasting methods and assessment tools for sustainable
development taking into account different scales of observation;
•
dissemination and horizontal activities.
EC Communication on water scarcity and droughts:
The Commission adopted in July the COM(2007) 414 final 'Addressing
the challenge of water scarcity and droughts in the European Union'. This
document describes a set of policy orientations for future actions
including incentives for water savings, water efficiency promotion, drought
risk management and securing water supply.
Best management practises are also mentioned as well as the necessary
efforts needed in view to improve knowledge and data collection.
The Communication text is available on:
http://ec.europa.eu/environment/water/ ...
A document issued by the European Environment Agency related to the
subject, the 'EEA Briefing: Climate change and water adaptation issues',
is available on:
http://bookshop.europa.eu/eubookshop/F ...
Better coordinated use of Framework Programme and Structural Funds to
support R&D:
Mobilising these two instruments together can help fostering (much more
efficiently than considered separately) the research and technological
development potential to contribute and promote growth and employment
at local, regional, national and European scale. The European Union
Scientific and Technical Research Committee (CREST) has recently
issued a set of guidelines on 'Coordinating the Framework Programme
and the Structural Funds to support Research and Development'. This
document summarises recommendations on developing strategies and
strengthening governance; developing human resources and
infrastructures; promoting R&D excellence and international cooperation;
reinforcing results' exploitation and valorisation strategies and improving
communication and information.
The guidelines are available on:
http://cordis.europa.eu/documents/docu ...
Advanced and novel approaches improving industrial waste water
treatment: INNOWATECH
The currently ongoing European project “INNOWATECH - Innovative and
integrated technologies for the treatment of industrial wastewater” started
in November 2006 and will last three years. Its main objectives are:
•
investigating and enhancing the performance of promising industrial
wastewater treatment options such as aerobic granulation, advanced
oxidation processes combined with biological treatments, membrane
contactors and membrane chemical reactors;
•
Advancing fundamental and technological knowledge;
•
Assessing the economic and environmental sustainability of the
investigated options;
•
Developing integrated tailor-made solutions for end-users operating
for different industrial sectors in wastewater treatment area;
•
Encouraging project’s results implementation for enhancing the
competitiveness of the EU Water Industry;
•
Transferring the developed know-how to potential stakeholders and
end-users inside and outside the project.
The main features of INNOWATECH are reported in the project's web-site (
http://www.innowatech.org) where an open forum area is available for
any potential stakeholders and/or end-users so that they can: get
details, forward questions, post comments and participate to enlarged
discussions.
For any question or request, please contact the project Coordinator: Dr.
Antonio Lopez (antonio.lopez@ba.irsa.cnr.it)
Sustainable and Safe Re-use of Municipal Sewage Sludge for
Nutrient Recovery (SUSAN):
The FP6 project SUSAN started in November 2005 with the aim to develop
technologies and strategies for safe and efficient recovery of nutrients as
fertilisers from municipal sewage sludge. The project focuses on
developing and validating a thermo-chemical process enabling heavy
metals removal and transfer of phosphorus into mineral phases with high
bioavailability. This technology shall be suitable for large scale facilities
handling up to 50,000 tons of ashes per year.
So far, the investigations demonstrated the capability of the proposed
technologies including efficient heavy metal removal and conclusive
increase of phosphorous bioavailability in the treated ashes.
An overview of the activities as well as a description of the current project's
status are available on: http://www.susan.bam.de.
Focus on the Priority Pollutants management options
SCOREPP and SOCOPSE are 2 FP6 projects that started towards the
end of 2006. They are thus now about to accomplish their first year. Both
projects deal with source control of priority pollutants and aim at
developing guidelines for stakeholders to help them achieve the
requirements in this regard of the WFD. An interaction between these 2
projects is gradually taking place.
SOCOPSE is looking mostly at hazardous priority pollutants to provide
guidelines and decision support tools for their management at river basin
scale. Their activities include material flow analysis, a series of detailed
substances reports, identification of measures and management options
and application to 4 case studies. A strong interaction with industry
research networks, authorities and NGOs is envisaged. (
http://www.socopse.se/ )
SCOREPP aims to assess a wider selection of pollutants including all the
priority pollutants and an additional list of relevant pollutants. This project
will develop appropriate strategies to reduce emissions from urban areas
into the receiving waters. The activities include the identification of sources
in urban areas, identification of measures, assessing their
cost-effectiveness and validation of the strategies on a number of selected
case studies. Interaction with relevant stakeholders is also an integral part
of the project. (http://www.scorepp.eu/ )
PUBLICATIONS and AVAILABLE DOCUMENTS
Report from the Wor
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