Research projects Archive

Filtering by: Advanced Digital Innovation Center (ADIC)

ActFast: Actions for Climate Transition by Developing Future Aquaculture Strategies and Technologies

How to promote a sustainable future for fish production in Europe? This is the question at the heart of ActFast (Actions for Climate Transition by Developing Future Aquaculture Strategies and Technologies), a Horizon Europe project coordinated by the Department of Veterinary Medical Sciences at the University of Bologna. The project addresses the challenge by combining sustainable farming practices, environmental monitoring and Artificial Intelligence. A multidisciplinary team of 28 partners from 10 EU countries, plus Norway, Tunisia and Egypt, will collaborate to develop innovative strategies for future aquaculture. In this context, the Regional Ocean Forecasting Systems (ROFS) division will play a key role as work package leader, contributing substantially to the development of high-resolution climate projections and forecasting systems specifically for the aquaculture sector.

ARCA: ARtificial intelligence platform to prevent Climate change natural hazArds

Forest monitoring stands as a crucial endeavor for the well-being of our planet and human communities. The project, named ARtificial intelligence platform to prevent Climate change natural hazArds (ARCA), aims to address forest monitoring by developing an innovative system utilizing Artificial Intelligence (AI). The primary objective is to create a transnationally applicable platform through pilot initiatives in wooded areas, employing cutting-edge technologies to combat the risks posed by climate change-induced natural hazards. The project relies on advanced algorithms based on Machine Learning (ML) and diverse networks made of Internet of Things (IoT) sensors. These technological components work collaboratively to model specific forests and proactively mitigate the impact of natural hazards such as windstorms, drought, and wildfires. The digital platform comprises wireless sensor networks (WSNs), video cameras, drones, and LiDAR remote sensing, all contributing to a comprehensive forest modeling approach.

Blue-Cloud 2026 | A federated European FAIR and Open Research Ecosystem for oceans, seas, coastal and inland waters

The Blue-Cloud 2026 project builds on the existing pilot Blue-Cloud project (Oct 2019 – Sep 2022) and it evolves its pilot Blue-Cloud ecosystem into a federated European Ecosystem to deliver FAIR and Open Data and analytical services instrumental for deepening research of oceans, the EU sea, coastal and inland waters. It develops a thematic marine extension to European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) for accessible web-based science, serving the needs of the EU Blue Economy, Marine Environment and Marine Knowledge agendas.

Climateurope2 – Supporting and standardizing climate services in Europe and beyond

Climateurope2 aims to develop future equitable and quality-assured climate services to all sectors of society by: a) developing standardisation procedures for climate services; b) Supporting an equitable European climate services community; and c) Enhancing the uptake of quality-assured climate services to support adaptation and mitigation to climate change and variability. The project will identify the support and standardisation needs of climate services, including criteria for certification and labelling, as well as the user-driven criteria needed to support climate action. This information will be used to propose a taxonomy of climate services, suggest community-based good practices and guidelines, and propose standards where possible. A large variety of activities to support the communities involved in European climate services will also be organised.

EDITO-Model Lab, Underlying models for the European DIgital Twin Ocean – EDITO-Model Lab

EDITO-Model Lab will prepare the next generation of ocean models, complementary to Copernicus Marine Service to be integrated into the EU public infrastructure of the European Digital Twin Ocean that will ensure access to required input and validation data (from EMODnet, EuroGOOS, ECMWF, Copernicus Services and Sentinels satellite observations) and to high performance and distributed computing facilities (from EuroHPC for High Performance Computing and other cloud computing resources) and that will be consolidated under developments of Destination Earth (DestinE).

ENMASSE: Enhancing NEMO for Marine Applications and Services

The Enhancing NEMO for Marine Applications and Services (ENMASSE) project represents a pivotal initiative aimed at advancing the capabilities of the NEMO (Nucleus for European Modelling of the Ocean) modelling platform. This enhancement is designed to address specific scientific and operational requirements set by the Copernicus Marine Service (CMS) program for the development and delivery of more precise and sophisticated ocean modelling products. These products are intended to support a wide range of applications, including marine safety, climate prediction, and ecosystem monitoring, ultimately contributing to informed decision-making and sustainable ocean management.

EOSC Beyond: advancing innovation and collaboration for research

EOSC Beyond is a 36-month project coordinated by the EGI Foundation with the ambition to support the growth of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) in terms of integrated providers and active users by providing new EOSC core technical solutions that allow developers of scientific application environments to easily compose a diverse portfolio of EOSC Resources offering them as integrated capabilities to researchers.

ESiWACE3 – Center of excellence for weather and climate phase 3

Extreme weather events and climate change are two of the main threats for society of the 21st century. Extreme weather events caused over 500 thousand casualties and over 2 trillion USD economic damages in the past 20 years. A failure of climate change mitigation and adaptation targets is ranked among the leading threats to global society. At the 2015 Paris Climate Conference, leaders from 194 countries of the world unanimously acknowledged the serious threat posed by anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases. Society must now become resilient to changes in climate over coming decades, which requires making quantitative estimates for future changes of weather patterns and climate extremes. This includes exceptional weather events such as violent windstorms and flash floods, but also persistent anomalies in planetary-scale circulation patterns, which lead to pervasive flooding in some regions and seasons, and long-lived drought and extremes of heat in others. Numerical models of the Earth system represent the most important tool to anticipate and assess these kinds of threats. One of the main factors that is limiting the skill of these models is limited resolution, and resolution, in turn, is limited by computational power that can be leveraged by these models. The first two phases of the ESiWACE Centre of Excellence (COE) have pushed the resolution of global Earth system models to unprecedented levels. This includes the first global atmosphere models that were able to run at ~1 km resolution in the first phase of ESiWACE and coupled atmosphere/ocean models that were able to

GANANA: Europe-India Partnership for Scientific High-Performance Computing

High-Performance Computing (HPC) is a major enabler of progress in many domains of science, including UN Sustainable Development goals towards improving population health and climate action. HPC is driving breakthroughs in genomics, drug discovery, and personalized medicine, as well as geophysical hazard simulations, improving preparedness for disasters like earthquakes and tsunamis, and supports weather and climate predictions. Europe is among the world leaders in HPC and with initiatives such as EuroHPC JU is advancing the usage of exascale computer systems for research. India is expanding its HPC capabilities through the National Supercomputing Mission, focusing on indigenous technology and fostering academic, industrial, and governmental collaborations. Combining Europe’s advanced infrastructure with India’s growing expertise offers opportunities for innovation in those strategic areas of climate modeling, disaster management, and healthcare. Shared resources and expertise can enhance predictive models, accelerate responses to pandemics, and foster technological and economic growth. The GANANA project is establishing a long-term partnership collaboration by uniting European HPC centers of excellence (BioExcel, ChEESE, ESiWACE3) and Indian institutions (C-DAC, IMD, ISR, NII, AIRAWAT) with the objectives to: • Strengthen the links between research communities in the priority domains by supporting existing and establishing new collaborative activities. • Setup and operate a range of activities in support of expertise exchange, capacity building and sharing of computing resources. • Develop selected leading software packages by extending their functionality, optimise HPC performance and scalability, deploy on target architectures, improve usability and data integration. • Expand the outreach, broaden the participation of external collaborators and

GRINS – Growing Resilient, INclusive and Sustainable

The green, digital and sustainable mobility transitions and the associated societal transformations require a far from trivial process of adaptation. The actors of the system, firms, households and public administrations, face complex and changing environments and need to make choices under uncertainty, often under limited information and often facing limitations in their ability to process it and use if proficiently. To respond to these needs – GRINS – Growing Resilient, INclusive and Sustainable Extended Partnership will offer tools to support fundamental and applied research for firms and households and for policy analysis and evaluation of the actions of public administrations. The project is designed following the priorities set by the Italian National Research Plan (PNR) and in strict adherence with the fundamental underline goals that inspire the whole EU-NRRP action: favouring resilient, inclusive, and sustainable growth.

IRIDE Lot 1

The IRIDE program is an innovative project undertaken by the Italian government in collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA) to leverage resources from the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR). Phase 2 of IRIDE Lot 1 started in October 2024 following the successful implementation of the IRIDE Precursor Phase. The main purpose of the project is to deliver an operational portfolio of geospatial services and develop digital tools for End and Pilot users within the Thematic Services S1-Coastal and Marine Monitoring, S2- Air Quality, S5- Hydro-Meteorological-Climate, S6- WaterManagement. The operational services allow mapping, monitoring and forecasting of various characteristics of coastal areas (including geomorphological, land use, flooding, habitats etc.) as well as operational model validation, operational air quality monitoring and forecast, pollutant emissions monitoring and assessment, re-analysis of air quality at national scale, hydro-meterological mapping and monitoring atmospheric structure, greenhouse gases and others essential climate variables monitoring, lightening monitoring, flood forecasting and sediment management, etc.

IRIDE Lot 4

The IRIDE program is an innovative project undertaken by the Italian government, in collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA), to leverage resources from the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR). Following the successful implementation of the IRIDE Precursor Phase, the Phase 2 started in October 2024. The main purpose of the project is to deliver an operational portfolio of geospatial services and develop digital tools for End and Pilot users within the Thematic Services S7-Emergency and S8-Security. The operational services allow mapping, monitoring and forecasting of critical events such as earthquakes, floods, extreme weather events, wildfires, volcanic eruptions, landslides, avalanches, mudflows, tsunamis, and other natural or man-made disasters. Additionally, the program includes Maritime Surveillance, focusing on oil spill detection, sea pollution management, and vessel tracking, ensuring comprehensive support for emergency and security needs.

NEVERMORE: New Enabling Visions and tools for End-useRs and stakeholders thanks to a common MOdeling appRoach towards a climatE neutral and resilient society

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report on Climate Change 2021 is a “code red for humanity” according to the UN Secretary-General. It is thus essential to work on a climate resilient society. This entails both climate neutrality and mitigation of those impacts of climate change that are making themselves felt already. The COVID-19 pandemic has further highlighted the importance of improved translations of scientific insights into policy and social practice.

RethinkAction – CRoss-sEcToral planning enHanced by a decisIoN-maKing platform to foster climate Action

RethinkAction focuses on supporting the objectives of the EU Green Deal translating its action plan in relevant and practical actions and solutions related to land use, as opportunities able not only to support climate neutrality and adaptation, sustainable use of the land resources, and biodiversity restoration, but also actions for social improvement, fostering equality and just transition for all designing the road map to green recovery after COVID.

RI-SCALE: Unlocking RI potential with Scalable AI and Data

Data and AI are the fuel of scientific discoveries, and Research Infrastructures (RIs) are at the forefront of this process, generating massive and increasingly more complex datasets. However, the growing size, diversity, and velocity of research data and software demand large-scale infrastructures and technical expertise from those on the user side. RI-SCALE will address this challenge by delivering Data Exploitation Platforms (DEPs). These scalable environments will co-host scientific data with preconfigured AI frameworks and models on powerful compute resources and unlock full data and AI potential for scientific users, RI operators and industry. RI-SCALE will design and develop the DEP technology with four RIs: ENES, EISCAT, BBMRI and Euro-BioImaging. DEP instances will be deployed for environmental and life sciences, validating the technology through 8 scientific and 4 technical use cases. These will run on national e-infrastructures from the EGI Federation and (pre)exascale machines from EuroHPC. RI-SCALE will collaborate with Destination Earth, EUCAIM cancer images data space, Copernicus Data Space Ecosystem, EOSC and Gaia-X to ensure interoperability within the broader landscape. The project will also facilitate industry and university collaborations, provide training and consultancy events to increase the uptake of AI technologies by additional RIs and explore sustainable DEP operation models for RI communities.

SDGs-EYES – Sustainable Development Goals – Enhanced monitoring through the family of copErnicus Services

The UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is a data driven agenda, and the use of Earth Observation (EO) can make the SDG indicators’ monitoring and reporting technically and financially viable, and comparable across countries. SDGs-EYES aims to boost the European capacity for monitoring the SDGs based on Copernicus, building a portfolio of decision-making tools to monitor those SDG indicators related to the environment from an inter-sectoral perspective, aligning with the EU Green Deal priorities and challenges. SDGs-EYES will establish an integrated scientific, technological and user engagement framework overcoming the knowledge and technical barriers that prevent the exploitation, combination and cross-feeding of data and tools from the Copernicus’s six core Services, its space-based and in-situ components, and other platforms and portals. SDGs-EYES considers three interconnected SDGs, on climate (SDG13), ocean (SDG14) and land (SDG15), to demonstrate through four Pilots the Copernicus potential for monitoring six indicators making part of the EU and national assessments: GHG emissions, temperature deviation, ocean acidification, marine eutrophication, forest cover change and soil erosion. Although focusing on the biosphere, these indicators are linked to other SDGs on socio-economic and (geo)political factors (e.g., human health, resources security, poverty, conflicts, displacements). Thus, an additional cross-goals indicator and Pilot will focus on vulnerable communities under cumulative climate extreme hazards. SDGs-EYES seeks to combine the science-informed (top-down) approach with a stakeholder-driven (bottom-up) approach to transfer scientific outcomes into easy-to-understand and easy-to-use actionable information in the context of SDG indicators’ assessment. Decision-making tools delivered by Pilots will be co-designed with users,

SIM: Sistema Avanzato ed Integrato di Monitoraggio e Previsione

The project, part of Italy’s National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR), aims to build an advanced and integrated monitoring and forecasting system to enhance predictive capabilities regarding the effects of climate change and protect the Italian territory and water resources from natural and anthropogenic risks. The SIM (Sistema Avanzato ed Integrato di Monitoraggio e Previsione) is a long-term surveillance system designed to enable the implementation of preventive measures, such as scheduled maintenance of the territory and infrastructures, marine and coastal pollution monitoring and optimized resource and emergency management. By integrating real-time data collection and predictive modeling, the system enhances the ability to detect environmental threats in advance, mitigate pollution risks in marine, coastal and land areas and support sustainable management strategies for land and water resources. The project involves six vertical applications, including Marine and Coastal Pollution Monitoring (Vertical 3), which focuses on surveillance of marine and coastal water quality to prevent and mitigate environmental pollution. Each Vertical is split in different Case Uses (CU) or applications. CMCC is involved in CU 3.2, 3.3 and 3.5 of Vertical 3.

Space It Up!

SPACE IT UP is a program aiming at enhancing the space technology of Italy to be used for space exploration and exploitation for the benefit of planet Earth and the entire humankind. An extended project partnership will foster synergies between academy, industry, and research centres to have a strong impact on the Italian space sector and to pursuit the following main objectives: -Promote innovative and extend fundamental knowledge; -Fostering a sustainable future; -Ensure long-term human permanence in extraterrestrial space; -Strengthening the “Ecosystem” space in Italy.

WeatherGenerator

The project will build the WeatherGenerator – the world’s best generative Foundation Model of the Earth system – that will serve as a new Digital Twin for Destination Earth. The WeatherGenerator will be based on representation learning and create a general and versatile tool that models the dynamics of the Earth system based on a large variety of Earth system data. The WeatherGenerator will be task-independent and will improve results for a wide range of machine learning applications when compared to task specific machine learning tools. It will also be more resilient for climate applications when the underlying data distributions are changing, and it will lead to a significant reduction in computational costs and faster turnaround times. To achieve this, the project will: (1) Collect and use the most important datasets of Earth system science including data from Digital Twins of Destination Earth, selected observations, analysis and reanalysis datasets, and output of conventional Earth system models. (2) Build the WeatherGenerator as a novel representation learning- based machine learning tool that exploits the full potential of Europe’s largest supercomputers. (3) Engage with the wider community via services and apply the WeatherGenerator for 22 selected applications that can be integrated into the Destination Earth framework. The applications include global and local predictions, local downscaling, data assimilation, model post-processing, and impact applications in the domains of renewable energy, water, health and food. The project consortium that will build the WeatherGenerator consists of experts in machine learning, supercomputing and Earth system sciences, and includes