Our ​EU Projects

For the first time the world united to save the Ocean in New York, 5-9 June 2017 at the United Nations. For the first time non-governmental organisations together with businesses, scientists and politicians sat down to discuss marine issues and decide on solutions.
XPRO Consulting was present and actively participated promoting Responsible Research and Innovation in relation to MARINA. XPRO Consulting with its partner Nausicaa submitted on behalf of the MARINA partnership a voluntary commitment about "Responsible Research and Innovation for ocean conservation and sustainable blue growth"
#OceanAction20696   
1st Cyprus Mobilisation and Mutual Learning Workshop 22-23 Nov 2016
"Tourism provides income but also destroys the values that brought it to Cyprus – How can we preserve both?"

Horizon 2020 Project:
MARINA - ​"Marine Knowledge Sharing Platform for Federating Responsible Research and Innovation Communities"
14 partners from 10 EU members and 1 non-EU
Total Budget: 3 Million Euros
Duration: 3 years (2016-2019)

Overall Project Aim:
To federate diverse and multidisciplinary communities of actors that are involved in Marine issues for solving many of the Europe's societal challenges by engaging in Responsible Research and Innovation. Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) implies that societal actors (researchers, citizens, policy makers, business, third sector organisations, etc.) work together during the whole research and innovation process in order to better align both the process and its outcomes with the values, needs and expectations of society.
MARINA's Impacts:
  • A Knowledge Platform federating RRI actors and communities in the marine sectors.
  • Consolidate and advance knowledge on science in the European society through the through the MARINA.
  • 504 Lessons Learned and Good Practices for mobilising stakeholders and citizens in co-designing actions for blue-growth solve societal challenges.
  • 45 Blue Growth Mobilisation and Mutual Learning (MML) Workshops organised all over Europe in 2016, 2017 and 2018.
  • 81 Spillover events reaching more than 23.000 people for
    • Awareness
    • Knowledge exchange
    • Behaviour and practice change
ESOF 2018 XPRO workshop on applying the RRI Roadmap on the Port of Venice. For presentations click here!
What: A highly interactive workshop about Responsible Research and Innovation in Industrial context. 
Why: Come and participate in reviewing the upcoming RRI Roadmap for embedding Responsible Research and Innovation in research and innovation activities. 
RRI is becoming a cross-cutting priority for the last 2 years of Horizon 2020 and the new Horizon Europe funding programmes.
XPRO Consulting has been instrumental in defining the project's concept, identifying suitable partners, advisory board members and in defining the project's concept and methodologies.
XPRO's responsibilities in the MARINA Project were:
  • Lead the Work-Package of RRI Methodological Learning and Spill-over activities of MARINA
  • Knowledge sharing and knowledge brokerage activities
  • Defining the Mobilisation and Mutual Learning​ (MML) workshop methodology approach and inclusion actor criteria, and organisation of local MML workshops
  • Activities for mobilising policy makers and RRI practitioners on H2020 Societal challenges
  • Definition of Dissemination and Communication Strategy
  • Methodology for identifying, collecting, analysing and extracting information from the different knowledge sources such as RRI and marine-related projects
  • Terms of requirements and populating the MARINA platform and for developing an effective, solid and dynamic sustainability strategy
  • Provide the change management methodology that will be instrumental in initiating the necessary change in the mind-sets of the RRI actors and stakeholdersL
  • Lead the Project Quality Assurance and Project Risk Assessment & Management
MARINAzines
The MARINA newsletters of the MARINA H2020 EU-project 
MARINAzine Issue #4:
This issue is dedicated about Open Science and it describes the on-going transition in the way research is performed and researchers collaborate with societal stakeholders. XPRO speaks in this issue about the RRI Roadmap: where we are and what’s next? The RRI Roadmap comprises of 7 Milestones on: how to apply RRI and how to make RRI “stick” in an organisation and its research and innovation processes. Read all about it here.
MARINAzine Issue #1:
The MARINA Newsletter highlights RRI in its first issue: “MARINAzine. Our engagement with the Ocean. Issue #1 – July 2017”: XPRO wrote about: Is there space for the Citizen in Research and Innovation?
"Future of Our Seas" European Maritime Day 2017, Poole UK.
XPRO in close collaboration with WWF-UK and Nausicaa is organising a highly participative workshop about public engagement in achieving Blue Growth in the European Seas. The workshop run with a game where scientists, policy makers and other types of participants collaborated and competed to create the best possible Blue Growth Strategy for their sea. The interesting point of the workshop was that the different teams instead of collaborating among them instead they competed without even realising that some had the same territory. 
That is why Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) may allow cross-disciplinary collaboration increasing the chances of success.
INTREPID COST Action
Interdisciplinary Symposium 1st-2nd of November 2016 in Tallinn, Estonia
​"Enabling Interdisciplinarity in Urban Studies – Methods and Tools. Experiences from Case Studies"
Tallinn University of Technology, the School of Economics and Business Administration
The objective of the symposium was to identify ways for overcoming significant interdisciplinary barriers in urban research for creating a framework across disciplines and practices for potentially enabling interdisciplinarity in urban studies.

STEP-WISE - Science, Technology and Policy Interfacing using WISE-RTD
7 partners from 5 countries
Total Budget: Just above 1 Million Euros
Duration: 2 years (2011-2012)

STEP-WISE aimed to improve and promote the WISE-RTD Water Knowledge Portal for increasing the use of FP environmental RTD results in the sector of environmental technologies focusing on water by diverse stakeholders: policy, scientists and industry.
XPRO Consulting was responsible for:

SPI-Water - Science-Policy Interfacing in support of the water framework directive implementation
15 partners from 10 EU States and 2 non-EU  
Total Budget: 1,4 Million Euros
Duration: 2 years (2006-2008)

The SPI-WATER project aimed to enforce communication links between the involved stakeholders by developing and implementing a ‘science-policy interface. 
XPRO Consulting was responsible for:
  • Identify connections among EU-funded for supporting the implementation of the Water Framework Directive.
  • ​Define User Requirements for the  information web portal WISE-RTD, which is part of the Water Information System for Europe
  • Populate the WISE-RTD by linking research water-related projects to the WFD policy statements allowing policy-makers and researchers to identify links and gaps.
  • Publish a final policy brief

SWIFT-WFD - Screening methods for Water data InFormaTion in support of the implementation of the Water Framework Directive
40 partners from 20 EU States
Total Budget: 6,7 Million Euros
Duration: 3 years (2004-2007)
XPRO Consulting was responsible for: