Driving Urban Transitions (DUT) Call 2023

Beneficiary & submission

Driving Urban Transitions to a sustainable future   The DUT Partnership steps up the game to tackle urban challenges. Through research and innovation and capacity building we enable local authorities and municipalities, service and infrastructure providers, and citizens to translate global strategies into local action. We develop the skills and tools to make urban change happen and boost the urgently needed urban transformations towards a sustainable future with enhanced quality of life in cities.    About the Call  The purpose of this Call for proposals is to support transnational research and/or innovation projects addressing urban challenges to help cities in their transition towards a more sustainable economy and functioning. The challenges are grouped into three themes called ‘Transition Pathways’: Positive Energy Districts, the 15-minute City and Circular Urban Economies. It is the second Call of the Partnership Driving Urban Transitions (DUT) funded by the European Commission under the Horizon Europe Partnership scheme. The projects selected within this Call will be funded directly by national/regional Funding Agencies from the following countries: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Korea, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, The Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Türkiye. Each proposal must involve, at least, three partners from three countries on this list that are eligible for funding by their respective national/regional Funding Agency. The added value of transnational collaboration should be clearly stated. The Call is open to a wide range of scientific disciplines and welcomes interdisciplinary approaches. It intends to support a large range of activities, from research to innovation and implementation. It also asks applicants to engage explicitly with stakeholders (including but not limited to public authorities, companies and NGOs) in projects and to consider users’ needs in the identification of project goals. Projects are expected to take a transdisciplinary and preferably co-creative approach from the early project formulation stage. This document describes the objectives, scope, and topics of the Call, rules for participation and procedures for proposal development and project implementation. Further information on this Call (mandatory templates to use for applying, link to the submission platform, etc.) can be found on the DUT Website.   Call topics Our future relies on tackling complex grand challenges now, many of which must be addressed within cities and by urban communities. Cities and urban areas are the nexus for the transformations required if the European Union (EU) is to achieve the targets of the European Green Deal (EGD) and to fulfil commitments related to the United Nations (UN)’ Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), UN-Habitat’s New Urban Agenda, the Urban Agenda for the European Union, the Paris Agreement and to support the New European Bauhaus (NEB) movement. The Driving Urban Transitions (DUT) Partnership aims to address these challenges with an integrated approach to offer decision makers in public authorities including municipalities, companies and, more generally, society, the means to enact and enable necessary urban transformations. Furthermore, the DUT Partnership, through research and innovation (R&I) projects, aims to develop, skills and tools (including technology) that facilitate urban change, boost urgently needed urban transformations, and bring existing and new knowledge and evidence into action. The DUT Partnership focuses on three critical urban sectors (and their interrelationships) which are laid out in its roadmap as Transition Pathways (TP):     Positive Energy Districts Pathway (PED) PED topic 1: Energy Resilience and Energy Poverty PED topic 2: Urban Regeneration and Refurbishment PED topic 3: Enabling Systems for Local Energy Transitions: Collaboration and Sustainable Investment    15-minutes City Pathway (15mC) 15mC topic 1: Integrated Policies and Evidence to Reduce Car-dependency 15mC topic 2: Mobility and Planning Policies for Proximity-oriented Developments ·15mC topic 3: Empower People for Urban Mobility Transitions    Circular Urban Economies Pathway (CUE) CUE Topic 1: The Built Environment as a Resource Base CUE Topic 2 Knowledge and optimisation of resources flows between urban and rural areas. CUE Topic 3: Planning and Designing urban areas with Nature: Towards a Regenerative Urbanism   Submission A two-step application procedure will be used in this Joint Transnational Call. Pre-proposals and full proposals must be submitted electronically via the online submission system, using the templates provided. Additionally applications may need to be submitted on a national level.   Transnational eligibility rule 6: Language and mandatory forms. Pre-proposals/full proposals must be prepared in English using the designated mandatory proposal form. Proposals written in other languages will be ineligible. The proposal form should be filled in completely. Pre-proposals and full proposals must respect the total number of pages using a standard font size and normal page margins as indicated on the proposal form. Transnational eligibility rule 7: Submission. Pre-proposals and full proposals must be submitted on the UEFISCDI electronic submission system, UDiManager[1] (www.uefiscdi-direct.ro), before each associated deadline: the Call for pre-proposals is open until 21 November 2023, 13:00 (CET).  In March 2024, applicants will be invited to enter the second stage of the procedure: the Call for full proposals will close on 30 April 2024, 13:00 (CEST). An online help document with guidelines for submission will be provided, detailing the procedures and duties of the Main Applicant and of other consortium partners. It is not possible to resubmit or revise the pre-proposal/full proposal after the submission deadline, unless it pertains to corrections to technical administrative details and is requested by the Call Secretariat. Transnational eligibility rule 8: Only pre-proposals invited to submit a full proposal will be eligible in the second stage of the selection procedure. If a Main Applicant decides to submit a full proposal rejected at the end of the first stage, this full proposal will be declared ineligible. Transnational eligibility rule 9:   No fundamental changes initiated by the applicants alone between the pre-proposal and the full proposal will be accepted. Namely: the project objectives stated in the pre-proposal cannot be changed, the Main Applicant (and its PI) must stay the same, except in case of force majeure, the consortium (co-applicants) should stay the same (with the exception of the widening possibilities allowed explicitly by the Call Secretariat, see below in section 4.1), only minor changes on the funding demand per Funding Agency can be allowed (except in the case adding widening partners). The Call Secretariat may allow such modifications in exceptional cases, if duly justified. Modifications requested by a Funding Agency do not count as changes between the pre-proposal and the full proposal stages. By submitting a pre-proposal/full proposal, applicants agree that it will be forwarded to all Funding Agencies which are receiving a request to provide funding for that proposal. Some Funding Agencies require submission of information on a national/regional level as well (see Annex A in the Call Text).   Evaluation   Criteria Pre-proposals and full-proposals will be assessed according to specific evaluation criteria by using a common evaluation form. Some sub-criteria are specific to the R&I approach (ROA or IOA). Each consortium is responsible for choosing the approach that best fits the objectives and positioning of their proposal:   a more “research-oriented approach” (ROA) to support projects aiming at producing knowledge, analysing data, better understanding and modelling phenomena and developing expertise and tools that will be useful to stakeholders, practitioners and policy-makers. This R&I orientation (called ROA moving forwards) welcomes proposals mainly focused on strategic and/or applied research;  a more “innovation-oriented approach” (IOA) to support projects aiming at developing or improving practical, operational solutions – technological and organisational – for companies, local communities and authorities in charge of urban transport and urban planning, as well as management and testing of such solutions. This R&I orientation (called IOA moving forwards) welcomes proposals mainly focused on applied research and innovation;   The criteria will be used for both evaluating the pre-proposals and the full-proposals. Criteria with asterisk* are used only for the evaluation of full-proposals.    Excellence – Intellectual Merit (5 points)   Clarity and pertinence of the objectives Credibility of the proposed approach and soundness of the concept Added value of transnational co-operation Clarity and feasibility of the project design and of the proposed methodology*  Identification of risks and mitigation plan*   Sub-criteria adapted to ROA:  Originality, contribution to new strategic knowledge, progress beyond the state-of-the-art   Sub-criteria adapted to IOA:  Innovativeness of the approach compared to existing solutions    Impact and User Engagement (societal and broader impacts of project results) (5 points)  Relevance to the call topics Integration of diversity and gender perspectives in the project plan and goals when applicable Engagement of stakeholders (e.g. communities, cities, policy makers, regulators, NGOs, or industry) Effectiveness of the proposed measures for the dissemination and/or exploitation of project results (*) both at the transnational and the regional levels   Sub-criteria adapted to ROA: Potential of the project to provide insights to an important societal issue and produce useful knowledge for stakeholders*  Sub-criteria adapted to IOA: Market potential of the project and/or capacity to respond to a demand or a need*   Quality and Efficiency of project implementation (5 points)  Composition, quality, and suitability of experience and expertise of the consortium to address the project goals (including interdisciplinarity, cross-sectorial collaboration, and co-creation aspects where relevant) Complementarity and balance of substantial contributions of partners of the consortium Feasibility and appropriateness of timescale Global value for money (costs are realistic and reasonable with respect to the ambition of the project and the expected results and impact) Appropriateness of costs allocation and justification of requested resources (staff, equipment, etc.)* Appropriateness of the allocation of tasks and workloads, ensuring that all participants have a valid role and adequate resources in the project to fulfil that role * Appropriateness of the management structures and procedures, including risk, quality, and innovation management* Consideration of regulatory and ethics issues, when necessary*   Evaluation scores will be awarded for each of the three main criteria and not for the individual sub-criteria. Sub-criteria are aspects that the experts will consider in the assessment of that criterion. A scoring system from 0 to 5 will be used to evaluate each proposal with respect to each evaluation criterion, using the following definitions for the scores:    Eligibilty Check The DUT Call Secretariat will verify the eligibility of the pre-proposals/full proposals according to the transnational eligibility criteria described in the previous section. The participating Funding Agencies will perform a check for compliance according to their funding rules. Both transnational and Funding Agencies’ eligibility criteria must be met for a proposal to be declared eligible at either stage. In the case a Co-applicant(s) is (are) ineligible, the proposal may still be eligible if and when the eligibility criteria are met by the proposal without this (these) partner(s). If a proposal is “eligible”, this does not mean that it will be awarded funding, only that the proposal will be admitted to the evaluation procedure.  Pre-proposal stage (stage 1) The pre-proposals declared to be eligible according to the transnational and national/regional criteria will be assessed by an Expert Panel. The Panel will consist of recognised international experts in relevant fields, academics as well as practitioners and innovators, who can assess the scientific as well as the innovative and practical value of the pre-proposals. The Panel will be appointed by the Funding Agencies. No external referees or reviewers will be part of the assessment at this stage. The Expert Panel will assess the pre-proposals using the evaluation criteria described above. Each pre-proposal will be assessed by at least three Expert Panel members. The Expert Panel will meet to discuss all pre-proposals, to produce an assessment report for each pre-proposal and ranking lists to advise the Funding Agencies responsible for the selection of pre-proposals. The outcome of the Expert Panel’s work will consist of six ranking lists, each corresponding to one specific TP and one specific R&I approach ( Research-oriented approach (ROA) or Innovation-oriented approach (IOA)) resulting in six ranking lists.  Selection of the pre-proposals invited to the second stage The decision for the invitation to submit a full-proposal in the second stage will be conjointly taken by the participating Funding Agencies (acting as a Call Steering Committee) and will be based on these six ranking lists and the following other criteria that will be used to arbitrate between the ranking lists. These criteria will aim to ensure that: the invited pre-proposals represent national/regional funding requests that do not exceed three times (two times for Canada, Finland, Korea and Switzerland; also see Funding Agencies marked (AP) in Annex A) the available national/regional budget of each Funding Agency; a maximum of countries participating in the Call are represented in the proposals accepted in the second stage; a good representation (in terms of the number of proposals) of the three TPs and of both types of R&I approaches will be included in the second stage.   Invited consortia will then have the opportunity to elaborate their ideas to full-proposals (second stage). It is possible that invited consortia will be allowed explicitly by the DUT Call Secretariat to integrate, in their full-proposal, additional partners from specific countries, if these countries are under-represented in the proposals invited to the second stage. However, this possibility does not invalidate the consistency requirements between pre-proposal and proposal. All consortia will be provided with an overall assessment of the quality of their pre-proposals.   Full-proposal stage (stage 2) Full-proposals deemed eligible according to the transnational and national/regional criteria will be assessed by an international Expert Panel, as in the first stage. Each full-proposal will be evaluated by at least four independent experts. The Expert Panel will meet to discuss all proposals, to produce an assessment report for each full-proposal and ranking lists of full-proposals recommended to be considered for funding to the Funding Agencies. The outcome of the Expert Panel will be six ranking lists, as in stage 1, each ranking list corresponding to a specific Transition Pathway and a specific R&I approach (ROA or IOA).   Decision for funding Based on the ranking lists made by the Expert Panel, the Funding Agencies meeting in a Call Steering Committee (CSC) will jointly decide which projects will be recommended for funding. The final formal funding decision will be taken by each Funding Agency afterward, following its national/regional procedure. Taking into account the available budgets of the Funding Agencies, this CSC recommendation will be based on the identification of the optimal choice of projects to be funded, arbitrating between projects from different ranking lists, and also between any projects equally ranked within the same ranking list , according to the following objectives:  optimising both the total number of projects funded and the total number of participating countries/regions involved in these projects; ensuring both a good representation (in terms of the number of projects) and not too dissimilar success rates between the three TPs and between the two R&I approaches; ensuring that the EC co-funding will be used as efficiently as possible but also distributed as fairly as possible among the participating countries eligible for EC co-funding.   A written statement on the evaluation of each full-proposal will be sent by the Call Secretariat to the Main Applicants. The Call Secretariat will inform the Main Applicants of projects that have been recommended for funding on the subsequent contracting procedure.   Right to object a decision, redress procedure Applicants will have no possibility to rebut and appeal against, at a transnational level, the Expert Panel’s evaluation or the decision taken by the Call Steering Committee. However, the Call does not preclude rules and legal frameworks that prevail at national/regional level. Therefore, even though an objection on a transnational level is not possible, it may be possible on a national level, depending on the national/regional legal framework. To voice an objection or redress please contact your respective Funding Agency. If the decision were to be challenged by a specific party, it will be dealt by the concerned Funding Agency at the national/regional level according to its applicable domestic laws on the matter. The result of the redress procedure is not Call-wide.

Further information

Partnership website Call website Call Text and Templates Matchmaking DUT Call 2023 Info Day 1 (online): 12 September 2023 10:00 – 12:00 CET  DUT Call 2023 Info Day 2 (online): 10 October 2023 National and regional Info Days