ICAERUS PULL 1 Open Call for Farming, Forestry and Rural Challenges

Description

The implementation of the ICAERUS PULL sub-projects will be divided in 3 phases: Design (M1-M2), Development (M3-M9), and Market (M10-M12 months). Each of the 3 phases will be completed with submission of deliverable, which summarized the work done during that phase. The review process will be followed each phase of the implementation. Once the deliverable is received, it will be assessed by the ICAERUS Open Call Advisory Board members. A request for the deliverable's update may occur with specific requirements for what should be modified. Based on the results of the review and acceptance of respected deliverables, payment will be made towards the subgrantees in the following modalities: Phase 1 - Design (M02), Deliverable: Activity plan - Payment of 30% of the total fund. Phase 2 - Development (M09), Deliverable: Results demonstration - Payment of 50% of the total fund. Phase 3 - Market (M12), Deliverable: Report on market associated activities - Payment of final 20% of the total fund.

Beneficiary & submission

SUBMISSION: In the first iteration of the PULL Open Call for Farming, Forestry, and Rural Challenges (FFRC), ICAERUS plans to select six (6) FFRC solutions. All Open Call winners must meet the eligibility criteria outlined in Section 3 of Annex 2 ICAERUS PULL Applicants’ Guide. At the time of application, all applicants must submit the following: Annex 4 (Declaration of Honour) and Annex 5 (Declaration of Conducting Business/SME Declaration/Business Activity Statement or equivalent document/Declaration for Rural Communities/Cooperatives) During the contracting phase, winners of the ICAERUS PULL 1 Open Call for Farming, Forestry, and Rural Challenges (FFRC) must also provide: Annex 6 (Bank account information) and three signed copies of the Sub-grant Agreement for ICAERUS Open Call winners (indicative model given as Annex 7, for informative purposes only), which will be given to them upon being declared a winning applicant. All applications for ICAERUS PULL 1 Open Call for Farming, Forestry, and Rural Challenges (FFRC) must be done in English, since submissions done in other languages will be considered ineligible and will not be evaluated. The entry point for submitting of all proposals for ICAERUS Open Calls is the ICAERUS website, https://icaerus.eu/open-calls/, which will lead to the Open Call platform. Applications received through any other channel will be automatically discarded. All the documents needed for the application (ICAERUS PULL 1 Open Call Kit) could be found on the ICAERUS website, on the section dedicated to the Open Calls. EVALUATION: After the PULL Open Call for Farming, Forestry and Rural Challenges (FFRC) has been closed, an eligibility check process will be carried out by the ICAERUS Advisory Board to discard non-eligible applications. Following the eligibility check, a remote evaluation will be done by carefully selected external reviewers. Each proposal will be reviewed by two different reviewers with specific technical and/or business expertise related to the topics of the call. The evaluation criteria cover: i) concept and feasibility (30%); ii) technology readiness and innovation development (20%); iii) impact and exploitation (30%); and iv) organisational capacity, sufficiency in the applicant’s background, and allocation of resources (20%). Each criterion can be scored with marks from 1 to 5. The average mark for each criterion has to be at least 3 and 12 points in total.

Further information

ICAERUS PULL Open Calls for Farming, Forestry and Rural Challenges (FFRC) aim to attract (but not limited to) stakeholders (agri-food producers, environmental monitoring entities and rural communities/cooperatives) who can utilize drones and services to address individual commercial needs such as crop production, early warning systems, but also community related issues such as disaster risk reduction, forest/wildlife conservation. It is planned to finance 6 winners in this call. The total sum for this iteration of the PULL Open Call is 300,000 €, and each winner may ask for up to 50,000 €.