Demographic change and the ageing of the population create new heterogeneous challenges for age-friendly living, recreational and working environments such as a shrinking workforce and increasing numbers of workers with functional impairments, chronic conditions, care duties or re-integration in and later retirement from the labour market.
Infectious diseases, in particular epidemics and antimicrobial resistance, pose significant threats to the social, economic and health security of communities and countries around the world. However, these diseases also transcend borders and require multi-sectoral and multi-jurisdictional co-operation and preparedness to ensure the world is safe from global threats.
ICT infrastructures and data have become critical for the functioning of the hospitals and care systems. Due to increasing connectivity, the exposure to risks of cyber-crime is constantly increasing. Cyber-attacks are a potential danger to the safety of patients and to the privacy of sensitive health data. Some cybersecurity threats are caused by human errors or ignorance.
Awareness raising of staff working in healthcare settings on security and data privacy is important to reduce cybersecurity vulnerabilities and exposure.
Achieving or maintaining global leadership in renewable energy technology requires that the innovative solutions are also affordable. Therefore cost reductions remain a crucial necessity for existing or new technologies. This specific challenge is in line with the sectorial cost reduction targets stated in the respective Declarations of Intent of the SET Plan, where applicable.
Proposals will address one or more of the following issues:
Human factors are the largest cause of accidents across all transport modes. Increased technical development and automation fundamentally change the way in which humans interact with the road or rail vehicles, vessels or aircraft and can improve safety by decreasing the human element. Evolving systems, operations and technology change how humans perceive their immediate environment and traffic as well as how they interact with the machine.
Societal changes are demanding a much higher attention to specific groups of users with specific needs and expectations for mobility. Only a disaggregated analysis can lead to the satisfaction of all citizens, thus ensuring a large as possible integration of all parts of the population in the society. Women account for half of society, but the specific needs linked to their physical and social characteristics have not been sufficiently assessed. The resulting inequalities in mobility opportunities therefore need to be thoroughly explored.
Appropriate actions taken following a marine accident can greatly reduce loss of life or damage to the environment. This is particularly the case for very large passenger ships where flooding and maintenance of stability and systems that can safely evacuate large numbers of passengers (from a wide demographic within difficult conditions harsh environments and where there may be limited search and rescue capability) are critical.
The rapid development of digital technologies and new collaborative tools are the basis of an on-going transformation and opening up of science and research, referred to as Open science.
The idea captures a systemic change to the way science and research have been carried out for the last fifty years: shifting from the standard practices of publishing research results in scientific publications towards sharing and using all available knowledge at an earlier stage in the research process.
Today's vehicles - in all modes of transport - are becoming increasingly connected and cooperative, as well as automated. This raises a number of issues about the role of the "driver" (or operator, rider, pilot, captain) in such vehicles (cars, trucks, powered-two-wheelers, trains, ships, planes, etc.). In particular, human-machine interaction is becoming increasingly complex in an environment with higher levels of both qualitative and quantitative information, automated data exchange (into and out of the vehicle) and increasing levels of automation (systems, operations, etc.).
New forms of shared-use mobility, automated vehicle technologies in all transport modes and innovative concepts such as Mobility as a Service (MaaS) often have to function in the regulatory frameworks that may not be adapted to these solutions and to rapid technological change.