Project structure
Work package 1
Project management and quality assurance
Main objectives
- Develop and facilitate a framework for systematic coordination and continuous improvement of university-city collaboration at four Ukrainian Universities
- Establish university-city collaboration centres.
- Plan for a transformative portfolio of research, innovation and education activities aimed at climate and sustainability transition in cities in collaboration between faculty, students and professionals.
- Carrying out regular coordination meetings to monitor progress of the activities and compliance with the indicators. Regular coordination meetings will be organized during the project with, approximately, 6-months interval.
- Providing necessary support to the WP leaders in implementation of the tasks.
Work package 2
Capacity building
Main objectives
- Improve capacity of UniCities partners in systems innovation.
- Provide insights and support shared learning from success, failures and obstacles of university-city collaborations in Ukraine, Spain and Sweden.
- Study visit to Viable Cities at KTH (1-week study visit to Viable Cities/ KTH (Sweden) will be organised for faculty and practitioners from the consortium).
- Study visit to itd UPM (1-week study visit to itdUPM / KTH (Spain) will be organised for faculty and practitioners from the consortium).
- Online training session on systems innovation (2-day on-line training session will be developed by KTH and UPM targeting Ukrainian academic and societal partners).
- Sense-making workshop (1-day on-line sense-making workshop is to reflect on learnings, how these lessons learnt could be used during the project and beyond.
Work package 3
Design and launch of university-city collaboration centres Main objectives
- Promote an inclusive co-creation process among faculty, students and urban stakeholders to design and nourish university-city collaboration centres at four Ukrainian universities.
- Establish university-city collaboration centres at four Ukrainian universities.
- Online co-creation spaces, which will be designed using Miro platform.
- University-city collaboration centres launch event.
Work package 4
Piloting university-city collaboration Main objectives
- Identify and plan for a transformative portfolio of research, innovation and education activities aimed at climate and sustainability transition in cities in collaboration between faculty, students and professionals.
- Create a point of reference, inspire new university-city collaborations, and inform discussions across the global higher education sector on the transformative role of universities in transition to climate-neutral and sustainable cities.
- Sustainability planning for university-city collaboration centers.
- Learning by doing and reflection. Co-creation sessions between universities /faculty and students) and societal partners to identify urban challenges that could become a base for initiation of the transformative portfolio. Based on the lessons learnt, will be prepared and published a White paper on the role of universities on transition to climate-neutral cities.
Work package 5
Challenge-driven education and student engagement Main objectives
- Create momentum for student engagement through interdisciplinary, multi-stakeholder and challenge-driven summer schools.
- Prototyping and testing two interdisciplinary, challenge-driven summer schools “Shaping urban environments for tomorrow”.
- To equip students from different MSc programs with the key concepts within the areas of ‘smart and sustainable cities’ and ‘climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies’.
- Developing and piloting an interdisciplinary, project-based MSc level course “Smart Cities and climate adaptation and mitigation strategies”.
- Provide students with hands-on experience in working on real-life challenges in multi-stakeholder settings through challenge-driven project- and MSc thesis work.
Work package 6
Dissemination and communication
Main objectives
- Establish university-city collaboration centres at four Ukrainian universities.
- Development of the dissemination plan for the project and for each institution to make the project and the EU funding visible to the main target groups.
- Awareness campaigns for urban stakeholders in order to update about the project developments and produced results.
- Content production and media relations. Each partner university will produce visual content with the local flavour, targeting urban stakeholders in their regions.
- Final project conference will be organized as an open event attracting stakeholders outside the project consortium.
The members of the consortium are leading partner universities from the EU:
Kungliga Tekniska hoegskolan (KTH, Sweden) – is a leading engineering university in Sweden, providing national economy with professionals in broad spectrum of engineering disciplines. KTH is working with industry and society in the pursuit of sustainable solutions to some of humanity’s greatest challenges:
- climate change
- future energy supply
- urbanisation and quality of life for the rapidly-growing elderly population
KTH is the host organization for Swedish Strategic Innovation programme Viable Cities, the catalyst for new forms of cooperation between cities, industry, academia, research institutes and civil society.
Universidad Politecnica de Madrid (UPM, Spain) – a top-quality academic establishment, that has a strong commitment to R&D and innovation, boasting 200 research groups and 17 research centres and institutes, contributing significantly to the international scientific community with a high number of journal papers, conference communications, and PhD theses.
UPM initiated a multi-stakeholder platform, citiES2030, similar to Viable Cities.
The partner universities leading two of the most impactful mission-oriented national initiatives on climate neutral cities by 2030, namely Viable Cities (Sweden) and citiES2030 (Spain). Participating in the consortium of the NetZeroCities project, these two initiatives inspire the EC’s Mission work on “100 Climate neutral and Smart Cities”.
The project is also built upon expertise of a quadruple-helix partnership in Ukraine consisting of four Ukrainian universities covering complementary areas of education and research:
National Technical University of Ukraine Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute (NTUU KPI, Ukraine) – is a leading engineering university in Ukraine providing education and carrying research activities in a wide range of engineering domains. The University carries out extensive cooperation activities with the urban stakeholders with the focus on energy efficiency and sustainable development of urban areas.
The project will be hosted by the Faculty of Heat Power Engineering. The faculty prepares power engineering specialists, research and automation of heat power processes, computer technologies in power engineering, which are capable to project, operate, adjust the power equipment of power plants, the modern computerized control and management systems of the enterprises of a power complex.
Chernihiv National University of Technology (CNUT, Ukraine) – is the main centre of technical education and research in the north of Ukraine. It is included in the list of priority higher educational establishments by Canadian Association of Engineers.
In the project the university will participate with a multidisciplinary team coming from departments of Software Engineering, Theoretical and Applied Economics, Architecture and Environment Design, Electrical Engineering, Architecture and Environment Design.
Higher education institution “Academician Yuriy Bugay International Scientific and Technical University” (ISTU, Ukraine) – is a modern university in science and technology, nationally and globally recognized for the quality of education, high scientific and professional level of pedagogical potential. The mission of the University is to provide quality higher education to promote sustainable development of society by preparing competitive human capital and creating conditions for lifelong learning.
The vision of ISTU: the innovative competitive University of the international level, influencing the development of human capital in the region, country, world; contributes to the development of a personality as a carrier of intellectual and innovative potential; constantly strives for excellence, modern and creative approaches in management.
Yaroslav Mudryi National Law University (NLU, Ukraine) – is one of the leading universities in Ukraine that provides modern education in the area of law. NLU cooperates with Kharkiv city authorities in educational, research, innovation and many other fields. Kharkiv city and regional councils, their executive bodies, state bodies of the regions of Ukraine are among the stakeholders.
Among the areas of joint work – conducting seminars/conferences/round tables by teachers of the university for representatives of the local council, consultations and explanations of certain provisions of the legislation of Ukraine, internships of university students in the executive bodies of the local council.
The societal partners of the project are:
Charitable Organization Charitable Fund CANactions (CANactions, Ukraine) – is a platform in the sphere of architecture and urbanism, which creates the space for communication and identification of the best practices for Ukraine, making them accessible for a wider audience. CANactions Platform includes the CANactions School, CANactions Publishing House and CANactions Competitions. By this work, CANactions contribute to the formation of contemporary Ukrainian society as a constituting part of the European community.
CANactions operates by building a network of engaged professionals in Ukraine and worldwide, creating synergies to improve the decision-making in urban and regional planning, facilitating the dialogue between Ukraine and the world in order to integrate Ukraine into the international context.
All-Ukrainian Association of Local Government Authorities Association of Ukrainian Cities (Association of Ukrainian Cities, Ukraine) – is a strong and influential non-governmental organization that unites more than 900 cities in Ukraine. Founded in 1992, AUC proved to be a strong organization that proved its ability to advocate local self-governance both nationally and internationally.
Since being founded AUC takes an active part in creation and development of the legal base for local self-governance, provides consultative support for its members, deals with the training and capacity building of the staff of Ukrainian municipalities and promotes international links between cities.
Public union «Association of the engineers of stable energy technologies of Ukraine» (AESETU, Ukraine) – was founded in the year of 2000 as national social organization, which brings together foremost specialists in heat and power engineering.
The main directions of activity are: implementation of national scientific and technical conferences and seminars for designers and manufacturers of heating equipment, promotion the transition to sustainable energy systems in collaboration with Universities, public authorities and industry.
Ukrainian Research Hydrometeorological Institute of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine and the National Academy of Science of Ukraine (UHMI, Ukraine) – is a research institute with the focus on monitoring of climate change and environment. UHMI is the main Ukrainian scientific research organization in the field of hydrometeorology and basic monitoring of the environment.
The main tasks of UHMI include development of the geophysical science by carrying out fundamental and applied research in the field of hydrometeorology and basic monitoring of natural environment, provision of scientific and methodical support to hydrometeorological and other operative services of the Ministry of Emergency Situations in Ukraine, co-ordination of scientific research in the field of hydrometeorology in Ukraine.