Smart solutions for smart rural communities: empowering rural communities and smart villages to innovate for societal change
Scope and expected outcomes
FUTURAL will accept applications from small consortia consisting of two (2) to four (4) parties, involving ≥1 (at least one) technical party (e.g., SMEs, startups, research organisations) and ≥1 (at least one) rural community (e.g., Municipalities, Regional authorities, Development agencies, NGOs etc) and proposed solutions must fall within one of the 5 following domains:
Circular bioeconomy, biodiversity and ecosystem management
Resilience to shocks
Citizen Engagement and Quality of Life
Lifelong Education and Training
Climate Adaptation and Mitigation
The Open Call will result in at least 10 projects (min €60k and max €120k per project / min €30k euro and max €60k per each third party, i.e. partner of the consortium submitting a proposal). In total, a €1.2M budget will be allocated to financial support to third parties.
Selected consortia will receive funding for developing and applying their own original digital smart solution, i.e. different from the eight (8) Smart Solutions that will be developed by the FUTURAL partners, representing regions beyond the existing Multi-actor pilots, within the five (5) domains as described above.
The implementation of the FUTURAL sub-projects will be divided in 3 phases: Design (M1-M4), Development (M5-M9), and Validation (M10-M12 months). Each of the 3 phases will be completed with submission of a deliverable, which summarises the work done during that phase. The review process will follow each phase of the implementation. Once the deliverable is received, it will be assessed by the FUTURAL 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 sub-grantees in the following modalities:
Phase 1 - Design (M1-M4): Payment of 20% of the total fund [Deliverable: Activity plan];
Phase 2 - Development (M5-M9): Payment of 50% of the total fund [Deliverable: Digital smart solution demonstration];
Phase 3 - Validation (M10-M12): Payment of the final 30% of the total fund [Deliverable: Report on market or community associated activities].
Submissions received through any other channel will be automatically discarded.
Documents required in subsequent phases will be submitted via dedicated channels (e.g. via email or via the Open Call Hub), which will be indicated by the FUTURAL consortium in the contracting phase.
In case multiple versions of the same application are submitted, only the last version will be evaluated. All the previous ones will be discarded.
Throughout the entire process, the confidentiality of applicants' identities and the contents of the proposals will be rigorously upheld. Any details pertaining to the proposed solution will be handled with the utmost discretion.
By applying to FUTURAL Open Call consortia automatically accept the terms and conditions of the Open Call as described in the Open Call Kit.
Evaluation
After the FUTURAL Open Call is closed, an eligibility check process will be carried out by the FUTURAL 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 (2) external evaluators with specific technical and/or business expertise related to the topics of the call. The evaluators will have to evaluate each proposal under the specific evaluation criteria: i. Concept and feasibility, ii. Technology readiness and innovation development, iii. Impact & Exploitation, iv. Organisational capacity and sufficiency in the team’s background.
All award criteria have the same weight. Each award criterion can be scored from 1 to 5 with a threshold of 3 points in each category, and a minimum of 12 points in total.
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