Project objectives:
The way we steward soil resources and manage our land use activities is central to ensuring Europe’s transition to a sustainable future for its citizens and
its global partners. Research and knowledge dissemination are fundamental to securing soils and land for next generations, for competitive economies and
healthy landscapes. Clever use of the services provided by the soil-sediment-water system (SSW system) may provide solutions for meeting societal needs
and for overcoming societal challenges.
The aim of the Coordination and Support Action INSPIRATION is to establish based on a demand-driven approach the adoption of a Strategic Research Agenda
(SRA) for land and the soil-sediment-water system, land-use changes and soil management in Europe. Main objectives are:
• Formulate, consult on and revise an end-user oriented SRA
• Scope out models for implementing the SRA
• Prepare a network of private and public funding institutions willing to commonly fund the SRA.
Horizon 2020 calls for research and innovation that will help Europeans achieve meaningful, harmonious and lasting existence in the face of significant
driving forces. The INSPIRATION work programme is to derive a SRA to directly address these challenges through understanding the SSW-system and identifying
land use and land management practises that can
• Contribute to food security and food safety
• Ensure secure supplies of safe drinking water
• Secure energy supply and distribution
• Reduce raw material and resource consumption
• Ensure efficient use of natural resources
• Contribute to climate change mitigation and societal adaptation.
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Project
Summary:
INSPIRATION stands for INtegrated Spatial PlannIng, land use and soil management Research AcTION. The consortium comprises 21 European partners from 16
countries. The network’s actions to achieve its objectives are based on a multi-stakeholder, multi-national and interdisciplinary, demand-driven approach
that covers the diversity of stakeholders (public bodies, business, science, citizens and society) and the variety of relevant public and private funders.
INSPIRATION engages in two ways with stakeholders. In a bottom-up approach, National Focal Points (NFPs) in the 16 INSPIRATION countries interview national
stakeholders, perform a desk study and organize workshops with national key stakeholders of funders, end-users and researchers across the various soil and
land management disciplines. The goal of these exercises is to collate the information being essential for identifying knowledge gaps and research demands.
Moreover, at the European level networks, e.g. from industry, policy-making and regulation, are invited to share their experiences, research demands and
funding interests.
The outcomes of the collation of demands for research from industry, end-users and funders are taken up and reviewed under four integrative themes
• Resources demand and efficiency
• Natural capital
• Land management
• Net impact on global, EU and local scale.
This is done in order to structure information into thematic knowledge needs to satisfy the as yet unmet societal challenges and to ensure that research and
knowledge dissemination will contribute primarily to enable meeting these challenges.
Based on these results, a cross-country and cross-discipline dialogue will subsequently be organized among the relevant user groups, private and public
funding institutions and scientific communities in Europe in order to reach a trans-national, prioritized SRA and a model for execution of this SRA. Thus a
framework for future research calls will be produced which will give private and public funders confidence that for each Euro they spend, they will get multiple
Euros worth of knowledge in return.
INSPIRATION is coordinated by the German Federal Environment Agency (UBA) and structured in five work packages (WPs) to achieve an efficient realisation
of the project’s objectives:
Project Management is handled in WP1. Its objective is to ensure an appropriate general management structure and an organisational platform to ensure a
smooth and streamlined information flow to safeguard that all aspects of the project are well integrated and coordinated.
The main objective of WP2 “Demands of research from industry, end-users and funders (State-of- the-art at national levels)” is to collate, review and synthesize
for all countries participating in INSPIRATION the following information:
• Demand-driven suggestions for the SRA, i.e. suggestions from the perspective of industry, end-users and funders
• Experiences regarding the exploitation of scientific knowledge to improve business opportunities and/or tackle other societal challenges
• Predominantly used as well as promising alternative funding schemes, mechanisms, programs for knowledge production and dissemination
• Experiences regarding the use of any trans-national, common budget for scientific knowledge production related to the scope of INSPIRATION.
This is done keeping the tackling of the societal challenges in mind. National key stakeholders (consisting of the most relevant funders, end users and researchers
in soil, land use and land management) have a central role in WP2 and will be consulted in interviews and national workshops. The national reports resulting
from WP2 are used in WP3 and WP4.
The objectives of WP3 “Transnational commons aggregated under integrated themes” are to
• Achieve an overview of the transnational shared demands and experiences grouped under the four integrated themes based on the national state-of-the-art
reports as produced by WP2
• Prioritise and elaborate the topics that could be included in the SRA (to be developed by WP4) under specific themes
• Elucidate the opportunity to match (to be done under WP4) individual stakeholders (as funders) to specific SRA topics that could be shared transnationally.
The objectives of WP4 “Developing, delivering and match-making of a strategic research agenda” are to
• Develop the SRA for activities on soil, land-use and land management
• Explore and where feasible establish a match between the SRA and national funders potentially willing to fund collaboratively a specific part of the SRA
• Map out funding models for delivering the SRA.
WP5 “International dissemination and communication” is to facilitate effective communication of the INSPIRATION project with all stakeholder communities
willing to contribute to the development and ultimate delivery of the SRA.
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