ERINN News

Project Officer opportunity with ERINN

ERINN is seeking a Project Officer to join its growing team. The Project Officer will be responsible for carrying out ERINN’s day-to-day role in specific European projects, ensuring their success for both ERINN and our partnerships. Initially, the projects will have a wetland focus, however ERINN’s project portfolio ranges across a variety of sectors including marine, food, health, climate, and energy. ERINN’s roles in projects typically include leading positions in project management, dissemination, communication, education, stakeholder engagement and knowledge management and transfer. Application Deadline: 12/12/21 at 17.00. The position is available to start in February/March 2022. Note: Once ERINN offices re-open in line with public health advice, the position would require the successful applicant to work from the Dublin office on a regular basis in a hybrid format. For more information on the opportunity, click here to visit the full job description.

ERINN Innovation collaborates on Accelerate Green programme to boost Irish SMEs focused on sustainability

In an exciting milestone for LIFE IP Peatlands and People, the launch of Pillar 2’s accelerator programme took place on Monday 11th October 2021, attended by Minister for State at the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Robert Troy. Peatlands and People is a 7-year LIFE Integrated project with three pillars – an ecological pillar (Peatlands Excellence), an economic pillar (the Just Transition Accelerator) and an education pillar (the People’s Discovery Attraction). The restored and rehabilitated peatlands are expected to store more carbon, protect biodiversity, improve water quality and support other benefits, while the Accelerator and Discovery Attraction aim to support economic growth and create space for social action. ERINN Innovation is one of the five key project partners. The Accelerator will provide a range of supports to SMEs to encourage the development of ideas into new products, services and enterprises. It will aspire to evolve so as to provide an incubator infrastructure to help businesses to test and adopt ideas and technologies for a Just Transition – ensuring the transition to a climate-neutral economy happens in a fair way. The Just Transition Accelerator is led by project partners Bord na Móna and ERINN Innovation who, following a tender process, appointed Resolve Partners to run the first accelerator programme. The programme – Accelerate Green – is the first Irish accelerator dedicated to scaling companies leading the response to climate action and sustainability by developing products and services based on green innovation. It will be located at Bord na Móna’s existing office complex in Boora, Offaly. The accelerator programme is currently accepting applications from the following: Established Scaling Climate Tech Companies High-growth SMEs pivoting to the climate change economy Earlier Stage Innovation-Driven Enterprises Technology, Engineering Science Renewables/Carbon reduction, Waste/Circular, AgTech Applications close on 10th December with the programme due to begin on 1st February 2022. Potential applicants are encouraged to register their interest and book office hours to discuss the programme. For more information, please visit: accelerategreen.ie. For more information on LIFE IP Peatlands and People, please visit: www.peatlandsandpeople.ie Image from the Accelerate Green launch event (L-R): Rebecca Doyle of ERINN Innovation, LIFE IP Peatlands and People Project Manager; David Murphy CEO of ERINN Innovation; Robert Troy, Minister for State at the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment; Declan Clarke of ERINN Innovation, LIFE IP Peatlands and People Pillar 2 Just Transition Accelerator Lead; John MacNamara of Bord na Móna, LIFE IP Peatlands and People Project Coordinator; Dr Christine Domegan of the Whitaker Institute NUI Galway, LIFE IP Peatlands and People Pillar 3 People’s Discovery Attraction Lead; Tom Donnellan, Bord na Móna CEO; and Suzanne Nally of the NPWS, LIFE IP Peatlands and People project partner rehabilitating peatlands under Pillar 1 Peatlands Excellence.

ERINN joins Horizon 2020-funded SCORE project to increase climate resilience in European coastal cities

The four year project, SCORE (Smart Control of the Climate Resilience in European Coastal Cities), outlines a comprehensive strategy, developed via a network of 10 coastal city ‘living labs’, to rapidly, equitably and sustainably enhance coastal city climate resilience though an Ecosystem-Based Approach (EBA) supported by sophisticated digital technologies. The intensification of extreme weather events, coastal erosion and sea-level rise are major challenges to be urgently addressed by European coastal cities. Deaths caused by extreme weather in Europe could rise from 3,000 a year between 1981 and 2010 to 152,000 between 2071 and 2100 if mitigation pathways are not enacted to increase the resilience of European cities and settlements, based on a study in The Lancet Planetary Health journal. To tackle this challenge, SCORE coordinated by Dr Salem Gharbia from the Institute of Technology Sligo (Ireland), will lead a consortium of international scientific institutions, cities, and SMEs in a new €10m Horizon 2020-funded research project to increase climate resilience in European coastal cities. The SCORE interdisciplinary team consists of 28 world-leading organisations from academia, local authorities, Research Performing Organisations, and SMEs encompassing a wide range of skills including environmental science and policy, climate modelling, citizen and social science, data management, coastal management and engineering, security and technological aspects of smart sensing research. ERINN is part of the communications and knowledge transfer team within SCORE. Senior Project Manager, Jane Maher leads ERINN’s involvement with the project. The project will involve citizen science in providing prototype coastal city early-warning systems and will enable smart, instant monitoring and control of climate resilience in European coastal cities through open, accessible spatial ‘digital twin’ tools. The project seeks to advance the control of climate resilience in cities in Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Slovenia and Poland. After a recent “Kick-Off” meeting in July 2021 with academics from across Europe, Dr Gharbia said: “SCORE will provide Europe with expandable and transferable solutions to increase climate resilience against extreme events in coastal cities. Together with our partners, we will establish a network of coastal cities that will work together and learn from each other to tackle climate change. In SCORE we want to put every effort to mitigate the effects of climate change now and in the years ahead” SCORE will establish an integrated coastal zone management framework for strengthening the Ecosystem-Based solutions and smart coastal city policies, creating European leadership in coastal city climate change adaptation in line with The Paris Agreement. For more information on the project, please follow @SCORE_EUproject on Twitter or SCORE on LinkedIn. NOTES FOR EDITORS: ABOUT SCORE PROJECT Smart Control of the Climate Resilience in European Coastal Cities (acronym: SCORE) Call: H2020-LC-CLA-2018-2019-2020 Topic: LC-CLA-13-2020 SCORE is a €10m Horizon 2020-funded research project to increase climate resilience in European coastal cities lead by Dr Salem Gharbia of the School of Engineering & Design at IT Sligo. The overall aim of SCORE is to design, develop, monitor and validate robust adaptation measures in coastal and low-lying areas to protect them from increasing climate and sea level risks, including coastal flooding and erosion, to enhance their overall long-term resilience. SCORE outlines a co-creation strategy, developed via a network of 10 coastal city ‘living labs’ (CCLLs), to rapidly, equitably and sustainably enhance coastal city climate resilience through Ecosystem-Based Approach (EBAs) and sophisticated digital technologies. SCORE will establish an integrated coastal zone management framework for strengthening EBA and smart coastal city policies, creating European leadership in coastal city climate change adaptation in line with The Paris Agreement. SCORE will provide innovative platforms to empower stakeholders’ deployment of EBAs to increase climate resilience, business opportunities and financial sustainability of coastal cities. The SCORE interdisciplinary team consists of 28 world-leading organisations from academia, local authorities, RPOs, and SMEs encompassing a wide range of skills including environmental science and policy, climate modelling, citizen and social science, data management, coastal management and engineering, security and technological aspects of smart sensing research. SCORE is a four-year project starting in July 2021. List of cities involved in the SCORE Horizon 2020 project: Sligo and Dublin, Ireland; Barcelona, Spain; Lisbon and Oeiras, Portugal; Massa, Italy; Benidorm, Spain, Koper, Slovenia; Gdansk, Poland; and Basque Country, Spain.