Open Projects

Industrial energy systems for manufacturing are mainly designed for single supply technologies, not designed for the fluctuation of energy demand and energy supply and thus can only react to a volatile demand and supply (thermal and electric) to a limited extent. From this, the need for the best possible support in optimizing the operation of the industrial energy system (demand and supply), the interaction of different renewable (volatile) and conventional energy sources and the design for industrial energy systems can be derived. The demand for products from the printed circuit board industry is continuously on the rise. Besides the increase of companies in Austria have to face the challenge of frequent change and adaptation to end-user requirements, causing significant changes in the energy demand and supply and by this, energy capacity limits onsite. This will be further increased by digitalisation and in terms of site security the need to increase productivity. The flexibility of the system makes it almost impossible for industry to plan and assess necessary adaptations and investment in the process and supply system and these challenges will increase significantly in the upcoming years. The overall objective of DigitalEnergyTwin is to support the industry with the development of a methodology and software tool to optimize the operation and design of industrial energy systems. The core of the project is the development of a holistic optimization approach, based on (near-) real production data, historical and predictions of the existing system, both the process demand and supply level. By this, industry will be supported for the first time with reliable solutions in terms of fluctuating, volatile and renewable energy supply well designed for efficient process technologies. The methodology of the digital twin will be developed and validated for single use cases and more importantly implemented in the manufacturing industry (PCB industry). For selected processes (energy relevant) and renewable as well as conventional supply technologies also the product quality will be addressed within this approach. Simplification and the development of technical standard solutions will lead to costeffective exploitation in other industrial sectors. Thus, the DigitalEnergyTwin builds on other areas of digitisation that are currently being developed. The use of the digital twin methodology will also make it possible to use the augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) approach, which enables efficient production and system monitoring as well training and will support the EnergyManager4.0 in the future. By this, a maximum impact and multiplication in other industrial companies and sectors will be achieved and the industry benefits from a reduction of costs and risk of investment decision, which will lead to a significant increase of the implementation of renewable energy technologies as well as technologies for higher energy efficiency in industrial production.

The research objective of this project is to increase the understanding of engine knocking and find novel methods to develop ultra-fast knock detection algorithms that are able to detect knocking in real time. Moreover, a step towards predictive knock control is taken, where the algorithm tries to predict knocking and takes measures to adjust the ignition conditions in the combustion cycle even before knocking occurs. Since the common physics-based models are already comparatively well developed and have undergone extensive investigations in the past, the novel methods aimed at in this project will primarily leverage data analytics and machine learning used for pattern recognition. In combination with the classic physical methods in hybrid approaches, they have the potential to improve knock prediction.

Modern, data-driven AI is highly complex, the path from the data to the analysis result is difficult to understand and difficult to verify, and their application requires expert know-how that is not available at every company. Another factor is that the confidentiality of the data prevents company partners from sharing analysis results with one another. The goal of the module is to start at all of these points and to develop a secure, verifiable and explainable AI and to create a curriculum for users of this AI that aims to create an understanding for the handling of and the boundaries of AI. The module thus incorporates all stages of the data processing chain, from the data source to be verified and cryptographical procedures to the secure data processing and the user of the AI.

The research objective of this project is to find novel methods to overcome these challenges and provide deeper understanding of cycle-to-cycle variations and knocking. Since physicsbased models have undergone extensive investigations in the past and have proven deficiencies in predictive ability, the novel methods that are the objectives of this project will primarily comprise data-driven approaches or similar methods from data science. These approaches should bring improvements when applied in combination with the physics-based approaches.

The research project EWA deals with the topic of strategic planning in drinking water supply to cope better with an uncertain future development. In the project, a decision support tool for water supply systems is being developed, which is able to derive robust system extensions or adaptations. Various planning alternatives with regard to security of supply, coverage of water requirements, life cycle costs and resource conservation can be examined in the tool, taking into account changing factors such as socio-demographic and climatic developments. The tool uses playful aspects to support intuitive solution finding. Such an approach is also known as a "serious game". The project also uses big data analyzes using machine learning algorithms to analyze time series data (smart meters, pressure and flow measurements). These are currently being developed in the research project ADAM (Advanced DAta-driven Modeling in water loss management). Long-term use of the web-based tool is ensured, among other things, by involving water supply companies, planning offices, state representatives and municipalities in the development of the tool.

The objectives of the COGSTEPS project are positive change in startup perception from the academic and scientific communities, starting more university startups and spin-off companies, development of an entrepreneurial mindset, transferable and transversal skills by many students, researchers, professors and scientists, forming a regional hub for innovation, research and science commercialization, and academic startups between project partners and crossing the gap between academic and startup worlds.

OPTIMA aims at improving the quality of higher education in Ukraine by increasing the level of academic integrity through bringing open practices and transparency to relevant content and services, as well as through modernisation and internationalization of Ukrainian HEIs. OPTIMA will introduce open practices as a quality assurance (QA) process and IT solutions and international virtual community as a quality assurance mechanism. The system of higher education (HE) in Ukraine is characterized by serious deficiencies, such as inefficient quality assurance (QA) and low levels of internationalization, which negatively affect educational attainment and reduce the country’s general potential. At the same time, another acute problem currently facing the country’s HE system is caused by the military conflict in eastern Ukraine. In 2014 the concept of “displaced higher education institutions” emerged as since the beginning of hostilities in the Donbass region, 18 higher education institutions (HEIs) have been moved from the temporarily ceased territories. The displaced HEIs managed to resume the educational process and now continue to educate over 40,000 students and employ about 3,500 academic staff. However, despite numerous achievements, problems of quality and integrity remain in the Ukrainian education system, harming society and economy. Misconduct in HE, when students do not properly represent their acquired knowledge because of cheating, plagiarism and ghostwriting, is one of the main problems of the Ukrainian education system. There is, then, a need for development and implementation of innovative QA mechanisms built on academic integrity culture. Transparency is at the core of Open Science (OS) which has gained increasing EU-level recognition and popularity in recent years. OS is not an end but a means to support better quality science, increased international collaboration and integrity. These goals are highly relevant to Ukrainian HEIs and can be effectively applied in the wider academic context through fostering research integrity culture and practices among academic staff, students and administrators in order to improve education quality. We conclude that the “OS vacuum” should be treated not as a failure, but as an opportunity to use the constantly improving European OS best practices to improve the situation in Ukraine. So, the proposed strategy is the introduction of more open and transparent practices leading to increased academic integrity leading to improved education quality. Introducing Open Peer Review (OPR) has the biggest potential in Ukraine as it brings transparency to the already familiar practice of academic evaluation and provides hands-on learning opportunities for early career researchers, helping to build new skills under collective mentorship of international experts. Hence, OPTIMA will develop and implement an online OPR platform for academic conferences and build an international virtual community of peer reviewers and researchers on the base of it. Combined with general and subject-specific OS subjects to be introduced in the partner HEIs for Master students and PhD candidates as well as a general open online course, OPTIMA’s OPR platform is intended to give our target universities (and Ukrainian HE system in general) a much needed impetus for change towards openness and integrity.

The project UserGRIDs develops two user-centred energy services at city district level, be¬ne¬fit-ting from active user participation and large amounts of real-time data. An ICT platform acts as a mid¬dleware providing seamless interoperability and standardized protocols. The first service is an energy management system (EMS) for districts with strongly fluctuating con¬sump¬tion and generation characteristics. The aim is to minimize emissions through optimal mana¬ge¬ment of en-ergy storage and supply from volatile sources. Various building controllers are ex¬ten¬ded to form a comprehensive, self-learning control system for the entire district. Its de¬vel¬opment is based on detailed thermo-electrical models also used by the second service, energy structure planning. It supports decisions on the transition of the district energy system towards zero greenhouse gas emissions. EMS, ICT-platform and energy structure planning will be im¬ple¬men¬ted, tested and further developed at the INNOVATION DISTRICT INFFELD of TU Graz.

The development of innovative products from lignin, which comes as black liquor in a million-ton scale from pulp and paper production, has a huge potential to open new business areas. Despite significant efforts on national and international level, the vast majority of lignin is still subjected to incineration. Another societal challenge is a safe and sustainable supply with energy. While sustainable energy production has been addressed in the past years, sustainable energy storage still is an issue. Nowadays, most of the chemical storage technologies rely on depletable sources (e.g. metals), which need to be mined and transported to Europe, thereby causing a wide range of problems (e.g., disposal, sustainability, flammability etc.) In this project, a new value chain based on lignin (more precisely black liquor) is explored to generate sustainable, non‒inflammable redox flow battery electrolytes including aspects on recycling after end-of-life. For this purpose, processes will be designed to efficiently separate and pretreat the black liquor.

The DIH SÜD initiative was launched by institutions from the provinces of Styria, Carinthia, Burgenland and East Tyrol to provide the best possible support to SMEs in Austria's southern region in the digital transformation taking place in the coming years. The consortium, which spans the provinces and industries, consists of five digital centres, which are central players in the regional research and innovation system. In addition to the digital centres, the consortium consists of numerous network partners, multipliers and third-party providers. A service package has been put together that includes the thematic focal points of (i) production & manufacturing technologies, (ii) security, (iii) data science - knowledge from data, (iv) digital business models & processes, (v) logistics and the cross-cutting topic of (x) human resources & young talent, the latter of which is dedicated to promoting young people with targeted qualification and motivation measures. The measures offered by DIH SÜD, based on the experience and competences of the partners, range from the implementation of information events, innovation and technology consulting activities, implementation of qualification measures to support in the development of innovations. The initial situation has already been thoroughly examined and the results show that the digital transformation is fraught with great uncertainties for companies. The direct effects of the digital transformation, the future needs and competences and above all the opportunities are very often underestimated, especially among SMEs. This is also due to information and knowledge gaps - new, digital technologies are complex, sometimes require high investment costs and often accompanying training and further education measures. Risks, challenges and opportunities can often hardly be objectively assessed by SMEs. The establishment of DIH SÜD closes a still existing gap in the development of DIHs in Austria and will support the SMEs of the Southern Austria region with know-how, networking and infrastructure in the coming years. Many successful projects have already been implemented in cooperation with companies, and the goal of the Digital Innovation Hub SÜD is to further expand these successful activities. Digital Innovation Hub SÜD. DIHs form contact and intermediary points for SMEs that require SMEs that need support with the digital transformation.

Numerous indicators suggest that democracy is under threat worldwide, with misinformation cited as a major concern. Misinformation is troubling not only because it lingers in memory even if people know it has been corrected, but also because under certain circumstances people come to view and value inaccuracy as a signal of “authenticity.” Within a populist logic, blatant lies violate the “establishment” norm of accuracy, thereby signaling the “authenticity” of a champion of “the people”. A lying politician may be considered “honest” because they are authentically “speaking their mind”. Such belief-speaking is one component of a tripartite model of honesty developed by the funders (see figure) and involves only the speaker’s beliefs and feelings, irrespective of factual accuracy. For a democracy, “belief-speaking” is problematic because it allows leaders to “honestly” speak beliefs without seeking common ground based on the actual state of the world. We therefore urgently need a better understanding of what is considered politically “honest”, and under what circumstances. Within the tripartite model, this quest requires exploration of the balance between the three components. We pursue this quest computationally, using largescale data analysis and text modeling of corpora.

Democracy is under threat. Populist movements—mainly but not exclusively on the political right—have pitted "the people'' against a presumed "elite'' that is variously constructed to include the judiciary, mainstream media, politicians, experts, and academics. PRODEMINFO builds on the realization that factual inaccuracy can be a political asset rather than a liability: Populist politicians may state obvious falsehoods to signal disregard for the "establishment" norm of honesty, thus identifying themselves as authentic champions of "the people." The rebranding of inaccuracy as authenticity reflects a profound shift in the underlying ontology of truth: Whereas liberal democracy is tied to a realist ontology of truth and a shared body of accepted knowledge, the populist ontology of truth is entirely constructivist and subjective. Understanding, documenting, and then addressing this ontological shift is crucial because it drastically changes the way in which one might confront misinformation—there is little point in correcting falsehoods if facts are not considered a relevant attribute of public discourse. PRODEMINFO will build tools to protect democracy in Europe by drawing a strategic arc from the threat arising from the insurgent populist ontology of truth to the development of protective solutions that can be rolled out at scale online. The objectives of PRODEMINFO are (1) to understand contemporary misinformation in Europe and how it connects to people's tacit ontology of truth; (2) to develop countermessages based on inoculation theory that are sensitive to people's different ontologies (e.g., addressing authenticity rather than accuracy of political speech); and (3) to test such countermessages at scale on social media. PRODEMINFO will pursue these objectives by combining controlled behavioural and cognitive experimentation with "big data'' analyses of social media, simulation modelling of behaviour online, and text modelling of large corpora.

The Austrian government is committed to accelerating the transition of its energy system and achieving CO2 neutrality by 2040. To achieve this goal, Austria must significantly step up its efforts to decarbonise all parts of its energy sector. Buildings account for about a third of the total energy demand. The government plans to phase out oil and coal heating systems by 2035 and limit the use of natural gas for heating in new buildings from 2025. Energy services such as predictive maintenance, demand-side management and model predictive control are central components for reducing the energy consumption of build-ings and transforming buildings into active, intelligent actors in higher-level energy sys-tems. The aim of BEYOND is to develop the technological foundation for “Next Generation En-ergy Services”, which is made possible by the interplay of the following technolo-gies: Virtual Reality for visualization and real-time interaction with the real building; Machine learning and physical simulation to show the real-life effects of interven-tions and decisions. IoT platforms for bidirectional real-time communication be-tween the building and its users. The technological developments are tested and evaluated on the basis of two use cases “Predictive Maintenance and Error Diagnosis” and “Human Aspects in Buildings”. Innovative companies in the field of energy services, building automation, simulation software and VR technology will benefit from the developments in BEYOND. Political decision-makers and end users will also benefit from the new possibilities of actively engaging with these next generation Energy Services.

Digitalization efforts have led to massive sensor infrastructures embedded in the structure of objects, processes and spaces. The growing volume of data increasingly requires access to data anytime and anywhere. A wealth of data needs to be processed for this, often by drawing on collective expertise before a decision is made.

Wider research context/theoretical framework During the global crisis caused by the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, all of a sudden societies worldwide found themselves in a state of emergency. While governments consulted mostly virologists and ordered a general lockdown to ‘flatten the curve’, citizens turned to existing ‘pandemic fiction’ or started to produce their own ‘corona fictions’ in order to understand the crisis (management), distract from pandemic fear or endure confinement and physical distancing. These reactions reveal the importance of literary and cultural productions, which – understood as a pool of “Means of Living and Means of Survival” (Ette 2016, 7) – offer explanations, show coping mechanisms, and foster resilience. Hypotheses/research questions/objectives The leading hypothesis of the project understands that pandemic narratives are based on consistent structures which circulate across media. ‘Spreading’ through transmedia storytelling (based on Jenkins), they contribute to an overarching meta-narrative throughout different subgenres, which, in turn, transfer their genre characteristics to the content. This assumption leads to the following research questions: - To what extent and how do corona fictions differ from previous pandemic fictions? Which parts of the meta-narrative are reactivated in corona fictions? - What are the main topics of corona fictions? Is it the fear of getting the virus, of dying or the difficulties of the confinement (isolation, care duties, domestic violence etc.)? - What narratological function does the coronavirus adopt? The objectives of the project are to determine how the pandemic meta-narrative is reactivated within current corona fiction. Furthermore, to demonstrate how health policy measures, e.g. the lockdown, influence cultural production processes and sociocultural practices. Approach/methods The project employs a pluralistic, multimodal, and interdisciplinary methodological approach in order to render the transmedia degree of the transcultural pandemic fiction. It includes (1) transmedia storytelling, (2) citizen science for the collection of the data and (3) the digital humanities for their computational processing and graphical presentation. (4) For the description and analysis of the formal aspects as well as the content of the specific corona texts, a methodological framework stemming from cultural, literary, and media studies will be used according to the specificities of each text. Level of originality/innovation The project combines the latest cultural productions published in the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic with cutting-edge methodologies and technologies. It integrates citizen science for the collection of the corona corpus, displays the data as an Open Access bibliographic network (Digital Humanities) and investigates the corona fictions through the lens of transmedia storytelling.

The COVID-19 pandemic is a public health crisis of unprecedented scale in modern times. Social and behavioural measures are important tools to curb the spread of the pandemic. The unfolding of the epidemic in a given country greatly depends on its implemented measures and the population’s willingness to adhere to them. Almost all countries have enforced or at least recommended some kind of physical distancing alongside wearing masks and washing hands, but it is unclear to what extent the population is following these policies. Additionally, during the last months, many countries have experienced movements that discourage adherence to measures and large protests against the measures. Human behaviour is, therefore, a large source of uncertainty in epidemic modelling and its understanding it is crucial to understand and prevent the spread of the virus in communities. Evidently, general pandemic modelling needs to be improved by including the modelling of human behaviour under the conditions of a pandemic. There is strong evidence that individual prosociality drives the willingness to adhere to measures and can be used as a proxy to assess this willingness. On the collective level, prosociality is subject to complex social and emotional interaction processes that are not yet understood in the context of an ongoing pandemic. The aim of this project is to understand how collective social and emotional interaction processes can sustain prosocial behaviour that prevents the spreading of COVID-19. To do so, I plan to combine large-scale data analysis of social media data with computational modelling of epidemic spreading and human behaviour. As a first step, I want to establish a correlation between an individual’s prosocial intentions, prosocial expressions on social media and increased willingness to adhere to measures through a large-scale survey of Twitter users. I then want to measure collective prosociality in a range of countries by large-scale data analysis of social media data. Subsequently, I want to test the hypothesis that collective prosociality levels in a country are (together with the timeline of country-specific countermeasures) predictive of (a) population mobility changes and (b) pandemic spread. Here, it is crucial to emphasise that collective prosociality can capture both mobility behaviour and cautionary behaviour, the latter of which is otherwise invisible and hard to assess. Lastly, I want to model collective prosociality as a dynamical system that is subject to reinforcing and dampening feedback by joint experiences and “measure fatigue”, respectively, and leads to collective levels of prosociality that oscillate in time.

The learning process in clinical placements involves several actors such as tutors, supervisors, teachers, and students and during this complex process, tasks and mentorships must be done in a way that is synchronized with educational and clinical processes and embedded in the respective contexts. Only a structure that synchronizes processes and respective communication can prevent (some central problems) and ensure meaningful learning for students and appropriate care in the placement organizations. The project ‘4D (Determinants, Design, Digitalization, Dissemination) in the Digitalization of Learning in Practice Placement’ (4D Project) aims at addressing this gap by introducing mobile technology in practice placements, creating a bridge between the different actors involved to foster the best experience in practice-based learning in healthcare settings. The 4D project aims to address this goal by implementing the four main objectives: (i) to Determine the key factors (practice-based learning models) and the key elements (diffusion of innovation theories) to introduce mobile technology in practice placements, (ii) to co-Design a mobile learning application (app) for successful adoption of mobile technology in practice-based learning reflecting users’ core values and needs, (iii) to introduce Digitalization and to train the participating institutions through workshops and providing tutorials, (iv) to pilot and assess the use of mobile learning in practice placements in healthcare higher education in three different countries in Europe and (iv) to Disseminate the project findings as a inclusive approach to exchange and support the practice placement digitalization around universities EU Countries.

The goal of the project is to build upon a sensor instrumented fibre production line, by textile producer, and provide predictive quality information in a trustful way to operators an decision makers throughout the production pipeline so that humans can change the process immediately and avoid inferior quality outcomes. Through this optimisation energy loss and waste are avoided, as no costly upcycling needs to be performed on inferior goods. To achieve this AI based instrumentation of the production line, we want to close (i) causality gaps and (ii) measurement data gaps by using historic information. In a second step we want to build (iii) trustworthy embedded energy-efficient explainable AI tools into the process and (iv) provide counterfactual-based explanations for what-if analysis of the overall process. Finally, this should showcase, to others, how sustainability goals and traditional cooperate goals are not mutually exclusive and can be enabled by using advanced AI methods.

Web search has become an essential technology and commodity, driving not only future innovations but forming a backbone for our digital economy. Regrettably, currently few non-European gatekeepers control Web search, which creates a biased, one-sided information access centred around economic success rather than the needs of citizens or European values and jurisdiction. This onesided ecosystem puts pressure on many small Web contributors from science, economy, art, culture, media and society requiring them to optimize their content for a few gatekeepers. A system greatly benefiting the gatekeepers thereby creates a vicious cycle, which leads to locked-in effects and a closed search engine market. To promote an open human-centred search engine market and provide a true choice to users when selecting search engines based on their own preferences, OpenWebSearch.EU proposes to develop and pilot the core of a European Open Web Index (OWI) and the foundation for an open and extensible European open Web Search and Analysis Infrastructure (OWSAI). Our approach is based on four objectives, namely (1) to develop a core suite of search, discovery and analytics services to create, maintain and utilize the OWI; (2) to develop relevant search engine verticals and new search paradigms demonstrating the impact; (3) to establish a network of European HPC-infrastructure, research and business organizations to pilot the OWSAI based on Europe’s values, principles, legislation, ethics and standards; (4) to stimulate an ecosystem around the OWI. The envisioned infrastructure will not only contribute to Europe’s sovereignty for navigating and searching the web, it will also empower Europe’s researchers, innovators and business to systematically tap into the Web as business and innovation resource, without paying huge upfront costs. This will be particularly crucial for future AI innovations and relevant for other European infrastructure like e.g. the European Open Science Cloud, GAIA-X.

Measures to empower girls and women in the digital world and diversify their educational paths and career choices with a focus on MINT.

The project result is a Virtual Reality Digital Twin environment of the test sites "My Smart City Graz" and "TU Graz - Innovation District Inffeld". The user can interactively operate and visualise energy-technical building simulations and Internet of Things monioring data of the districts. This will support all stakeholders in making our cities more climate-neutral, resilient, efficient and liveable.

In the light of the growing pressure to decarbonise our economies, hydrogen is attracting strongly increasing attention from researchers, industry, policy makers and the wider public. Although hydrogen has been described as a promising substitute for fossil fuels already in the 1970s, current enthusiasm about the energy carrier is unprecedented. A rising number of countries are implementing national hydrogen strategies, policies, and policy targets, and large corporations such as Toyota, Bosch, or Siemens present the hydrogen economy as the growth market of the coming decades. In addition, the recent war in the Ukraine strengthens hopes about hydrogen even further. While expectation and attention levels associated with hydrogen are rising, important inconsistencies exist in terms of how the production of hydrogen is envisioned. Casting a glance at already specified national hydrogen strategies shows that nations have very different expectations about the roles that fossil fuels will play in this production process. Germany and the UK are good examples in this regard. Whereas Germany focuses on hydrogen produced from renewable electricity (‘green’ hydrogen), the UK strategy places an additional emphasis on the production of hydrogen from natural gas that is combined with technological approaches that capture and store the resulting CO2 emissions (so-called ‘blue’ hydrogen). In the HydroFRAME project, the examples of Germany and the UK are used to better understand the processes by which nations develop desirable visions of sociotechnical futures. Conceptualizing the future images associated with the German and British hydrogen strategies as politically legitimized ‘imaginaries’, the following questions will be addressed: - What expectations and visions are associated with the emerging hydrogen imaginaries in Germany and the UK, and which framing processes in the policy arena have driven the formation of these imaginaries? - Which alternative or competing hydrogen visions exist in these countries, and what are the country-specific differences? - Which narratives are associated with the countries’ ‘incumbent’ natural gas imaginaries, and how do these narratives relate to the emerging hydrogen imaginaries? - How did the public framing of hydrogen futures in Germany and the UK evolve over time, and what has been the role of these framing processes in shaping the emerging hydrogen imaginaries? By shedding light on how the emerging future images associated with the German and British hydrogen strategies relate to discursive processes, the project gains important insight into the interplay between two different types of expectations: institutionally stabilised, and politically legitimized, expectations on the one hand, and expectations that are shared rhetorically through ‘language in use’ on the other. Furthermore, the project provides a decision basis for countries and regions that currently think about their own hydrogen futures.

Bei diesem Projekt geht es darum, die landesinterne Projektgruppe (auf der Basis unserer Erfahrungen mit dem Projekt "Klimaneutrale TU Graz 2030") zu unterstützen und zu beraten, um das Ziel "Klimaneutrale Landesverwaltung Steiermark 2030" effizient zu erreichen.

Against the background of the necessity to create a sustainable mobility system, different mobility paths for the next decades will be developed and evaluated in this project. For this purpose, an interdisciplinary supported, multidimensional view on the future development of mobility in Styria will be taken, which considers both passenger and freight transport as well as implications for Styria as a production location. The future projections should be flexible enough to integrate recent materializing developments, to strengthen appropriate trends and to change course according to the principle of avoid-shift-improve. The projection period covers the next 20 years in line with the 2040 climate neutrality target at the federal level. The analysis will seek to answer the following specific questions, among others: - What new governance structures and tax needs are derived for spatial, urban, and transportation planning? - What are the requirements for the distribution patterns of housing, workplaces and infrastructure? - How do the different projections affect social inclusion and socio-spatial inequalities? - What is the significance of new social practices, such as the use of "Mobility as a Service" (MaaS) offerings, for the Styrian industry? The project approaches this issue through a broad-based, transdisciplinary backcasting process. With the participation of stakeholders, the neuralgic points of possible development paths are identified and quantitative projection calculations are validated. In addition, this project combines backcasting and scenario analysis in a contrasting and synthesizing way (a methodological approach that is quite innovative in international comparison).

The project COOL-KIT develops demonstrates and structures system solutions for the cooling of buildings, with a focus on the founders' period (Gründerzeit). Buildings from this period (approx. built 1850 to 1910) characterise the centres of many European cities and contain high-quality public and private functions. Climate change, densification and sealing are increasingly causing extreme summer situations in these central urban locations and are rapidly enhancing the need for overheating protection and active building cooling. Due to the lack of overarching approaches to cool this important group of buildings, the increasing use of inefficient individual cooling systems (mostly single split units) becomes an energy-related, acoustic and architectural burden. The cooling systems developed in the project are based on different cooling sources (ground, air, microgrids) and various active cooling techniques and components (activated intermediate ceilings, fan coils, radiators). Passive approaches such as shading or night ventilation are investigated as complementary measures. Predictive control technology ensures optimal control and the use of PV electricity a sustainable operation. Cooling system and operation designs are developed, taking into account the accessible synergies with the heating operation. Cooling ceilings are used to reduce heating system temperatures to increase the year-round efficiency and reduce district heating requirements. Selected system configurations are implemented in several buildings of the participating universities. Testing of different predictive control approaches will be performed on the test buildings using a digital twin, based on an IoT platform, followed by comprehensive energy and comfort related, economic, ecological and operational evaluations. The experience gained simulation studies, as well as market and stakeholder analyses lead to a modularly structured bundle of interdisciplinarily evaluated system solutions, the COOL-KIT. BIM models of the system concepts also enable subsequent projects to be configured in a technically and economically targeted manner with little processing effort.

Implementation of an immersive and interactive virtual reality environment for career guidance.

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a growing problem (1-in-44 children; 4:1 boys:girls) that causes debilitating cognitive issues. "Social blindness," an inability to recognize emotions in others, is a common problem that requires costly and limited 1:1/small-group therapy. This shortage of therapy is particularly concerning given the increasing number of ASD diagnoses, particularly in boys. To address this, there is a need to increase access to emotional recognition training/therapy for those with ASD, and at a lower cost. Our proposed solution is to virtualize emotional recognition training/therapy by combining three novel key elements (KE1-3): hyper-realistic and responsive avatars, computer vision, and programmed therapeutic methods. This creates a fully virtualized, two-way adaptive, and individualized therapy that can be extended, gamified, and used for further research. Our hypothesis is that this technology solution can be ≥80% as effective as one-to-one therapy with ASD therapists, increasing access to basic care and augmenting/reinforcing current therapy. The outcome is a highly extensible software-based platform technology solution that dramatically increases access and scalability, lowers costs, and creates new insights/pathways in ASD research.