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REBUILD - Activities



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Activities / results Description Partners Deliverable
Work Package 1 – Background Information Gathering Objectives
In order to allow the partnership to define service prototypes and system specifications, there is a need to examine the refugees/migrants needs to steer the toolbox development options as well as local authorities and public administration to identify priority information. This WP aims to find a common methodology and tool to gather information from the target group able to inform the subsequent phase of the project and specifically:
● To examine the existing state of the art in terms of tools and methods used to collect information from the target group in the field subject of the project (legal, health, education, employment etc.)
● To create a common methodology for an integrated and storable data gathering
● To provide data and information to be used in the further definition of scenarios and prototypes
Description of work:
Task 1.1 Development of a standard template/tool for an integrated information gathering (M1-M5) (Lead: CAM, other participants: UNINETT, ENG, UAB, OMNES, VUB, MDAT). This first task aims to develop an integrated tool for the collection of background information, on the basis of the state of the art and the methodologies already implemented by the NGOs daily committed in the support and inclusion of migrants/refugees. The collection of quantitative and qualitative data and information already takes place in each country involved in the partnership, but using different aims, tools, templates and methodologies. Furthermore, often these activities are designed only to fulfill their direct and immediate purpose. The tool will therefore have to respect two main characteristics, in order to create a common method and language: • be integrated and usable in the fields concerned by the targeted services provided by the NGOs: training and employment, health, welfare, education etc; • be developed not only for the purposes of a direct use but also for the data storage and the subsequent analysis. The tool will be implemented through a preliminary exchange of information among the involved NGOs during the very first phase of the project (M1-M12). During the project design phase the partners will share the respective state of the art on the information collection methodologies, the NGOs will collect the tools (questionnaires, templates, models) used in their daily activities to constitute a knowledge base for the next step of the task. In a second phase, a 2-day workshop will be organized in Bologna. With the scientific coordination of UNINETTUNO (responsible for the knowledge transfer described in WP2) experts from the NGOs partners will develop the new model to be tested in the design phase. The approach used will be participatory and the process will be leaded by Camelot using specific co-design techniques developed over the years: starting from the evaluation of the existing assets and through a collaborative decision making process, the new model to be adopted will be defined.
Task 1.2 Gathering of user background information (Months: M1-M8) (Lead: CAM, other participants: ENG, UAB, OMNES, VUB). This task is of crucial importance in the WP1 and within the whole project, revealing its participatory and user-oriented approach. With the aim of establishing the base of data for the next co-design phases (WP2), relying on the shared methodology and using the adopted tool (T1.1), the NGOs will proceed to:
1. To contact end users. In each country involved in the project, therefore, the NGOs will administer 50 qualitative interviews choosing a representative users sample, taking into account the complexity of the migrant population in terms of geographical origin, religion, gender, age, specific vulnerability etc. The population that will be involved in this activity will be identified in two main groups of future users: migrants/refugees included in second reception programs still benefiting from the social integration support services; migrants/refugees who have just left the reception programs. This distinction will be useful to compare the expectations of those who are about to be independent in their new societies and the point of view (needs, obstacles, shortcomings, possible improvements) of those who are already experiencing the integration in a new country. Interviews results will be described by each NGO in 3 internal technical reports.
2. To collect qualitative information necessary to develop the toolbox. For this purpose, a sample of future users of the tool will be involved through individual interviews by NGOs’ experts (sociologists, psychologists, intercultural mediators) (the methodology will be set in detail and indicated by Uninettuno to ensure consistency with the subsequent design phases) aimed at identifying and register their needs, allowing to design the toolbox as close as possible to the real migrant/refugees’ expectations. In each country involved in the project, therefore, the NGOs will administer 50 qualitative interviews choosing a representative users sample, taking into account the complexity of the migrant population in terms of geographical origin, religion, gender, age, specific vulnerability etc. The population that will be involved in this activity will be identified in two main groups of future users: migrants/refugees included in second reception programs still benefiting from the social integration support services; migrants/refugees who have just left the reception programs. This distinction will be useful to compare the expectations of those who are about to be independent in their new societies and the point of view (needs, obstacles, shortcomings, possible improvements) of those who are already experiencing the integration in a new country. Interviews results will be described by each NGO in 3 internal technical reports.
3. To establish ethical and genre requirements for user interaction during the life of the project. This task is directly relevant to section 1.2.7 and 1.3.8.
Task 1.3: ARTES Framework (M01-M10) [Leader: VUB, Contributors: UAB, CIDAS, OMNES, MDAT]. The aim of this task will be the identification and review of the relevant societal concerns that are likely to be affected during various stages of the REBUILD project (right to the protection of personal data, right to privacy, ethics and societal acceptance). The ARTES test consists of five principles: Authenticity, Respect, Truthfulness, Equity and Social Responsibility. The framework will be built on three pillars:
1. Fundamental rights framework: The applicable framework regarding the relevant fundamental rights (specifically to the rights to privacy and protection of personal data), inter alia, in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union in context of the tasks carried out within the REBUILD system will be analysed.
2. Ethical and societal framework: it will analyse ethical principles relating to truthfulness, appropriateness in the addressed forms of the ICT-based solutions, ethical handling of data relating to immigrants, stigmatization and discrimination arising from the REBUILD practices.
3. Regulatory frameworks relevant to Rebuild. Since the REBUILD toolbox will rely on the processing of data from migrants and refugees, for policy making purposes, the relevance of the specific legal frameworks will be thoroughly mapped and described. A succinct list of legal frameworks to be reviewed include the EU Data Protection Framework, the Council of Europe’s framework and certain selected national frameworks of EU Member States where the project will be deployed.
The task will also provide a detailed study of the existing best practices on profiling of migrant and refugee individuals in the EU for integration policy purposes and the implementation of ethics by design, privacy by design and data protection by design approaches. Re training sessions will be held for consortium partners. This task will contribute to deliverable D7.1.
Task 1.4: Identification, priorisation and validation of cultural markers (M1-M6, lead: UAB, partic: UNINETT, ENG, CIDAS, OMNES, VUB, MDAT). Understanding the many cultural markers, and prioritising their impact in the development of the technology and human interaction will be the objective of this task. Through Focus Groups users will be presented with the project developments, to understand their acceptance and expectations. We will define the FG methodology and data gathering. In addition, the indicators to map the impacts will be here developed in relation to the socio-economic impact assessment in order to have a comprehensive methodology to include cross-culturality as one of the main topic to map.
Leading partners:
  • CIDAS Cooperativa Sociale
Other partners involved:
  • International Telematic University UNINETTUNO
  • ENGINEERING - INGEGNERIA INFORMATICA SPA
  • Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona (UAB)
  • OMNES - Syllogos Ethelonton Kilkis
  • Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB)
  • MDAT- Metropolitan Development Agency of Thessaloniki
Work Package 2 – Codesign Processes Objectives
To study and specify the users’ requirements;
To define and implement co-creation processes in REBUILD system design;
To define users’ scenarios and service prototypes;
To provide relevant input for system specifications and overall UX of REBUILD toolbox;
To define processes and methodologies for feedback loops and iterative testing of REBUILD system.
Description of work
The goals of this work package are to define users requirements, scenarios, features and navigation flows of the envisaged components of the REBUILD ICT toolbox. The first tasks will integrate the preliminary research already carried on for this proposal, gathering data and information from the relevant stakeholders: migrants and refugees, target users of the REBUILD toolbox, and local/public authorities, services providers. Then co-creation workshops will be organized in the three main project countries, involving inter-disciplinary experts from the Consortium and all the relevant external actors. The cocreation workshops will be managed using service design, creative thinking and brainstorming facilitation approaches. Finally, a final task will keep involved these external actors during the development / deploy / testing / tuning phase, for continuous feedback gathering and improvement of the REBUILD toolbox, managed in WP6. This WP is in strict correlation with WP1, that will gather information and perform a first research/need analysis on the immigrants/refugees target group.
Task 2.1 Service provision analysis (Months: M1 – M6) (Lead: UNINETT, Other participants: ENG, UAB, DEN, CIDAS, OMNES, MDAT). This task aims to analyze the existing service provision flow, involving local authorities and public services providers from all the 3 country clusters defined. Public authorities and service providers supporting the proposal will participate actively in this task, surveyed and interviewed by the research group. This task will focus the analysis on the service provision in the fields defined as in the scope of REBUILD project in section 1.3.2. The analysis will take into consideration workflow definition, analyzing for each service, for each provider, for each country/region involved, how the service provision chain actually works. The final output of this task will be a Needs and Gaps analysis report, from the point of view of local authorities, NGOs and public service providers. Main tools used for this task will be surveys and interviews
Task 2.2 Preparation and implementation of the Co-Creation Workshops (Months: M6 – M10) (Lead: UNINETT, Other Participants: ENG, CERTH, UPM, UAB, DEN, CIDAS, OMNES, MDAT, UNESCO). The aim of this task is to define scenarios and prototypes sketching how the modules of the REBUILD toolbox are expected to work and interact with real users. Three 2-days workshops will be organized, one in Italy, one in Greece and one in Spain. The workshops will involve experts from the consortium covering technical and social/human scientific fields: cognitive and social psychologists, service designers, ICT system designers, developers and integrators, legal experts, social and political scientists; migrants and refugees involved through the NGOs in the consortium; and local and public authorities who already provided their availability and interest in being involved in designing and piloting the REBUILD toolbox. The workshop preparation will be based on the results of WP1 and of Task 2.1, and will involve also the definition of a Workshop Agenda, and internal training of technical partners for cross-cultural issues, interaction with non-ICT experts, facilitation techniques. Main tools/techniques used will be needs exhibition, subtask definition, peer learning in subgroups, card sorting, brainstorming techniques, rapid prototyping, needs validation / agreement, co-design, use case scenarios and mock-ups.
Task 2.3 Workshop findings restitution (Months M11 - M12) (Lead: UNINETT, Other participants: ENG, UAB, CIDAS, OMNES) This task will maximize the value added by the active involvement of target users and services providers in the design phase, aiming to design and deliver a set of ICT solutions effective in improving the communication between migrants and public services, the access to and the provision of those services. Results of the three workshops will be reported in a common, shared template; a final Co-Creation report will integrate findings and proposals emerging from the three workshops. Consortium partners and users and stakeholders involved in the workshops will be asked to comment a first draft of the Co-Creation report in a common shared space, providing access and comment/editing capabilities to the documents. Interactive/live discussion systems will be available to the working group. This task will also deal with the definition of relevant REBUILD modules to be tested during the development phase, before the pilot; and with the definition of external users groups, who participated the Workshops, available for being involved in the test phase. This specifications will feed WP6
Leading partners:
  • International Telematic University UNINETTUNO
Other partners involved:
  • ENGINEERING - INGEGNERIA INFORMATICA SPA
  • Centre For Research and Technology Hellas (CERTH)
  • Universidad Politecnica de Madrid (UPM)
  • Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona (UAB)
  • DEN Institute asbl
  • CIDAS Cooperativa Sociale
  • OMNES - Syllogos Ethelonton Kilkis
  • MDAT- Metropolitan Development Agency of Thessaloniki
  • UNESCO - United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
Work Package 3 – Data analysis and skills matching Objectives
The main objective of this WP is to obtain a complete model for improving the interaction between migrants and refugees and the destination states by means of three basic pillars: first by doing a profile analysis based on a deep learning methodology for user’s characterization and link. Second, by helping in the integration path by means of new solutions for matching and recommendation according to users’ needs and skills and finally, by implementing a follow-up method for system performance optimization through the analysis of subjective opinion and experience within the REBUILD environment.
Description of work
Task 3.1: Deep learning based profile analysis (M3-M24, lead CERTH, partic: ENG, UPM). The task will deliver embedding methods to create low-dimensional vectors that represent profiles and background information such as ethnicity, origin, age, gender, skills and education, family status, hobbies and preferences to name a few. The list of data to be used will be defined in the data gathering phase. Graph embedding and encoder-decoder embedding deep learning methods will be investigated and used to create clusters of profiles and detect connections and links among people and groups of people.
Task 3.2: In depth skills and needs matching through machine learning (M9-M26, lead: UPM, partic: CERTH). Using as input the embedding of profiles and a wide range of information on the needs and integration paths, this task will deliver a deep learning model that will predict optimal matching in a deeper level aiming for a sustainable integration model. The proposed methodology will focus in an optimal guidance of migrants as well as public authorities for a successful and sustainable integration.
Task 3.3: Recommendation for service provision enhancement and follow-up (M9-M26, lead: UPM, partic: ENG, CERTH) This task will focus its activity on easing the active integration process by providing a recommendation framework which will help matching the migrants and refugees needs with the available solutions in the destination state, considering the contextual information. It will take the vector profiles from T3.2 and provide a practical reasoning system which will act as a recommender for supporting the enhancement of the user’s position. Moreover, this task will also be focused in the follow-up of the system’s users that will help in the optimisation of the system performance
Leading partners:
  • Universidad Politecnica de Madrid (UPM)
Other partners involved:
  • ENGINEERING - INGEGNERIA INFORMATICA SPA
  • Centre For Research and Technology Hellas (CERTH)
Work Package 4 – The Digital Companion Objectives
The main objective of this work package is to provide the digital companion as a set of tools that will support the effective communication between PAs and migrants on the benefit of both. The proposed REBUILD tasks will focus on the removal of the language barriers both in terms of multilinguality as well as illiteracy in certain cases. A rule based chatbot service will be the core of the digital companion and the personalized interaction will enhance the way information is fed to user according to the needs and capacity.
Description of work
Task 4.1: Pictograms and signs for multilinguality (M1-M18, lead: UAB, partic: UPM). Pictograms and other signs are important to reach a very broad range of spoken/written languages within the arriving migrants and refugees. The task will define a basic vocabulary, respecting existing standards and common knowledge, to provide an efficient tool for communication. In parallel to the designed visual language, the English language and/or the national (locally spoken) language will be available as an extra tool that helps in the faster integration through language understanding.
Task 4.2: Securing communication through audiovisual information chunks (M3-M26, lead: CERTH, partic: UPM, UAB). Short audio and visual information that is available online in multiple languages, spoken by already integrated migrants of each ethnicity/community/origin is an effective tool to help illiterate people learn their new society and guide their way to interact with the public authorities and public or private services. The task will provide a structure, a scenario and the tools to produce short audio/visual information chunks from ubiquitous equipment such as mobile devices. However, the validity and trustworthiness of this information should be well secured through the provided tools, before making them publicly available.
Task 4.3: Hybrid (human/machine) chatbot as digital companion (M6-M28, lead: CERTH, partic: UPM). The task will work on delivering a rule-based chatbot that will be able to reply to common questions from both migrants and authorities and reply with data coming from the analysis modules. A routing component will be developed and will be responsible to hand-off discussions, that the chatbot can't manage, to community members, volunteers or successfully integrated migrants.
Task 4.4: Personalised interaction (M15-M28, lead: UPM, partic: CERTH, UAB). This task will lead to a self-learning system for improving service customization based on a self-adaptive process which can learn not only from user’s interaction but also from other user’s experience by means of innovative statistical methods. It will be in charge of obtaining implicit and explicit data from users actions and preferences in an iterative manner in order to help the optimization of the services, assuring the enhancement of the accuracy of personalisation
Task 4.5: Perception of migration (M6-M26, lead: UPM, partic: CERTH, UAB). The digital companion will also be responsible to provide fact-based information to enhance the public perception of migration. The companion will give information to any interested 3rd-party, local citizens or any other that is interested for the impact of migration to a local and a national level. To do so, except for the commonly asked, data related questions, the digital companion will automatically create infographics based on previous questions and existing data.
Leading partners:
  • Centre For Research and Technology Hellas (CERTH)
Other partners involved:
  • Universidad Politecnica de Madrid (UPM)
  • Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona (UAB)
Work Package 5 – Integration and technical validation Objectives
The main objective of this work package is the delivery of the REBUILD Pilot Platform ready for the pilot execution. Accordingly the related further sub-objectives are:
1. to define the reference architecture of the REBUILD open platform relying on the requirements input from WP1. The Architecture definition will also include the design of both the internal operational processes and the system interfaces for the platform interoperability.
2. to define the system interfaces for the platform adoption by stakeholders.
3. to develop the REBUILD platform operational plan and put it in place. The plan will cover all the aspects including actual realization and testing & trials on respect of requirements defined in WP1 and T5.1.
4. to define the overall mechanisms for components integration including the related system interface definition
Description of work
T5.1 Use cases and requirements (platform and service requirements) (M3-M12) (Lead. ENG, part.: UNINETT, CERTH, UPM, CIDAS, OMNES, MDAT). This task will identify the REBUILD use cases and elicit the functional and non-functional requirements necessary to fulfil the goals identified, satisfying the usage scenario and respecting the legal and ethical framework. The task will guide the user partners to agree on requirements that are realizable by the current technological capabilities and within the context of REBUILD. The purpose is to advance the current state of the art based on the technology baseline that is already available by the partners. A set of baseline services that is foreseen to be necessary is listed in Service Table in section1. The output of this task will be both technical requirements for the platform and a description of the whole set of technological components that are deemed necessary for the satisfaction of the user needs and scenarios. This description will detail the necessary functionality of each component along with the necessary input and output.
T5.2 Platform Architecture (M4-M26) (Lead. ENG, Part.: CERTH, UPM). This task deals with the definition of REBUILD open platform architecture according to the functional and technical requirements elicited in T5.1. Reference architecture will be the basis on which the services provided by REBUILD partners will be integrate for the platform provision. The task includes both the definition of all the functionalities that the platform will offer and the interoperability between the platform and external systems, including tools. The initial conceptual architecture was introduced in Section 1[VC_ENG1] , which depicts the main concepts REBUILD will make available to Users via Mapping processes.
T5.3 User Interface (M5-M30) (Lead. UPM, part.: ENG, CERTH). Relying on the User requirements and the User scenarios collected this task will define the user interface of REBUILD Open Platform. In particular, for the user scenarios identified specific user interface will be defined and realized. Techniques and operational modalities will be identified in order to realize intuitive and effective interface able to facilitate the platform adoption from Users and speed up their learning process and lighten the related learning curves.
T5.4 REBUILD Platform development (M5-M27) (Lead. ENG, part.: CERTH, UPM). The main goal of this task is to develop the REBUILD open platform. A plan will be defined to cover all the operational aspects from actual realization, tests & trials and support to the pilots of WP6. The requirements defined in WP1 and T5.1 will be used to define checkpoints, time plan with milestones and validation procedures. This activity will functionally link together the input from other WP tasks to act in a coordinated way into the REBUILD platform. It will be evaluated to structure the platform in sub-parts to be linked together for the overall processes implementation referring to Microservices Architecture paradigm. Ultimately this task will develop the REBUILD platform as base for the integration and interfaces implementation that will be part of T5.5.
T5.5 System Interfaces & service integration (M7-M34) (Lead. ENG, part.: CERTH, UPM). This task deals with setting up the interfaces needed to integrate the component provided in other WPs into the REBUILD platform and to deliver it ready for the piloting phase. This will allow to both the partners involved in the pilots and the external stakeholders to take advantage of the features offered by REBUILD. Ultimately this task will take into account the integration aspect of the REBUILD platform to prepare the work for the pilots.
Leading partners:
  • ENGINEERING - INGEGNERIA INFORMATICA SPA
Other partners involved:
  • International Telematic University UNINETTUNO
  • Centre For Research and Technology Hellas (CERTH)
  • Universidad Politecnica de Madrid (UPM)
  • CIDAS Cooperativa Sociale
  • OMNES - Syllogos Ethelonton Kilkis
  • MDAT- Metropolitan Development Agency of Thessaloniki
Work Package 6 – Deployment, piloting and user validation Objectives
The main objective of this WP will be to define, organize and perform test sessions with selected users during the development of the REBUILD toolbox. This WP also involves designing the Pilot foreseen in the Phase 3 of the Project Implementation Methodology to obtain relevant feedbacks for continuous improvement of the developed solution.
While technical validation will be done in WP5, WP6 will focus on usability, accessibility, user acceptance, cognitive breakpoints, in all interaction/communication modules. Testing will involve small subset of the beneficiaries (immigrants/refugees, and local public services providers), from the three pilot countries (Italy, Spain, Greece). A minimum of three testing involving a minimum of 30 users from both user groups will be done before the final delivery of the first completed version of the REBUILD system. The Pilot will therefore involve at least 100 users from the 3 countries and both target groups. The results of the pilot will help in validating the application as a whole and specifically establish the user acceptable of the Digital Companion as “interaction/communication enabler”. This step will also provide valuable feedbacks for final refinement and optimization of REBUILD toolbox.
Description of work:
Task 6.1 – Test planning and methodology definition (M11-M16) [Lead: UNESCO Participants: UNINETT, ENG, CERTH, UPM, UAB, CIDAS, OMNES, MDAT]. Based on the Co-creation workshops, this task willestablish the composition of the small test groups and demography of the participants. This step will positively contribute to the stakeholders’ confidence on the project. This task will mainly consist of drafting user-centered design for the tests and methodology, and on setting up data collection mechanism. Inputs received from other WPs will ascertain that the crosscultural aspects and Ethical / Legal issues are considered in the design of the tests. The task will ensure selection of a minimum of 30 users representing services, regions and user groups relevant for the REBUILD toolbox.
Task 6.2 – Testing and results gathering (M17 – M26) [Lead: UNESCO Participants: UNINETT, ENG, CERTH, UPM, UAB, CIDAS, OMNES, MDAT]. This task will prepare a test-schedule according to development/pre-release progression in the technological work packages. User groups will be involved in testing relevant modules and components when available ensuring immediate feedbacks for interaction flow redefinition and bug tracking/fixing if needed. At least 3 test cycles will be performed, focusing on different modules/components. Data will be collected and elaborated according to the methodology defined in Task 6.1.
Task 6.3 – Pilot planning (M22 – M26) [Lead: UNESCO Participants: UNINETT, ENG, CERTH, UPM, UAB, CIDAS, OMNES, MDAT]. The result of this task will be a comprehensive pilot plan, ensuring that components, features and perceptions are tested in cycles to support a high quality outcome. A detailed pilot execution and evaluation plan will be designed to guide the pilot task. Guidelines will be produced to support all partners in the execution and evaluation of the pilots following a common, shared framework.
Task 6.4 – Pilot execution and validation (M27 – M34) [Lead: UNESCO Participants: UNINETT, ENG, CERTH, UPM, UAB, CIDAS, OMNES, MDAT]. This task will ensure the operational side of pilot management, user selection and community management. This task will also ensure the actual pilot rollout in the 3 countries and involve a minimum of 100 users, which will include selected service providers among project partners and migrants/refugees . The objective of this task will also be to gather qualified information and feedbacks to validate the application: all modules of the Digital Companion will be assessed for their accessibility, improved usability and user acceptance from both user groups. The collected feedback will be compiled as executive summaries with clear impact and results to obtain a user-validation of the tool box.
Leading partners:
  • UNESCO - United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
Other partners involved:
  • International Telematic University UNINETTUNO
  • ENGINEERING - INGEGNERIA INFORMATICA SPA
  • Centre For Research and Technology Hellas (CERTH)
  • Universidad Politecnica de Madrid (UPM)
  • Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona (UAB)
  • CIDAS Cooperativa Sociale
  • OMNES - Syllogos Ethelonton Kilkis
  • MDAT- Metropolitan Development Agency of Thessaloniki
Work Package 7 – Fundamental rights, Ethical impacts and Cross culturality Objectives
The main objectives of this WP are two fold: related to the fundamental rights and ethical impact, and related to cross culturality.
Regarding the fundamental rights and ethical impacts: i) The clarification of data flows within the consortium, the adoption of various legal, ethical and security protocols, the development of forms and continuous legal and ethical advice to consortium partners. ii) The identification of risks and impacts likely to affect relevant societal concerns caused by the implementation of the ICT-based solutions and their assessment in order to ensure that potentially negative effects are predicted. iii) The development and delivery of a moral judgement and ethics control based on the processing of data from migrant for the purposes of this project. Related to cross culturality analysis of cross culturality in the technology impact in context of data gathered in T1.4.The objective of this WP is to analyse data gathered in WP1, and complement WP4 and pave the way to WP 6 to secure robust communication and interaction. This WP will take care of the many cultural factors, which may impact in the way end users perceive themselves, and this has a direct implication to data produced and interaction
Description of work:
Task 7.1: Ethical Impact Assessment (M01-M12) [Leader: VUB, Contributors: UAB]: The work can be divided into two subtasks
Task 7.1.1: REBUILD Impact Assessment Method: Impact assessment follows a proactive approach contributing to informed decision-making by considering the potential consequences of the envisaged operation before its occurrence. The task will focus on the method of performing an impact assessment in REBUILD, in order to generate information useful for decision-makers in the consortium and assisting them in taking informed decisions regarding the development and deployment of the REBUILD ICT toolbox. This task will establish the REBUILD Impact Assessment method, focusing on a proposed list of steps to be taken, the designation of the Impact Assessment team, timeline, resources, etc. This task will contribute to deliverable D7.2.
Task 7.1.2: ARTES Impact Assessment: This task will address the relevant societal concerns (i.e. security, right to the protection of personal data, right to privacy, ethics and societal acceptance) affected by REBUILD by identifying and assessing the impacts and risks on the ARTES requirements. The impact assessment will be built on the method developed in T7.1. Analyses of possible scenarios and recommendations for the consortium partners will be formulated in order to foster the development of the REBUILD technology by ensuring compliance with legal provisions, furthermore treating (i.e. minimising) the possibly negative effects of the system on the various concerns. The impact assessment will be deliberative and inclusive, i.e. the voice of the public will be actively sought and duly taken into consideration, in order to ensure that not only expert but also layperson knowledge are utilised in the process. This task will contribute to deliverable D7.3.
Task 7.2: ARTES guideline for ICT solutions in REBUILD (M12-M 24) [Leader: VUB, Contributors: UAB]. This task aims to develop and deliver an guideline following the ARTES framework for of all the technological solutions within the REBUILD Project. The guideline will take into account the outcomes of T7.1.1 and T7.1.2. This task will contribute to deliverable D7.4.
Task 7.3: Continuous legal/ethical monitoring and review (M24-M36) [Leader: VUB, Contributors: UAB). The aim of this task is to monitor the impacts of REBUILD on the ARTES requirements identified in T7.1, as the ICT solutions are integrated, tested and evaluated. This will ensure that any new aspect or update of the REBUILD ICT solutions or their potential application is tested against the relevant societal concerns, described in T7.1. The monitoring will be performed by VUB, who will have the right to access any information arising from the work of the project, to attend any meeting of the consortium and to interfere should it consider the work of the consortium incompatible with REBUILD. This task will logically follow T7.2. This will ensure that the outcomes of the impact assessment are implemented by all partners, thus compliant with the relevant laws.
Task 7.4: Cross-cultural issues in technology (M3-M26) [Lead: UAB, partic: UNINETT, ENG]. Generate from demands and needs gathered from T1.2 short media content, (audio and visual information), to share online in multiple languages, spoken by already integrated migrants of each ethnicity/community/origin as a tool to help people learn their new society, and guide their way to interact with the public authorities and public or private services. The task will provide a structure, a scenario and the tools to produce short audio/visual information chunks from ubiquitous equipment such as mobile
Leading partners:
  • Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB)
Other partners involved:
  • International Telematic University UNINETTUNO
  • ENGINEERING - INGEGNERIA INFORMATICA SPA
  • Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona (UAB)
Work Package 8 – Dissemination and Communication Objectives
This work package includes the dissemination activities associated with the REBUILD project, including the creation of a project website and a number of awareness-raising communication strategies. The goal is to achieve the broadest possible impact, giving an high visibility of the REBUILD outcomes. Hereafter a first planning and description of dissemination goals and channels, target groups and partner’s approach is included as a draft of the goals of the Consortium as a whole.
The objectives of WP8 are to ensure that: news and services providers and users have a clear conception of the service provision; there is general on-going awareness of the project amongst those (public administration, NGO dealing with immigrants and refugees and society) who could exploit its results; the project engages directly with relevant communities and acts on feedback from them to increase the relevance and effectiveness of the provided services to the relevant stakeholders such as Public Administration, Refugees and immigrant and civil society. The goal is to attract a critical to the REBUILD technologies/techniques so that the project can have an actual impact and continues to have it after it is completed.
Description of work
The most significant activities for the dissemination and communication activities are presented below.
Task 8.1 – Dissemination Activities (M1-M36 – Lead MDAT, Partic. All). A Dissemination Plan will be developed, providing a concrete roadmap for the consortium to reach the objectives of the work package. The Plan will address the various recipients of dissemination activities: Public Administration NGOs dealing with refugees and immigrants. Governmental institutions and organisations. The immigrants and refugees. Civil society. The Plan will identify suitable dissemination opportunities and specify a strategy to make best use of potential dissemination activities and the appropriately target the different audiences. The activities will be distributed across all consortium members to be executed, and will combine the targeted stakeholders and wide-ranging dissemination strategies (via international conferences, mailing lists and articles in media outlets). Main communication channels will be:
a) Project Website. A dedicated project website will be established early in the project lifecycle (Month 3) to provide wide dissemination of REBUILD articles and results, as well as general information about the project. MDAT will develop and host the project website, which will be located at its own specific domain (e.g. www.rebuild.eu or similar). All content sections will be open to the public: project and consortium information, databases, articles, news and events, educational materials, a library to download all public REBUILD deliverables and project’s documentation (articles, relevant links, etc.). The plan will ensure all partners in the project provide relevant website content, including regular contributions, e.g. articles, blog posts; and that the content available on the website is kept up to date.
b) Social Media. The REBUILD project will set up social media accounts in order to disseminate the project results but also to listen to the feedback from producers and users. At least Twitter and Facebook will be included, but additional platforms will be considered. Other initiatives centered on services to support the integration of refugees and immigrants will be monitored and their updates shared with the REBUILD followers.
c) Media outlets. A number of journalistic articles will be produced by REBUILD as part of the use cases described in section 1. They will be used to address some of the most relevant scenarios in this particular areas, providing context on e.g. how and why they were created or how they take advantage of pre-existing prejudices. These articles will leverage the tools developed by REBUILD, and will be targeted at a general audience. In order to achieve a wide distribution, they’ll be translated into several European languages, and will be offered to the media outlets who have signed Letters of Support for REBUILD.
d) Offline. As part of the Dissemination Plan, the REBUILD consortium will identify relevant events at which the results of the project should be presented (via e.g. technical papers, business presentations, discussion panels), and the organisation of events to engage the community around the project (e.g. workshops, public presentations and focus groups).
Task 8.2 – REBUILD community building (M3-M36 – MDAT, Partic. All). The way data, documents, articles, materials and databases are managed and made available to others is an important aspect of the project’s impact. Open standards and open licenses will be used to distribute the publicly available results, the tools’ source code and the gathered data sets. Furthermore, the project documentation will contain textual and graphical description like the REBUILD methodology and the technology choices, frameworks, use cases and especially specification of data sources and datasets. Through regular reports to the European Commission, the work progress will be made public. Beyond individual publications, REBUILD will organize platform promotion and engagement workshop and focus groups. This will allow significant interaction with other stakeholders and researchers from outside the project and increase the visibility of the project and its reach. This task contributes to deliverable: D8.3 REBUILD will also leverage existing networks and communities whenever possible, in order to quickly reach relevant stakeholders and potential users. Additionally, REBUILD will reach out to organisers and participants of international public challenges in the fields of PA services for the immigrant and refugees integration.
Leading partners:
  • MDAT- Metropolitan Development Agency of Thessaloniki
Other partners involved:
  • International Telematic University UNINETTUNO
  • ENGINEERING - INGEGNERIA INFORMATICA SPA
  • Centre For Research and Technology Hellas (CERTH)
  • Universidad Politecnica de Madrid (UPM)
  • Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona (UAB)
  • DEN Institute asbl
  • CIDAS Cooperativa Sociale
  • OMNES - Syllogos Ethelonton Kilkis
  • Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB)
  • UNESCO - United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
Work Package 9 – Socio-economic impact assessment and exploitation Objectives
The goals in this work package are the following:
● Develop an impact assessment methodology by adapting already existing and successfully tested approached to REBUILD specificities;
● Engage project partners and project beneficiaries in the methodology development in order to assure that all expected impacts will be mapped and described/measure as much as possible in the project time-life;
Constantly monitoring project activities to refine the methodology with proper indicators and variables;
● Assess projects impacts at month 15 to give input to the partners to adapt project activities and provide a final impact assessment at the end of the project;
● Use the results of monitoring and impact assessment activities as input for supporting the dissemination and exploitation activities of the project;
Description of work:
Task 9.1 - REBUILD impact assessment methodology development (M1-M6 lead DEN, partic: ENG, UAB, VUB). DEN will develop a socio-economic impact assessment methodology specifically designed for REBUILD specificities. It will rely on existing and tested methodologies that have been successfully developed, adapted and tested by DEN in previous ICT and Social Innovation European projects (SEQUOIA, MIDAS, MARKOS, IA4SI, SecInCoRe) and validated in public and private sector. The methodology will consider social, economic and political impacts related to the provision and delivery of a set of ICT tools for the management and integration strategies for migrants, refugees and local authorities. The methodology will also integrate analysis performed in WP 7 to include the socio-cultural and ethical factors emerged as crucial for the development of the technology as indicators and variables to map the social and technological impact of REBUILD. The impact assessment will be run looking at a double perspective. From one hand, it will quantify the impact received by public administrations and local authorities from the adoption of ICT solutions on the current procedures for migrants and refugees integration and management. On the other hand, it will be mapped the impact of the REBUILD activities on migrants and refugees involved to quantify and analyse how the solutions and activities developed by the project empower users’ conditions during the project development and afterwards. In particular, it will be possible to map: the new skills acquired by migrants and refugees using REBUILD services, the improvement in the perception of inclusion, and also the cost saving and return of investment (ROI) for the local authorities engaged in the project pilots. The methodology will be a quali-quantitative, multi-stakeholders and multidimensional one, making use of Cost-Benefit analysis, multi-criteria analysis and, data allowing, SROI (social return on investment). The impact assessment approach will use the impact value chain approach analysing project inputs, activities, outputs, outcomes and impacts. The methodology will support the identification of the project’s value proposition, its expected impacts and eventual obstacles to reach full achievement, and will take into consideration the background situation of the accessibility service sectors on one hand and of the migrant communities engaged. In order to respect the peculiarity of each of the pilots, the methodology will be made modular so to be adaptable to different settings. Project partners, in particular NGOs and associations, will be actively involved in the methodology development as field experts. A dedicated workshop early in the project will support the partners involved in this activity, and in understanding the methodology development process and in providing the needed information/data.
Task 9.2 REBUILD state of the art of the field (M6-M9 lead: DEN, partic.: UNINETT, ENG, UAB, CAM, OMNES, VUB, MDAT). This task will focus on the first step of impact assessment, which consists in the development of a complete and clear picture of the situation without REBUILD outputs, also called zero scenario or “do nothing scenario”. In particular, the methodology development will start with the definition of a broad state of the art, using the data available from the consortium first and considering already existing studies and data bases. This includes: a full mapping of the stakeholders potentially touched by REBUILD activities, their expectations and needs, starting from the situation “without REBUILD”, also called the zero (baseline) scenario. This baseline scenario is essential in order to understand and quantify the “difference” produced by project outputs, i.e., its impacts. The zero scenario will be used as counterfactual scenario for comparing the impact of REBUILD’ activities and output (including the digital companion for migrants) with the situation with them at different stages of project development.
Task 9.3 Running the impact assessment (M9-M36, lead DEN, partic.: UNINETT, ENG, UAB, CIDAS, OMNES, VUB, MDAT). The impact assessment will be performed according to each pilot and then at project level considering all the general outputs produced by the project. This will be done using the zero scenario developed in the first stage of the project as point of reference and if necessary, by identifying external mean of comparisons. In relation the work performed in WP7, also a socio-anthropological analysis will be performed with the aim of determining the sociocultural factors in play in the development of the technology. The assessment will be performed at the end of the project (M30). However, output and activities performed will be monitored during the project development in order to provide a mid-term assessment to the partners to adjust their actions (M18). The mid-term round has the main goal of providing useful inputs to the consortium in order to fine tune the activities for maximising the project impacts. The final impact assessment will consider impacts on a larger scale and will take in consideration the upscaling potential of the project. Both the preliminary and the final assessment will provide input to the dissemination activities by highlighting the project added value, its transformative capability and the most interesting results.
Task 9.4 Exploitation and sustainability strategy (M26-M36, lead DEN, partic.: UNINETT, ENG, CERTH, UPM, UAB, CIDAS, OMNES, MDAT). In order to sustain project results in a long run, REBUILD will explore its sustainability plan foreseeing a way of supporting its activities after the founding period. A deliverable will be realized detailing the strategy and actions for the three years after the project ends with the objective of ensuring continued activities. Also individual exploitation plans from all partners involved will be provide in addition to an extensive exploitation strategy that will also investigate public private partnership opportunities and public tenders to exploit project’s outcomes.
Leading partners:
  • DEN Institute asbl
Other partners involved:
  • International Telematic University UNINETTUNO
  • ENGINEERING - INGEGNERIA INFORMATICA SPA
  • Centre For Research and Technology Hellas (CERTH)
  • Universidad Politecnica de Madrid (UPM)
  • Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona (UAB)
  • CIDAS Cooperativa Sociale
  • OMNES - Syllogos Ethelonton Kilkis
  • Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB)
  • MDAT- Metropolitan Development Agency of Thessaloniki
Work Package 10 – Management Objectives
The main objectives of this work package are:
• To provide overall project management and coordination;
• To ensure the quality management and assurance;
• To maintain the information flow between partners;
• To provide administrative and financial control according to the work plan
Description of work:
T10.1 Project management (M1-M36) (Lead UNINETT). This task deals with the organisation of the project launch, and includes the following activities: establish procedures; project management methods and tools (IP Management organisation and processes, quality plan, conflict resolution, data management plan); prepare and organise REBUILD kick-off meeting. Coordination and controlling of each partner’s results in order to allow for effective and efficient internal information delivery (e.g. deliverables). Maintain and monitor the work plan, monitor project progress, identification and trouble shooting of technical and organisational problems, technical coordination meetings.
T10.2 Quality assurance (M1-M36) (Lead. UNINETT, partic.: ENG). This task deals with the plan and management of the quality, establishment and benchmarking of project milestones. Moreover, it coordinates timely production of deliverables, organisation of reviews, control of quality and consistency against technical and contractual aspects.
T10.3 Administrative and Financial coordination (M1-M36) (Lead. UNINETT, partic.: ENG). This task focuses on the following activities: To establish and maintain financial records, coordinate cost statements submission by all project partners, follow-up of EC payments, distribute partner shares according to consortium agreement agreed rules; To maintain contractual documents (Consortium Agreement); To coordinate internal and contractual periodic reporting; To organise and manage audits requested by the Commission. Of particular importance is the mandatory mid-term and end-of-term review, and technical or financial audits upon request by the Commission; To organise periodic project meetings and committees for project progress review, decision-making and conflict resolution.
Leading partners:
  • International Telematic University UNINETTUNO
Other partners involved:
  • ENGINEERING - INGEGNERIA INFORMATICA SPA

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