European Union research in support of environment and health: Building scientific evidence base for policy

How to Enhance the Role of Science in European Union Policy Making and Implementation: The Case of Agricultural Impacts on Drinking Water Quality

“…The European Union made a substantial investment in research and innovation in the past decades through its Framework Programmes for Research and Technological Development, including the current program, Horizon 2020 (2014-2020), and its subsequent program, Horizon Europe (2021-2027), in order to respond to and provide substantial scientific evidence for the numerous policies at the union level [48]. At the same time, EC DGs opened calls for tenders (service contracts) with a particular focus on underpinning policy implementation, monitoring, and evaluation.…”

“…Service contracts are (a) relevant, as they address policy makers' key questions (very specific); (b) credible, as they are scientifically sound and authoritative (at least good enough); (c) legitimate, as they are developed through processes that can be trusted (competent consortium); and (d) timely, as they deliver reports on time to inform the decision-making process (timeliness is a key advantage compared to research and innovation action (RIA) projects). Improvements are observed as exploitation and dissemination activities are under contractual grant agreement obligation for researchers participating in EU projects and are evident in service contracts [48].…”

“…Science-policy dialogues in EU projects or service contracts have many forms [9,48,49]: (1) Policy makers are invited to meetings (e.g., EIP focus groups); (2) conferences or events are organized by projects or the EC; (3) project participants are members of EU or national scientific advisory committees; (4) ministries or other national regulatory bodies or policy makers are directly involved as beneficiaries in projects; (5) projects seek input from regulatory stakeholders through surveys and inform them regularly through policy briefs; (6) representatives from policy making bodies participate in (scientific) advisory boards of projects; (7) projects involve professional scientific societies, stakeholder associations or civil society organizations; (8) the EC assists projects to ensure and facilitate the uptake of scientific results into policies by providing responses to members of the European Parliament, who often enquire about outcomes of projects; and (9) open access publications and data are available so that stakeholders, including policy makers, can get the maximum benefit from EU-funded projects and scientific research.…”

Applying big data in water treatment industry: A new era of advance

“…BD and modeling can also help water utilities and land use planners collaborate to assess what amount of water will be needed and are available for different city growth scenarios (Tracy, 2016;Irvine et al, 2016;Karjalainen et al, 2017).…”

Blueprint for the Development and Sustainability of National Nanosafety Centers

“…Examining these risks and benefit perceptions utilized in the formation of attitudes and opinions about nanotechnology can be useful for both industry and policy makers involved in its development, implementation, and regulation [10]. To address these concerns, considerable effort has already been undertaken by the OECD Working Party on Manufactured Nanomaterials (WPMN) as well as the EU Framework Programmes FP6, FP7, and H2020 to answer basic scientific, technical, and social questions [11][12][13]. Nevertheless, knowledge is growing rapidly and effective use of this knowledge for risk management is lagging behind [11].…”