General conditions

1. Admissibility conditions: described in Annex A and Annex E of the Horizon Europe Work Programme General Annexes

Proposal page limits and layout: described in Part B of the Application Form available in the Submission System

2. Eligible countries: described in Annex B of the Work Programme General Annexes

A number of non-EU/non-Associated Countries that are not automatically eligible for funding have made specific provisions for making funding available for their participants in Horizon Europe projects. See the information in the Horizon Europe Programme Guide.

3. Other eligibility conditions: described in Annex B of the Work Programme General Annexes

4. Financial and operational capacity and exclusion: described in Annex C of the Work Programme General Annexes

5. Evaluation and award:

• Award criteria, scoring and thresholds are described in Annex D of the Work Programme General Annexes

• Submission and evaluation processes are described in Annex F of the Work Programme General Annexes and the Online Manual

• Indicative timeline for evaluation and grant agreement: described in Annex F of the Work Programme General Annexes

6. Legal and financial set-up of the grants: described in Annex G of the Work Programme General Annexes

Eligible costs will take the form of a lump sum as defined in the Decision of 7 July 2021 authorising the use of lump sum contributions under the Horizon Europe Programme – the Framework Programme for Research and Innovation (2021-2027) – and in actions under the Research and Training Programme of the European Atomic Energy Community (2021-2025). [[This decision is available on the Funding and Tenders Portal, in the reference documents section for Horizon Europe, under ‘Simplified costs decisions’ or through this link: https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/docs/2021-2027/horizon/guidance/ls-decision_he_en.pdf]].

Beneficiaries will be subject to the following additional access rights: Each beneficiary must grant royalty-free access to its results (intellectual property rights), which are needed for further developing, implementing and monitoring the European Commission’s Destination Earth initiative, to the entities that are signatories of the Contribution Agreements for implementing the initiative (European Space Agency (ESA), European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) and European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT)). Such access rights are limited to non-commercial and non-competitive use.

Specific conditions

7. Specific conditions: described in the [specific topic of the Work Programme]

Documents

Call documents:

Standard application form — call-specific application form is available in the Submission System

Standard application form (HE RIA, IA)

Standard evaluation form — will be used with the necessary adaptations

Standard evaluation form (HE RIA, IA)

MGA

Lump Sum MGA v1.0

RAO decision authorising the use of lump sum funding

Explanatory slides for applicants on the specificities of lump sum funding

Detailed Budget Table (HE LS) for estimation of Lump Sum Funding

Additional documents:

HE Main Work Programme 2023–2024 – 1. General Introduction

HE Main Work Programme 2023–2024 – 3. Research Infrastructures

HE Main Work Programme 2023–2024 – 13. General Annexes

HE Programme Guide

HE Framework Programme and Rules for Participation Regulation 2021/695

HE Specific Programme Decision 2021/764

EU Financial Regulation

Rules for Legal Entity Validation, LEAR Appointment and Financial Capacity Assessment

EU Grants AGA — Annotated Model Grant Agreement

Funding & Tenders Portal Online Manual

Funding & Tenders Portal Terms and Conditions

Funding & Tenders Portal Privacy Statement

Project results are expected to contribute to all the following expected outcomes:

• Availability of advanced modelling and prediction capabilities aimed at industrial, scientific or policy end users on fundamental, complex and socio-economically relevant real-life phenomena, including consideration of the possibility to replace, where appropriate, the need for physical experiments and interventions by using digital twins.
• Enhanced competitiveness and improved effectiveness of European RIs;
• Better integration of RIs into local, regional and global innovation and decision support systems.

The aim of this topic is to deliver digital twin solutions which advance the state-of-art of European RIs and show transformative potential in RI operations. The solutions should pave way for new ways to conduct experiments by the RIs through AR/VR (augmented reality/virtual reality) empowered digital twins. Mixed reality (XR) technologies can also be considered. The focus is on newer application areas, such as healthcare, safety and security, to understand complex real-world systems, particularly in application areas constrained by specific physical limitations (like radiation, pressure or temperature). The related developments, which underpin the provision of improved and advanced services, should lead RIs to support new areas of research and/or a wider community of users, including clearly identified and involved industrial, scientific or policy end users and enhance the potential of the RIs in addressing EU policy objectives and socio-economic challenges.

Proposals should address all of the following aspects:

• development of digital twin solutions for RIs that take advantage of AR/VR technologies for interactive visualisation and bring together the available relevant data resources in the specific topical area;
• include technology validation and prototyping activities to cope with a large and representative application area to test the relevance of the solutions with the needs of relevant industrial, scientific or policy end users;
• prepare for take-up of the developed solutions by clearly identified and involved industrial, scientific or policy end users, and include relevant training for the operation and use of these new solutions.

Consortia should include world-class RIs, like ESFRI infrastructures, European Research Infrastructures Consortia (ERICs) and/or other world-class RIs of European interest. Relevant technological partners from the industry and SMEs should be involved to the activities and to promote innovation and knowledge sharing through co-development of new technical solutions for RIs.

Clearly identified industrial, scientific and/or policy end users should be involved through an iterative development process. Clearly defined use cases should demonstrate the potential of these new solutions within the involved communities and beyond. If appropriate, links to the Destination Earth (DestinE) initiative[1] could be established, either by contributing directly to future application areas of DestinE or by making use of DestinE model/data resources. In this topic the integration of the gender dimension (sex and gender analysis) in research and innovation content is not a mandatory requirement.

Activities are expected to achieve TRL 6 or higher by the end of the project – see General Annex B.

[1]https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/destination-earth