Social Rights, Culture, Education and Cycles of Life

Today, the Saló de Cent hosted the award ceremony for the 2021 call for grants for scientific research projects for urban challenges. Barcelona City Council and "la Caixa" Foundation awarded the grants to the seven projects selected, six of which will be 100% funded, while the seventh will receive a contribution that will allow it to cover 73% of the budget. The total amount of the subsidies for this call is 1 million euros and is part of the extraordinary aid programme with a two-year duration and a total budget allocation of 2 million euros, of which 1.2 million euros are provided by the City Council and another 800,000 euros by "la Caixa" Foundation. A new call is planned for 2022 with the remaining million euros.

This extraordinary call for grants for scientific research projects is the result of a collaboration agreement between “la Caixa” Foundation and Barcelona City Council. The initiative is part of the Barcelona Science Plan 2020-2023 and is in line with several of the objectives on which both institutions agree. One of these objectives is precisely to consolidate the line of research grants to address the most urgent urban challenges. In the 2021 call, a total of 62 proposals were submitted, but not all of them met the requirements set out in the terms and conditions, so 57 of the submitted proposals were accepted.

The call was addressed to proposals for projects based on research into urban challenges that could be encompassed in one of the following themes: (1) ageing and quality of life, (2) mobility and environmental respect and protection, and (3) the sustainable city: new technologies applied to housing, space and public services.

Winning projects

Of the seven proposals that received the highest score and were awarded grants, two are in the first theme, three in the second and the remaining two proposals in the third theme.

Specifically, the winning proposals for the 2021 grants are the following:

WUICOM-BCN: Barcelona Fire Resilient Interface Communities

Proposal to carry out a holistic analysis of fire risk in Barcelona’s wildland urban interface, focusing on social, ecosystem and infrastructural vulnerabilities. It also aims to develop a sustainable action plan for the city to increase post-fire resilience in particularly vulnerable areas of Barcelona.

• Lead entity: Polytechnic University of Catalonia – BarcelonaTech (UPC).
• In collaboration with: Open University of Catalonia Foundation (UOC) and Pau Costa Foundation.

LIKE-BCN: social, accessible and walkable Barcelona

Addresses the analysis of public space to detect gaps by exploring GIS information on walkable space and real data on pedestrian dynamics. LIKE-BCN is presented as an accurate and data-driven measurement tool to guide urban transformation processes towards the achievement of Barcelona’s challenges for 2024 and beyond.

• Lead organisation: Open University of Catalonia Foundation (UOC).
• In collaboration with: University of Barcelona (UB) and TC Group Solutions.

GRANBCN: social isolation and loneliness among the elderly in Barcelona

This project aims to analyse the impact of ageing, urban change and their interaction in the different neighbourhoods of the city. It also focuses on examining social intervention processes to provide emotional support to older people who feel lonely.

• Lead entity: Centre for Demographic Studies (CED).
• In collaboration with: Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) and Amics de la Gent Gran.

Verd de proximitat BCN

The aim of the project is to design and implement a plan for monitoring and evaluating the functioning and impacts of green roofs in the city of Barcelona, which is inclusive and participatory, economically viable and sustainable over time.

• Lead entity: University of Lleida (UdL).
• In collaboration with: Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC), Innovation Technologies for Sustainability (IT4S), Eixverd and Teb Verd.

VISITMOB: mobility of visitors to the city of Barcelona after COVID-19. Analysis and guidelines for the promotion of socially and environmentally sustainable mobility.

The project will study the mobility of the tourists’ population in Barcelona and its impact on the quality of life of the resident population, with the aim of improving mobility management in the city after COVID-19. It aims to provide useful evidence for designing strategies and instruments to promote more socially and environmentally sustainable mobility in a context with new challenges arising from the pandemic.

• Lead institution: Rovira i Virgili University (URV).
• In collaboration with: Open University of Catalonia Foundation (UOC), Technology Centre of Catalonia (Eurecat), Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), UIC Barcelona and Ostelea Tourism Management School.

OptimalSharing: optimising car sharing and shared mobility in smart and sustainable cities

Using the Open Data BCN initiative, provide efficient solutions to problems by designing a new family of intelligent algorithms capable of rapidly processing large amounts of data to support real-time decision making.

• Lead organisation: Open University of Catalonia Foundation (UOC).
• In collaboration with: Polytechnic University of Catalonia BarcelonaTech (UPC), Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV) and Spindox Digital Soul.

REV-TER: reviving on rooftops

Improvement and reuse of the rooftops of Ciutat Vella from the perspective of active and healthy ageing, through socio-demographic diagnosis, analysis of the existing rooftops in the district and the search for low-cost, removable and recyclable solutions. It proposes to draw up a catalogue of microprojects and the prototyping of integral solutions as proposals for application in pilot cases that can be reproduced in other parts of the city and the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona.

• Leading entity: Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC).
• In collaboration with: University of Barcelona (UB) and Associació Oasiurbà.

Previous call for proposals

The 2021 and 2022 calls for proposals are a continuation of an initiative that began in 2019, with a first call for grants for scientific research projects awarded in 2020 with a budget of €1 million. During the presentation of the proposals of this new edition, the results of the 7 research projects that have been funded with grants from the 2019 call were also presented.