Author: JRC – European Commission – HEADLINES

Today, the European Parliament budgetary committee gave the green light for the construction of two new buildings at the JRC’s Ispra site. The EP’s positive opinion, following that of the Council, effectively clears the way towards the signature of the construction contract in the coming weeks, allowing works to start shortly afterwards.

This project is probably the largest infrastructure effort at Ispra ever since the construction of the Ispra-1 and ESSOR reactors some 50 years ago. The new buildings should accommodate, from 2012 on, about 400 staff of the Institutes for Environment and Sustainability (IES) and for Health and Consumer Protection (IHCP). They will be erected simultaneously in the heart of the so-called future "science zone", and will provide a net surface area of 10,000 square metres for offices, laboratories and meeting space.

Measurements of Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) were carried out by the JRC’s Institute for Environment and Sustainability (IES) within the framework of the environmental assessment of European waste and sustainable use of resources. Emission factors were provided for POPs’ from three specific activities in developing countries, where no data had previously been available: brick production, open cooking with biomass and the use of simple stoves. A study on the impact of brick production on nearby soil quality was also included. Final reporting will be made through EU reports, which will be published on the webpage of the Stockholm Convention Secretariat.

More than 4000 physical structures were destroyed or damaged in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, by the magnitude 7 earthquake that struck the country on 12 January 2010. About 2000 residential buildings have partially or totally collapsed and the same number of buildings shows severe damage. A number of critical infrastructures such as government buildings, educational structures and hospitals have collapsed or are severely damaged. These are the preliminary findings of a rapid damage assessment carried out by the JRC based on the analysis of very high resolution satellite imagery acquired before and after the disaster.

>> For additional information and damage assessment maps, see the press pack

The January edition of the JRC Newsletter has been published and can be downloaded here. It features an editorial from Killian Halpin, Chairman of the JRC Board of Governors, on the JRC’s efforts to define a new corporate strategy.

This month’s issue also contains news on potential economic impacts of global warming, the positive effects of EU energy efficiency measures, chemicals in ground water, the 2009 regional innovation scoreboard and much more.

The European Commission has decided a significant reorganisation of the JRC’s horizontal services. Taking effect on 1 January, the reorganisation aims to streamline these services and in doing so, making them more efficient. A clearer separation of centralised and decentralised tasks, in particular in the areas of human resource management and finance, is for example aiming at more efficient and timely recruitment of specialized staff.

Other changes include the creation of a new Unit "Knowledge Management and Evaluation" in the Programmes and Stakeholder Relations Directorate, and the merging of the two former "Work Programme" Units ‘EC’ and ‘Euratom’) into a single one. The detailed organisational chart is available on the JRC website.

Two new pan-European soil maps have been released to the general public through the European Soil Data Centre: the Saline and sodic soil map of Europe and the Soil compaction map of Europe.

The first map shows the area distribution of naturally saline or sodic soils and potentially salt affected areas within the European Union. Salinisation is the accumulation of soluble salts of sodium, magnesium and calcium in soil to the extent that soil fertility is severely reduced. The soil compaction map of Europe shows the natural susceptibility of agricultural soils to compaction when the weight of livestock or heavy machinery compresses the soil, causing it to lose pore space. Affected soils become less able to absorb rainfall, thus increasing runoff and erosion. Plants have difficulty growing in compacted soil because the mineral grains are pressed together, leaving little space for air and water, which are essential for root growth.

The European Commission today presented the results of the first-ever survey on creativity and innovation in schools. The results show that 94% of European teachers believe creativity is a fundamental competence to be developed at school, and 88% are convinced that everyone can be creative. In order to achieve that, Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are considered very important among teachers (80%): computers, educational software, videos, online collaborative tools, virtual learning environments, interactive whiteboards, and free online material and courses. These results were presented at the Closing Conference of the European Year of Creativity and Innovation in Stockholm, 16 – 17 December.

The JRC has developed a high resolution digital view of man-made green house gas (GHG) emissions for any 10 km x 10 km area in the world. Using JRC’s work on emissions and Google Earth™, this new tool allows the visualisation of the levels of emissions locally from 1970 to 2005 and the identification of the main sources.

Scientists from the JRC Institute for Environment and Sustainability (IES) have made it possible to visualise the distribution of GHG emissions all over the world at local level through an add-on layer to Google Earth™. Their grid size is a tenth of a geographical degree of latitude by the same extension in longitude, or simplified, a square about 10 km x 10 km, roughly the size of central Paris. Data used in the visualisation come from JRC and the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency’s (PBL) Emission Database for Global Research (EDGAR), and its dataset released in May this year (EDGAR v4.0).

The level of innovation in regions varies considerably across almost all EU countries. This is one of the main findings of the 2009 Regional Innovation Scoreboard (RIS), published today by the JRC’s Institute for the Protection and Security of the Citizen (IPSC), together with the Commission’s Directorate-General for Enterprise and Industry and the Maastricht University (MERIT).

The 2009 RIS, based on the European Innovation Scoreboard (EIS) approach and methodology, assesses innovation performances across 201 regions in the EU and Norway. Spain, Italy and the Czech Republic are the most heterogeneous countries, where innovation performance varies from low to medium-high. While on average the pattern of innovation is quite stable between year 2004 and 2006, several regions, in particular in Spain and France, have improved their innovation performance. The report also shows that the most innovative regions are typically in the most innovative countries, although some regions outperform their country level.

After the recent release of the final report of the PESETA project on the impact of climate change in Europe, the JRC’s Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS) is launching a series of monographic reports with more information on each of the sector specific studies of the project. The first such report, "Impacts of climate change in agriculture in Europe" has been published today. If the climate expected in the 2080s occurred today, European agriculture could face an annual decrease of up to 10% in crop yields, which would translate into yearly additional GDP losses of 0.32%.

Sensitivity analysis is more and more frequently adopted by scientists to understand numerical models that are employed to simulate and predict natural and social-economic phenomena. Sensitivity analysis is the study of how the variation in the output of a model can be apportioned, qualitatively or quantitatively, to different sources of variation.

Scientists at the JRC’s Institute for the Protection and Security of the Citizen (IPSC) have been working on developing a new paradigm for sensitivity analysis, called global sensitivity analysis. The most recent evidence for the world wide recognition of the innovative methodologies developed at the JRC has been the invitation by the prestigious Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL, New Mexico) to Marco Ratto and Stefano Tarantola to hold a two-day training course on Global Sensitivity Analysis and Uncertainty Quantification (GSA-UQ). The course, held in Santa Fe on 18-19 November 2009, attracted 35 senior researchers from LANL, Sandia Labs (Albuquerque) and Lawrence Livermore National Lab (Livermore, California) involved in research and technology for national security related projects.

EU countries are the biggest consumers of chocolate confectioneries in the world. A technique developed by the JRC Institute for Reference Materials and Measurements (IRMM) to measure vegetable fats in milk chocolate has become the first such method to be adopted as a standard by the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO). It has been developed to enable the enforcement of the so-called ‘Chocolate Directive’, which stipulates that European chocolate must not contain more than 5% vegetable fats, other than cocoa butter.

European legislation allows the addition of up to 5% of vegetable fats other than cocoa butter in chocolate products and stipulates that consumers be informed by appropriate labelling of the product. The threshold of 5% is also an essential requirement for these products to move freely within the internal market.

The November edition of the JRC Newsletter has been published and can be downloaded here. It features an editorial from Martin Williams, Chair of the Executive Body of the UNECE Convention on Long Range Transboundary Air Pollution, on issues in climate change research that need to be addressed beyond the current debate.

This month’s issue also contains news on emission testing of non-road mobile machinery, case studies on road infrastructure charging, biodiversity, social computing, corporate R&D investment, educational reform in the EU and much more.

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Energy efficiency measures introduced across the European Union are already contributing to stabilise electricity consumption. A combination of labelling, minimum efficiency standards and voluntary agreements, together with national policies and incentives, have flattened the energy and electricity consumption in recent years. For the first time since 1990, final electricity consumption decreased in 2007 in EU households from 806.52 TWh in 2006 to 800.72 TWh.

The ‘Electricity Consumption and Efficiency Trends in the European Union’ report, issued today by the by the JRC Institute for Energy (IE), calculates the market share of energy-efficient appliances and equipment and the energy consumption by sector in 2007. It also identifies the appliances in which energy efficiency has the largest potential: domestic, street and office lighting; televisions and stand-by appliances in households, as well as electric motors in industry.

At the third Civil Protection Forum, held in Brussels from 25 – 26 November, more than 500 civil protection experts have gathered to explore how EU countries can develop their resilience to disasters. Climate change is likely to increase the frequency and impact of natural disasters, and Europe has to be prepared for this challenge. The Forum has started a debate on a comprehensive European disaster management strategy to enhance resilience.

At the event, the JRC has presented its activities in this field, such as the European Flood Alert System (EFAS) and the European Forest Fires Information System (EFFIS), as well as the Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System (GDACS). All these tools aim to increase European and global coordination for disaster management by using cutting-edge forecasting applications.

Despite a general improvement in education and training performance in the EU, progress is too slow, which means that the majority of the reform targets set for 2010 will not be reached. This is the main conclusion from the ‘Commission Progress Report towards the Lisbon Objectives in Education and Training – Indicators and Benchmarks 2009’.

This annual report, co-authored by scientists of the JRC’s Institute for the Protection and Security of the Citizen (IPSC) – Centre for Research on Lifelong Learning (CRELL), looks at Member States’ progress towards five key benchmarks in education and training for 2010.

If the climate expected in the 2080s occurred today, the EU would face yearly GDP losses between €20 and €65 billion, depending on the temperature increase in Europe (2.5°C to 5.4°C). This is one of the forecasts of the final report of the PESETA study, published today by the JRC Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS). The PESETA study also looked at different regional impacts of climate change across the EU. Damages would occur mainly in Southern and Central Europe, while Northern Europe would be the sole region to benefit, in economic terms and for the aspects studied, from climate change.

On the occasion of a joint event organised by the JRC in cooperation with the Malta Council for Science and Technology (MCST), the two organisations signed a Memorandum of Understanding on intensified research cooperation. Areas of such collaboration have been identified on the basis of mutual interest and include environment, biotechnology, information and communication technologies (ICT), energy, food safety and maritime affairs.

Both organisations have also agreed to host Maltese doctoral and post doctoral students in the various JRC Research Institutes. Candidates for grants funded by Malta’s national programmes will be nominated by MCST or the University of Malta, and pre-selected candidates will be approved by the JRC. Maltese candidates to the EU grants will need to follow the common JRC grants procedures or apply for a Marie Curie fellowship.

Nature’s capacity to provide vital services and functions such as freshwater, benign climate and natural ecosystems for recreational activities is often cheaper to sustain than having to invest in technological solutions to compensate for lost functions. Protecting and restoring biodiversity is also an essential step in the transition to a more sustainable economy and protecting ecosystems can be a very cost effective measure to this purpose. This is confirmed by a report to policy makers presented by The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) project, a major independent global study providing an economic angle to an environmental topic.

The rapid growth of web 2.0, or social computing, allows users to play an influential role in the way commercial and public products and services are shaped. The report "The impact of Social Computing on the EU Information Society and Economy", published today by the JRC Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS), finds that in 2008, 41% of EU Internet users were engaged in social computing activities through Social Networking Sites (SNS), blogs, photo and video sharing, online multi-player games and collaborative platforms for content creation and sharing. This percentage rises to 64% if users aged under 24 only are considered.

The report shows that social computing goes beyond individual networking and entertainment, as it empowers tens of millions of Europeans to support their work, health, learning and citizenship in innovative ways. The research found that social computing is reshaping work practices, as employees join communities of interest outside their organisations to improve their knowledge and skills. Social innovation enabled by social computing contributes to improved lifelong learning processes, business competitiveness, social inclusion and integration of immigrants, among others.