Dr Giacomo Carli

ACCELERATE proposes the development of a fertile inter-discipline and inter-sectoral ecosystem that aims to radically contribute towards enhancing UAV technology to enable the sustainable environmental management. The specific objectives of the project are to: a) Create a continuously updated ecosystem with UAV datasets suitable for environmental studies and climate change impact assessment, b) promote methodological advances in the field of UAVs technology, by exploiting the unique capabilities of those data with state-of-the-art techniques and c) establish clear guidelines and homogenized protocols for the characterization of the exploitation of UAVs in specific application domains (hydrological, ecological, and agronomic). Experimental analysis will also be carried to showcase the practical use of the project outputs via 7 carefully selected and innovative Use Cases, that will serve as Key Performance Indicators of the project.

ICAERUS proposes an “application-oriented” approach, through the selection of five (5) specific drone applications, to explore the multi-purpose application potential of drones in agricultural production, forestry and rural communities. The selected drone applications represent the most important sectoral and societal drone usage purposes in Europe and cover multiple applications that are interconnected within the complex rural European landscape. The ICAERUS vision is to explore opportunities and provide a more complete and interconnected account of the potential and impact of drones as multi-purpose vehicles in EU agriculture, forestry and rural areas. The aim is to showcase and support, through application, the effective, efficient and safe deployment of drones as well as, identify the risks and added values associated with their use. “Taking off” from the current state-of-the-art in the drone ecosystem, ICAERUS will “rise up” by advancing existing software technology, platform components and knowledge in regard to drones, to exploit the potential of drones and strengthen capacities to reduce their risks, achieve better informed decision-making, enhance sustainability performance and competitiveness in agriculture, forestry and rural areas. This will be showcased in two directions: fundamental applications representing an “eye-in-the-sky”, using the drone as a positioning system for optical observation and recording, and a “hand-in-the-sky” applications, for spraying and goods delivery. ICAERUS plans to scale-up through research, technology optimisation, demonstration and education about drones to create an efficient, trusted and safe enabling environment for the EU drone services market to achieve the EU’s decarbonisation, digitalisation and resilience ambitions. ICAERUS consists of a balanced, multi-actor, cross sectoral and well-experienced consortium, including research organisations, SME technology providers, associations and non-profit organisations.

First, this research aims to study how strategies for stakeholder engagement can be assessed about their ability to generate shared value and promote sustainability practices. Second, a particular attention will be devoted to investigating how stakeholders are effectively integrated into organisational and governance structures to participate in the development of a business strategy oriented to sustainable development. The outcome of this project will be development of a multi-dimensional model for assessing the process aimed at developing a shared business strategy according to several perspectives (e.g., economic, financial, social, environmental, relational and geographical). An empirical case study will be developed in order to evaluate the model in a real context. The results of the project will include an ABS 3 journal submission, a presentation to an internal conference and the organisation of a business breakfast event to be held at the Open University