Cascade Call: Partenariato Esteso “Multi-Risk sciEnce for resilienT commUnities undeR a changiNg climate (RETURN)” - Spoke 1 – VS1: Acqua
Project title: “Nuovi approcci per la valutazione della pericolosità idraulica nei piccoli bacini montani – RETURN-PB”
PNRR Missione 4: Istruzione e Ricerca - Componente 2: dalla Ricerca all’Impresa - Investimento 1.3 finanziato dall’Unione Europea – NextGenerationEU.
Avviso MUR: N. 341 del 15 marzo 2022
Decreto Direttoriale di concessione del finanziamento MUR: N. 1550 dell’11 ottobre 2022
Funding: € 600.000,00
Codice Identificativo: PE00000005
CUP: D43C22003030002
Project objectives: Preparation of a practical guide for the assessment of hydraulic hazard scenarios and risk in small catchment areas
Implementation: RETURN-PB will involve 14 research partners in the development of operational tools for the analysis of hydraulic hazards in small river catchments, characterized by nonlinear responses to forcing scenarios, rapid hydrological response, small spatial and temporal scales, intense sediment and wood transport and potential mass transport.
Different types of small basins representative of the Italian territory will be considered: i) steep alpine basins, with possible debris flow formation; ii) Apennine/Mediterranean-type basins, with hyperconcentrated flow; iii) basins affected by pyroclastic flows/mudflows; iv) basins with ordinary sediment transport.
Expected results: RETURN-PB will provide, as a final product, a practical guide to be used for identifying possible forcing scenarios in small mountain catchments within the context of climate change. This guide will be applicable both in the design phase and in management processes.
Through an integrated approach, it will consider hydrology, sediment production, flow propagation and dynamics, risk mitigation measures, vulnerability and exposure assessment, and the role of protective forests and wood transported by the flow. The guide will include practical applications to some significant case studies.
Coordinator: Libera Università di Bolzano
Principal Investigator: Libera Università di Bolzano, prof. Michele Larcher – Faculty of Agricultural, Environmental and Food Sciences
Project Duration: 01/05/2024 – 31/10/2025
Project website: https://www.fondazionereturn.it/

Cascade Call: Investimento 1.3 FAIR “Future Artificial Intelligence Research” - Spoke 2 – Integrative AI
Project title: “Multi-modal AI for Process Mining– MAIPM”
PNRR Missione 4: Istruzione e Ricerca - Componente 2: dalla Ricerca all’Impresa - Investimento 1.3 finanziato dall’Unione Europea – NextGenerationEU.
Avviso MUR: N. 341 del 15 marzo 2022
Decreto Direttoriale di concessione del finanziamento MUR: N. 1550 dell’11 ottobre 2022
Funding: € 214.618,75
Codice Identificativo: PE0000013
CUP: C63C22000770006
Project objectives: The goal of the MAIPM project is to define a Multi-modal AI framework for Process Mining, where knowledge representation formalisms dealing with dynamics, objects, data, and uncertainty are holistically combined, and where corresponding multi-modal AI techniques are employed, further developed, and combined to solve key tasks pertaining the analysis, discovery, and conformance checking of multi-perspective processes and their executions. This has the potential of establishing a virtuous circle where integrative AI and BPM/process mining mutually advance each other.  
Implementation: To achieve the five objectives of MAIPM, we foresee a workplan of 18 months, with three technical work packages, and two dissemination/management work packages. WP1 provides core technical contributions needed in WP2 and WP3, which are independent from each other and thus run in parallel. WP1 deals with multi-perspective process modelling and analysis, WP2 tackles multi-perspective process discovery, and WP3 focusses on multi-perspective conformance checking. Thes three WPs are backed up by two additional WPs dealing with dissemination and coordination.
Expected results: The expected results consists of an integrated formal model and reasoning techniques for multi-perspective processes using Petri nets or temporal logics as underlying control-flow backbone, paired with multi-modal AI algorithmic pipelines for process discovery and conformance checking.
Coordinator: Fondazione Bruno Kessler
Principal Investigator: Libera Università di Bolzano: prof. Marco Montali – Faculty of Engineering
Project Duration: 30/04/2024 – 29/10/2025
Project website: https://fondazione-fair.it/ 

Cascade Call: Bando a cascata 1/2023 - Bando per la selezione di proposte progettuali nell’ambito delle tematiche dello Spoke 4 “Sustainable Finance” del progetto "GRINS - GROWING RESILIENT, INCLUSIVE AND SUSTAINABLE” (cod. PE0000018 CUP: H73C22000930001)
Project title: The impact of greenwashing activities on corporate policies and security pricing (ANTGREENWASH) Piano Nazionale di Ripresa e Resilienza, Missione 4 “Istruzione e ricerca” – Componente 2 “Dalla ricerca all’impresa” – Investimento 1.3, finanziato dall’Unione europea – NextGenerationEU
Avviso MUR: avviso pubblico nr.341 del 15/03/2022
Decreto Direttoriale Decreto Direttoriale MUR n. 1558 del 11/10/2022
Funding: 298.667,50 €
Codice Identificativo: PE0000018
CUP: I53C23002310005 (progetto ANTGREENWASH) H73C22000930001 (progetto GRINS)
Project objectives: This project aims to develop a greenwashing alert system capable of predicting which companies or industries are adopting business practices likely to result in the greenwashing of their products, services, or entire business models. Greenwashing refers to misleading practices where organizations exaggerate their environmental credentials to deceive stakeholders.
Implementation: In the first working package (WP1), we explored the impact of corporate greenwashing on capital markets, particularly in the Food & Beverages and Energy sectors across the US and EU. The central hypothesis investigates whether greenwashing is perceived as a material risk by investors and if it influences stock prices and corporate costs of equity capital. The study aims to understand if capital markets efficiently price greenwashing risks and its implications on asset pricing. Leveraging the Fama-French five-factor model, the research examines monthly portfolio returns, incorporating variables linked to corporate greenwashing activities. The study utilizes comprehensive datasets from Bureau van Dijk ORBIS and Eikon Thomson Reuters, focusing on US and EU companies from 2010 onwards. The analysis includes the ESG score and the ESG controversy rating to gauge their impact on returns. Initial results indicate that, while systematic risk factors such as market movements significantly influence portfolio returns, ESG and controversies scores have a limited impact on residual returns after accounting for systematic risks. In the US Food & Beverages sector, profitability is positively linked to ESG performance, whereas the EU shows a preference for larger, growth-oriented firms with high ESG ratings despite weaker profitability correlations. Differences emerge between regions and sectors. In the US Energy sector, profitability and conservative investment strategies are positively valued. In contrast, the EU Energy sector favours value-oriented firms with strong ESG credentials, reflecting regional variations in investor sentiment towards sustainability.
Expected results: The findings suggest that current ESG and controversies metrics do not adequately capture greenwashing risks as priced by investors. This indicates either a market inefficiency in pricing these risks or limitations in the current metrics. Further refinement of greenwashing proxies is essential, with future work planned to develop a more robust measure using advanced techniques such as natural language processing. 
Coordinator: Leader allo Spoke 4 “Sustainable Finance” Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia
Principal Investigator: prof. Massimiliano Bonacchi – Competence Centre for Economic, Ecological and Social Sustainability – Faculty of Economics
Project Duration: 01/01/2024 – 31/08/2025
Project website: https://grins.it/progetto

Cascade Call: “Extended Partnership Network 4 Energy Sustainable Transition – NEST” - PNRR Missione 4 “Istruzione e ricerca” – Componente 2 “Dalla ricerca all’impresa” – Investimento 1.3, finanziato dall’Unione europea – NextGenerationEU  - “Clean Hydrogen and Final Uses” - Spoke 4 - Tematica 9 – Innovazione per la produzione di idrogeno verde da biomasse
Project title: OSMOSYS – Optimization of small-scale oxy-steam gasification and catalytic water-gas shift for renewable hydrogen production
Avviso MUR: n. 341 del 15.03.2022
Decreto Direttoriale N. 1561 del 11 otobre 2022, registrato dalla Corte dei Conti il 04/11/2022 n. 2784
Funding: € 107.351,25
Codice Identificativo: PE00000021
CUP: D33C22001330002
Project objectives: Address the current limitations related to biomass-to-hydrogen at the small-scale by assessing experimentally a coupled system comprising novel oxygen-steam gasification of residual biomass and catalytic water-gas shift technology
Implementation: The steps of the proposed experimental work include 1) optimizing the operational parameters (oxygen and steam flow rates) of fixed bed oxygen-steam gasification for maximal hydrogen yield, 2) determining the degree of contamination of the obtained syngas with sulphur compounds that jeopardize the performance of downstream water-gas shift catalysts and 3) testing a water-gas shift fixed-bed bench-scale reactor loaded with selected commercial catalyst and fed with artificial syngas reproducing oxygen-steam syngas.
Expected results: The results of the experimental activity will enable determining the expected hydrogen yield on biomass attainable with a coupled process. Moreover, syngas composition results and contaminants tolerance specifications provided by catalyst manufacturers will be used to define a conceptual syngas cleaning process adequate for small-scale biomass-to-hydrogen.
Coordinator: Libera Università di Bolzano
Principal Investigator: Libera Università di Bolzano: prof. Baratieri Marco – Faculty of Engineering
Project Duration: 26/06/2024 – 25/06/2025
Project website: https://fondazionenest.it/