Information for projects

Projects are expected to participate in three projects events, to meet, share knowledge and engage in strategic discussions with other projects.

Kick-off meetings are organised in the first year of the projects’ timeline and serves to give important information about programme requirements and support activities and to establish a sense of community from the start in the programme and around the three transition pathways. 

Mid-term and final events, typically organised in the second and third year respectively, focus on exchange of experiences and results and discussions on how projects can gain impact beyond project results. 

In addition, funded projects should plan to contribute to at least one DUT event per year. Examples of such events includes cross-project meetings to deepen reflections on project results; participation in stakeholder dialogues; workshops to reflect research results; and conference sessions to promote and discuss science policy issues regarding sustainable urbanisation.

Municipalities who are partners in funded projects should plan to take part in the DUT City Panel. The DUT City Panel is a collaborative platform facilitating co-creation, consultation, exchange, cooperation and engagement with cities relating to the strategic priorities of the DUT Partnership. More specifically, the DUT City Panel supports cities in their transition challenges, strengthening existing skills and tools to boost urban change and transformation towards climate neutral, livable and inclusive cities. Involving the experience, needs and requirements of municipalities in DUT through the City Panel is essential to develop challenge driven and innovative solutions. Further information on the DUT City Panel can be found here.

The Innovation Portfolio is an instrument used by DUT to promote the most promising solutions produced by DUT projects. They will be showcased on the DUT website, starting in 2026, and will be widely promoted by DUT to enable wider impact​. 

A DUT Innovation (DUTI) is an innovative solution, funded by DUT, with relevance for achieving a climate neutral and resilient urban future for all and with potential for scaling.​ This can be any type of innovation, for example a new policy, governance or collaboration model or a specific tool, and needs to have a practical rather than scientific use. ​

The selection of DUTIs is based on the following criteria: 

1. Specificness: Clarity on the specific challenge addressed and value proposition of the innovation ​
2. Usability: are the project results packaged as a solution? (user friendliness and clarity of materials)
3. Innovativeness: does it bring a novel/unique angle to addressing a challenge​
4. DUT’s mission: is it aligned with DUT’s mission, objectives, and themes​
5. Target group: clarity on who should use the innovation and how ​
6. Relevance for cities: is the innovation something that cities need? ​
7. Enabled by DUT: Is the work developed as part of a project financed by DUT (e.g. not separate work of project partners)​
8. Applicability to other contexts: is the innovation tested in different environments, are transferability issues thought about ​
9. Availability of information: is there enough information available for others to use it ​
10. Readiness level: what is the readiness for scaled adoption (policy, economy, society, technology)​

We encourage projects to take these criteria into account when developing a project to ensure that project results can be adopted by urban stakeholders. 

The Knowledge Hub is DUT’s instrument to gather a knowledge community, capitalise on project results, and facilitate the transfer of the project results to practitioners. 

Each project must be represented by an expert who will spend at least 5 person-months on Knowledge Hub activities. The experts, together with the management team of the Knowledge Hub(s) and the specific Transition-Pathway programme management, will: 

• Contribute to the strategic development of the TP;
• Synthesise results, collaboration with other projects;
• Develop science policy briefs, white papers, etc, and participate in specific events;
• Communicate to the scientific community and stakeholders;

A mandatory work package summarises these standard activities. It remains the responsibility of each project to nominate the expert who will best represent their project, deliver the project outputs and participate in the writing of supporting materials (policy recommendations, white papers, etc.) This expert must be nominated with their name and contact details, and resources (budget and staff) for this role should be indicated.

DUT will share important information with all project partners through the Projects Community Newsletter. All project partners indicated in the submission system will be added to this email list. If you do not receive these emails, please contact projects@dutpatnership.eu and you will be added to the list.

Items that do not fit into the publication time of the newsletter can also come directly through our project support email projects@dutpatnership.eu and are typically sent to project coordinators.  

The projects contact point (PCP) is the main contact point and support function between the project meetings. The aim of the PCP is to find out what type of questions arise from the transnational projects and to provide a support linking the projects to the members of the DUT consortium as well as with the other activities running at the level of the DUT programme.

During the runtime of the projects, the PCP observes the projects’ progress, together with the projects identifies relevant results and helps communicating and disseminating these. Several brief informal meetings will be held every 4-5 months with members of the transnational projects to also strengthen cross-project relations. Information of these meeting will be shared through the Projects Community Newsletter. 

The DUT communications team can help increase the visibility of DUT-funded projects by sharing results and updates through DUT’s channels such as the website, newsletter, and social media. We encourage you to keep us informed whenever your project has available results, news or other updates by emailing projects@dutpartnership.eu.

Each project is responsible for its own communication activities and should develop a communication plan and produce publicly available materials. Projects are free to choose their preferred communication channels, whether that means setting up a dedicated website and social media accounts or using existing communication channels of the project partners.

Tagging DUT in your projects social media posts allows us to amplify your message and help increase its reach. Remember to tag @Driving Urban Transitions Partnership on LinkedIn so we can share your updates with our network.

Recommended hashtags: #DUT and #DrivingUrbanTransitions #15minuteCity #CircularUrbanEconomies #PositiveEnergyDistricts

All funded projects from DUT calls are featured in the Projects & results database on the DUT website. Each project has its own dedicated page where key information and updates are displayed. Projects should establish a routine to contact the DUT communications team to share results, news, or other updates.

If your project has outputs or updates, please send them to projects@dutpartnership.eu so we can keep your project page up to date.

The DUT communication team strives to support community building and exchange of best practice between partners in lead of the projects’ communication and outreach activities. Project partners can on a voluntary basis sign up for and attend communication support group meetings that are organised 2-3 times per year by contacting projects@dutpartnership.eu. Topics and agenda points for these meetings follows the articulated needs of the participating people. 

A communication plan is a mandatory deliverable in year 1. Each project shall have dedicated budget and personnel for communication, with at least one person assigned as the ambassador for communication activities (such as a WP leader). Communication activities may include, but are not restricted to, promotion of the project activities (events, webinars, seminars, publications), speaking at external events, writing key messages targeting the project's audience, and sharing results with the wider DUT community.

Projects funded by DUT must use the DUT logo and the EU emblem (Co-funded by the European Union) in their communication to acknowledge the support received under DUT programme. It must be displayed prominently and correctly, in combination with a funding statement that mentions DUT’s and EU’s support.

All project outcomes (e.g. publications) must also include proper acknowledgement of DUT, the European Commission, and the relevant Funding Agencies.

Funding statement to be used: This project has been funded by *Agency xyz* under the Driving Urban Transitions Partnership, which has been co-funded by the European Commission.

Instructions of logo usage:

• DUT logo
• EU emblem

The funding contracts are established by the project coordinator and project partners with their respective national/regional funding agencies.

A Consortium agreement (CA) is obligatory for all projects. We recommend using as an example the DESCA model CA. Please note that the DESCA model CA is foreseen for H2020 projects with the EC as the only funder. Thus, several of the paragraphs have to be adapted as the DUT consortia have different funding agencies for the respective project parts carried out in the different countries.

Annual project progress reports must be submitted by the project coordinator to the Call Secretariat via DUT’s project monitoring system. Details about the system and login credentials will be sent individually to each project coordinator. The transnational reporting is independent from the national/regional reporting requirements for each project partner. The reports are mainly used to monitor the progress of the project.

Projects are expected to prepare regular popular science summaries (on an annual basis) of the project contents and updates for programme activities and publications by the EC and the DUT Partnership (e.g. for brochures, (digital) newsletters, websites).

At the end of each project, projects are expected to submit an additional publishable report, meant for the general public. A template for this report will be provided by the Call Secretariat.

Information on the projects and its partners, including summaries, abstracts, contact information, publishable reports and general information on the project may be published by the DUT Partnership, its partners, the EC or any entity contracted by them. All partners of a consortium grant rights of use to the aforementioned entities.

The Call Secretariat will publish detailed guidelines and templates to assist projects with these duties.

The DUT Partnership wish to promote open, transparent and robust urban and global change research by encouraging more open sharing of research data, leading to wider data analysis, more data re-use, and the combination of datasets from multiple sources. The DUT Partnership believe that an increased emphasis on the open sharing of research data has the potential to stimulate new approaches to the collection, analysis, validation and management of data, and to the transparency of the research process. However, the DUT Partnership also recognise that not all research data can be shared openly, and that there will be legitimate reasons to constrain access, for example the risks to the privacy of individuals must always be considered where data arise from, or are derived from, personally identifiable data.