Twinning in Environmental Data and Dynamical Systems Modelling for Latvia

TED4LAT is a Coordination and Support Action proposal targeting the overarching objective of the call HORIZON-WIDERA-2021-ACCESS-03-01: Twinning to reach high international standards in research and innovation in Latvia. It will be implemented by twinning two prominent research institutions in France, Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, and in Italy, Politecnico di Torino, with three widening Latvian Universities (Liepaja University, Vidzeme University of Applied Sciences, and Riga Technical University). The Baltic Open Solutions Center, a Latvian SME, joins the endeavor as a living-lab application partner. Latvian universities barely reach international standards in strategic areas such as the foundation and last-generation ICT science and technology like Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, and Dynamic Systems Modeling. In these sectors, Latvia is lagging behind compared to other European countries and aims at bridging the knowledge gap.To achieve the objectives, a research component of the work plan aims at targeting universities, incubators, research centers, NCPs. An intertwined set of Communication and Support activities aim at reaching the broadest community of junior and senior researchers, Twinning project’s teams and other EC initiatives, Latvian policy and decision makers. A common research agenda will address scientific challenges related to the use of satellite data for environmental applications, as accompanying measures, computational infrastructure upgrades, doctoral schools, workshops, exchange visits and seminars will be implemented.The outcomes will be critically important to increase the ability and capacity of Latvian universities to carry out large-scale and high-quality research in the aforementioned domains. Capacity building will result in the emergence of Latvian universities' excellence for proactively cooperating in EU research programmes over the coming decade.