The StartUp Europe Awards (SEUA) are a useful open innovation tool to promote the exchange of experiences, add value to the business ecosystem and help startups to grow and position themselves in the market.
The Finnova Foundation – beneficiary of the CILIFO Project – implements this methodology of the Directorate General for Communication and New Technologies (DG CONNECT), supported by the Committee of the Regions and the European Commission in collaboration with StartUp Europe, through the Startup Europe Awards.
Several successful editions of these awards have been held and launched and the 2nd Edition Firefighitng StartUp Europe Awards (SEUA-CILIFO) are being organised.
The aim of SEUA-CILIFO is to find those ideas that offer products, services or methodologies that address the three phases in fire fighting 1) Prevention 2) Action 3) Regeneration They must provide an improvement in the efficiency of resources in firefighting; technological tools; social awareness; fire behaviour; spatial and temporal patterns of fire; fire meteorology and fire danger classification; fire extinguishing techniques; terrestrial, aerial and spatial detection; restoration; etc.
The announcement and launch of these awards was made at four webinars organised within the Green Week or European Green Week 2020 (in Vilamarxant (Valencia) on Friday 25 September 2020; in Seville on Monday 28 September 2020; in Cadiz on Monday 19 October 2020; and in Cordoba on Wednesday 21 October 2020): www.bit.ly/2SWomwv.
Do you have a project in the field of fire prevention and extinction, climate change or forest management?
Promote your project or innovative idea!
Apply before Thursday 19 November 2020 on: www.f6s.com/startupeuropeawards
The so-called European Week for Waste Reduction (www.ewwr.eu) encourages all Europeans to take action to raise awareness of sustainable resource and waste management during a single week in November. The CILIFO Project contributes to the adaptation and mitigation of climate change. That is why CILIFO is working on good management of forest waste and its recovery to help find innovative solutions that promote adaptation and mitigation of climate change. The SEUA-CILIFO project aims to identify and support these entrepreneurs and to ensure that these good ideas are implemented for the benefit of society as a whole, generating a public-private partnership which will lead to the drafting of projects and thus access to European Union funds. The target users are entrepreneurs and startups with ideas/projects related to the fight against forest fires in the 3 action areas of the CILIFO project: prevention, action and regeneration.
The selected entrepreneurs will have:
- Acces to a mentoring programme (on European funds, training courses, visibility, lobbying, etc.) to develop their project and make it viable at European level.
- A recording of an elevator pitch of the winning startup with rights shared with Finnova and which can be used without time limit by the company in question for its promotion and dissemination.
- The right to be present in a database that will be created and that, being owned by Finnova. This will allow competing startups to increase their relations and be more competitive in European project calls.
- The opportunity to participate in a global network of contacts and have the possibility to collaborate with both European institutions and entrepreneurs.
- Their brand associated with a European award guaranteed and recognised by the European institutions at international level.
For the Firefighting category of the awards, i.e. the Firefighting StartUp Europe Awards SEUA – CILIFO 2020, the judges will select a winner. During the awards ceremony, the winner will receive a StartUp Europe acceleration ticket of acceleration worth of 10,000 euros. The following services will be offered to the winners of the acceleration ticket:
- Mentoring
- European B2B Marketplace
- Networking / lobbying
- European funding for internationalisation
Some of the benefits will be:
- Advice in the elaboration of proposals to obtain European funds that will allow to turn the entrepreneur’s innovation into a recognized and/or financed European project.
- Support in the definition of communication and marketing actions.
- Intellectual property rights assistance service that offers personalised advice on EU intellectual property rights.
Click here for eligibility criteria.
Firefighting StartUp Europe Awards (SEUA – CILIFO): Based on the Iberian Centre for Research and the Fight against Forest Fires, the Firefighting StartUp Europe Awards (SEUA – CILIFO) were created as an action to promote open innovation for the adaptation and mitigation of climate change; the establishment of “networking”; the exchange of good practices; the recruitment of entrepreneurs, companies and technologies that help prevent and extinguish forest fires; and the restoration of natural areas that have suffered from forest fires. SEUA-CILIFO was set up as an action of the Iberian Centre for Research and the Fight against Forest Fires. It is a tool to identify and support entrepreneurs with new ideas in the field of fire fighting.
More information about the Firefighting StartUp Europe Awards (SEUA – CILIFO) here.
Common Challenges – Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
The aim is to meet the challenge 13 and 15 of the UN SDGs to innovate in taking urgent action to combat climate change and its effects, as well as to protect, restore and promote the sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss.
1st Edition Firefighting StartUp Europe Awards (SEUA – CILIFO)
The Iberian Centre for Forest Fire Research and Control (CILIFO) participated in the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 25) in December 2019 in Madrid, Spain. On the occasion of COP 25 and in the framework of the CILIFO project, the Finnova Foundation organised a round table on 11 December from 15:00 to 16:30 at the Espacio Mare Nostrum of the IFEMA (Av. Capital de España, 7, 28042, Madrid, Spain) entitled “Cooperation and governance for innovation in prevention, fire fighting and restoration of burnt areas”.
The Junta de Andalucía was invited to the event. The Secretary General for the Environment, Water and Climate Change, Francisco José Gutiérrez Rodríguez, was responsible for opening the round table. The CILIFO project was presented as a case study of the need for international alliance methodologies. CILIFO is a pilot project for Spain-Portugal cross-border cooperation in the EU which, with almost 25 million euros, is the largest budget in the field of fires financed by the INTERREG V-A Spain-Portugal Cross-Border Cooperation Programme (POCTEP) 2014-2020.
The Firefighting StartUp Europe Awards 2019 were launched at the end of the round tables. This call identifies disruptive innovations and is managed by the Belgian entity StartUp Europe Accelerator. The award winning startup for this special edition was Drone Hopper.
The company Dron Hopper has designed a drone that can store up to 300 litres of water and then act on forest fires.
As said before, this startup was the winner of the 1st edition of the Firefighting StartUp Europe Awards and is part of the StartUp Europe Accelerator programme of the Finnova Foundation, thanks to which it obtained help and mentorship to present its project, and was able to obtain 50,000 euros from the SME Instrument programme (which accredits it as one of the most innovative projects at European level).
About the Finnova Foundation
Finnova is a European non-profit foundation, with headquarters in Belgium-Brussels, and offices and in Spain (Seville, Valencia, Tenerife, Madrid and Vitoria), whose main purpose is to seek international funding related to the transfer of new technology, modernization, training, innovation for regional or local public administrations. Its main objective is to promote international and inter-regional cooperation through networks and events, its main fields of work being the environment, energy, climate change, innovation and improvement of the quality of life.
CONTACT:
Beatriz Martínez Muñoz
European projects and communication technique at the Finnova Foundation
Beatriz.martinez@finnova.eu