General objectives
The overarching goal of the SWITCH project is to improve understanding of knowledge, accessibility and facilitation gaps that limit present large-scale adoption of sustainable and healthy diets among European citizens, and to develop and demonstrate appropriate innovative solutions and tools to facilitate a just transition towards healthy and sustainable dietary behavior at all levels of the multi-actor food system in EU. SWITCH will promote this shift to sustainable healthy diets incentivizing food behavioral changes in both the supply and demand sides, by designing an innovative food system concept and by applying a combination of technological, systemic, social and user experience innovations that will be implemented in real conditions in 6 selected Food Hubs across Europe.

CMCC role
CMCC is the coordinator of the project and the lead beneficiary of “WP1 – Project Coordination”, “WP5 – Food Hubs as living labs for better adherence to healthy and sustainable dietary behaviors”, “WP9 – Clearing house for National and EU food policy recommendation”, and “WP10 – Ethics requirements”. CMCC has also a role, in collaboration with the other project partners, in the implementation of several tasks under other WPs lead by different beneficiaries.

Activities
SWITCH will involve all actors of the food systems, such as farmers, businesses, investors, consumers, healthcare providers, students and educators, media, institutions and policy makers, which will act together in 6 living Food Hubs distributed over an EU transect North-South:

• HUB 1: Rome and Lazio region (Italy);
• HUB 2: Cagliari and Sardinia region (Italy);
• HUB 3: San Sebastian and Basque region (Spain);
• HUB 4: Montpellier Metropolis and Occitanie region (France);
• HUB 5: Berlin and Federal State of Brandenburg (Germany);
• HUB 6: Göteborg and Västra Götaland region (Sweden);

A Hub Digital Experience platform, designed to be an ecosystem of digital experiences in support of the multi-actor actions toward sustainable and healthy dietary shifts, will be realized. In each regional dimension represented by the Food Hubs, specific activities and technologies will be introduced with the aim to: (i) characterize the environmental, economic and social sustainability and the healthy level of the food production as well as of the food consumption, dietary patterns and cultural approach at local level, including its contribution to climate change in terms of GHG emissions, (ii) increase the knowledge and the awareness of both the food demand and food supply sides (i.e. food providers and food consumers) about sustainable and healthy food and dietary plans; (iii) increase the accessibility to sustainable and healthy food and dietary patterns, addressing social inequalities, tackling food poverty and ensuring a fair income for all actors; (iv) facilitate the provision of sustainable and healthy food offers and the right food choices simultaneously.
The core activities in each Food Hub will aim at data gathering for the baseline characterization of the current behavioral trends of the target groups in relation to healthy and sustainable diets and food systems and for behavioral change consequent to the proposed solutions/actions. In this respect, an IT platform will be created serving as an advanced data repository and retrieval systems for integration of large and diverse data sets collected during the project actions from metadata (regional food offers, food indicators database etc.) to physical, medical and social nature (real-time sales data, citizen behavioral data, etc.) of different granularity in space and time domain into one unique “Data Lake” to be exploited through Machine Learning for providing scenarios and evaluate the success of innovation actions.

Expected results
We expect that the impact of this large outreach exercise, disseminating a new paradigm of one planet health, will strongly push the market towards sustainable, productive, climate-neutral and resilient farming systems, which will increase their share in the market allowing them to also become more competitive and less expensive. We also expect that the adoption of these new guidelines at policy level will give way to policy strategies to support producers for fairer returns to farmers. The Hub platforms and experiences are expected to increase knowledge and facilitation and connectivity among actors making it easier for consumers at all levels to access affordable, safe, traceable healthy and sustainable food (direct sales, restaurants, distribution, etc). Also, the strong regional focus on the local products will allow valorising the regional and typical offer of each country. The valorisation of these productions and the increased share of consumption by users will contribute to the adaptation strategies of the agri-food sector.
We expect to increase the access to sustainable and healthy food for vulnerable groups, since marginalization is often an issue that can affect both little producers and consumers within communities of critical areas. The HUB experience will help to overcome barriers and results will be translated into policy recommendations. The regional analysis in the 6 Food Hubs will allow to fine tune the different weight that external factors have on the characterization of vulnerable groups and their key barriers. 

Partners
UNICAMP, FFI Foundation, UNINA, ZALF, CHALMERS, IIASA, WU, INRAE, UPM, BC3, POSTI, RISE, KUTXA, KUTXA S.L.U., BCC, LAORE, AGROCAM, BAUMHAUS, EPFL, Antistatique