There have been several initiatives aiming to promote innovation and support stakeholders to increase investments in relevant societal areas connected to Smart Healthy Age-Friendly Environments—SHAFE. However, their impact usually runs shorter than desirable in the mid- and long-term due to the difficulty to identify, map, and connect stakeholders in the different European and world countries that are willing to work for the practical implementation of social innovation around SHAFE. This mapping and connection can contribute to increase awareness of innovation actors on social innovation concepts and, if well disseminated, may also leverage the creation of alliances and synergies between different stakeholders within ecosystems and between ecosystems. Understanding what relevant practices exist, how they are funded, and how they involve citizens and organisations is also key to ensure that business actors have access to social innovation and entrepreneurial knowledge, which is key for future sustainable societal change. The present study developed and implemented a survey replied by 61 organisations from 28 different countries. The results showed relevant inputs regarding different cultural and societal perceptions, including diverse end-user organisations, and will, thus, facilitate multistakeholder engagement, public awareness, and the overall upscaling of social innovation on SHAFE.

Smart furniture represents a growing field that integrates Internet of Things (IoT), embedded systems and assistive technologies, yet lacks a comprehensive synthesis of its components and applications. This PRISMA-guided systematic review analysed 35 studies published between 2014 and 2024, sourced from PubMed, Web of Science and Scopus. The included studies presented prototypes of smart furniture that used IoT, sensors or automation. The focus was on extracting data related to technological configurations, functional uses, validation methods, maturity levels and commercialisation. Three technological pillars emerged, data collection (n = 31 studies), transmission/processing (n = 30), and actuation (n = 22), often combined into multifunctional systems (n = 14). Health monitoring was the dominant application (n = 15), followed by environmental control (n = 8) and assistive functions for older adults (n = 8). Validation methods varied; 37% relied solely on laboratory testing, while 20% only involved end-users. Only one solution surpassed Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 7 and is currently on the market. Current research remains pre-commercial, with gaps in AI integration, long-term validation, and participatory design. Smart furniture shows promise for healthcare and independent living, but requires standardised evaluation, ethical data practices, and co-creation to achieve market readiness.

Fundamental values like human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, and respect for human rights are essential values of a democratic, social and participatory society. Despite this, in the past few years, it’s possible to see an increasing of hate speech, racism and hate crimes in many countries of the EU. This paper aims to present the state-of-art of the Portuguese situation regarding to discrimination, hate speech and racism. It was made a literature review of national and international resources, and interviews with persons that have suffered from hate speech as well as experts of the field. Results shows a long way to do to mitigate these phenomena and it’s fundamental the intervention of all parts of society: government, organisations, civil society and citizens. The researchers hope that this paper may enrich the knowledge about these concepts and may be useful for the development of strategies to promote a society more equitable.

The average age of the European population has been increasing and this fact leads to the need of adapting the physical spaces, so that older adults may stay independent for as long as possible. To that aim, building constructors, furnishing designers but also social care and health sectors need to be aware of the difficulties that older adults face in their homes and in public spaces. Design for All, Universal Design and Smart Healthy Age-Friendly Environments are approaches that build and promote more inclusive spaces to everyone, regardless of their gender, age, ethnicity or functional limitations. The present study aims to identify the needs and gaps in different educational levels, concerning D4All and Universal Design, in four European countries (Portugal, Slovenia, Slovakia and Spain), as well as survey the needs of stakeholders. With that purpose, desk research, interviews and workshop sessions were conducted, allowing to build a Matrix of Gaps, comparing the approach to these topics in four educational fields: Architecture, Design, Health, and Social care. Results show differences among the countries, but also that these topics are not sufficiently addressed in formal curricula, highlighting the need for this to be changed in the near future.

The NewEcoSmart project addresses the need to foster inclusive green and digital transitions in rural habitat sectors by systematically assessing local socio-technical readiness and tailoring capacity-building interventions. We adapted the validated SCIROCCO Exchange Maturity Self-Assessment Tool—selecting eight dimensions relevant to environmental, technological and social innovation—and conducted a two-phase evaluation across three pilot sites in Italy, Portugal and Spain. Phase 1 mapped stakeholder evidence against predefined criteria; Phase 2 engaged local actors (45+ adults, SMEs and micro-firms) in a self-assessment to determine digital, green and entrepreneurial skill gaps. For each domain of the SCIROCCO Tool, local actors can assign a minimum of 0 to a maximum of 5. The final score of the SCIROCCO tool can be a minimum of 0 to a maximum of 40. Quantitative maturity scores revealed heterogeneous profiles (Pacentro and Majella Madre = 5; Yecla = 10; Adelo Area = 23), underscoring diverse ecosystem strengths and limitations. A qualitative analysis, framed by Smart Healthy Age-Friendly Environments (SHAFE) domains, identified emergent training needs that are clustered at three levels: MACRO (community-wide awareness and engagement), MESO (decision-maker capacity for strategic planning and governance) and MICRO (industry-specific practical skills). The adapted SCIROCCO tool effectively proposes the assessment of socio-technical maturity in rural contexts and guides the design of a modular, multi-layered training framework. These findings support the need for scalable deployment of interventions that are targeted to the maturity of the local ecosystems to accelerate innovations through equitable green and digital transformations in complex socio-cultural settings.