InnovaWood takes the initiative to stimulate wood science related COST Actions by facilitating submission of new COST Action proposals. For that reason we carried out last year a survey from which we defined 14 COST Action proposal topics of highest interest. The 14 topics are the following:

1.Hardwood raw material potentials in the bio-economy: from construction to novel composites.
2. Development of innovative wood-based products, using adaptable cost and energy effective production technologies, transformation and modification processes and model-based process optimization methods.
3. Novel products and concepts (new materials, logistics, LCA) for wood recovery practices. Technologies for reusing and recycling bio-based materials.
4. Resource availability and quality: wood mobilization, forecasting wood supply and raw material qualities.
5. Indoor air quality: minimising VOC and formaldehyde emissions.
6. Indoor living space improvement. Design and comfort of multifunctional furniture (elderly people), innovative functionalities for wood-based products.
7. Service life prediction strategies for wooden constructions: mould and decay protection without biocides, low maintenance concepts and fire safety of multistory buildings
8. Timber construction: thermal properties of wooden buildings
9. Green building principles and design, energy efficient building.
10. Development of public pan-European databases on wood as carbon storage, carbon footprinting, ecodesign, EPD and LCA carbon accounting rules (LULUCF).
11. Renewable energy technologies and biomass utilisation.
12. Development of biorefinery business and new concepts, lignin as a secondary raw material
13. Consumer behaviour towards wood-based products and wooden construction. Studies on market and market orientation improvements (living labs).
14. Education and training in the FWC, skills improvement, increasing human potential

Some topics show overlap with already running or finished COST Actions, nevertheless they are included in the list as they were identified of highest interest to for further initiatives.

The first coming collection date for COST Action proposals in the new open call is on 24 March 2015. You are invited to participate in the proposed COST action topics that the Innovawood secretariat plans to launch if sufficient contributors expressed their interest. Everybody is welcome to join the proposed actions providing you are ready to contribute to the proposal preparation. The proposed topic titles are not fixed so they can be changed during the proposal preparation.

In order to prepare the establishment of consortia for new COST action proposals you are invited to fill in the answering form.

Please send it back via email by 2/02/2015 to office@innovawood.com and add as subject “InnovaWood COST Action proposal preparation”.

Compared to previous years, COST has established a new action proposal submission, evaluation, selection and approval procedure. This new procedure, fully Science and Technology-driven, will ensure simple, transparent and competitive proposal evaluation and selection, in line with the bottom-up, open and inclusive principles of COST. The one-stage submission procedure is based upon a proposal of 15 pages. With Horizon 2020 the COST structure changed and proposals will not be collected and evaluated in the FPS domain any longer, instead proposals from all domains will be competing each other directly. More information on the new open call can be found at the COST website.

In addition, an overview of recent COST Actions in the wood science field could be find on the following link.