The scientific research prizes from Barcelona City Council, with a call launched in October 2020, come from the Covid fund which was set up to help the city respond to the Covid-19 crisis.

The call attracted 65 projects, with projects by women predominating in terms of participation and among the 15 winning projects, with 23 people benefitting.

In addition, all the projects were proposed by young members of the science community, as the call sought to boost young Barcelona talent and limited participation to the under-40s.

Fifteen winning projects with various approaches

The winning projects in the scientific awards stand out for tackling many different areas, such as mobility and public space, handling of data, housing, waste management, energy inequalities and more.

The fifteen winning projects were:

• Integrated management model of the Besòs water resources in the face of climate change: solutions for self-sufficiency and resilience of the water system in the Barcelona metropolitan area (86,987,34 euros).
• The “fifteen-minute city”: post-pandemic mobility dynamics in the city of proximity (96,617,00 euros).
• Geothermal energy to promote the degradation of organic compounds found in Barcelona’s groundwater (70,857,00 euros).
• New indicators for the right to the city: digital technologies, emotions and inequalities (95,065,08 euros).
• The impact of public spaces to improve health and well-being in Barcelona from a feminist perspective (97,831,00 euros).
• Cohabitem Barcelona: five case studies in Ciutat Vella for urban reuse and the promotion of innovative production models (99,682,05 euros).
• Simulating the spread of the Covid-19 outbreak: a risk forecasting tool considering socio-economic and gender inequalities in Barcelona (72,000,00 euros).
• Infrastructures for independent living: participatory research to rethink housing, care and community in times of pandemic (78,769,74 euros).
• Energy inequalities: urban segregation and access to energy in the metropolitan area of Barcelona under conditions of health, social and environmental crisis (41,100,00 euros).
• Tactical interventions in public space: a participatory diagnosis based on listening (39.888,67 euros).
• Housing and health in times of pandemic and beyond (57,530,00 euros).
• An automatic data discovery approach to improve Barcelona’s data ecosystem (72,113,03 euros).
• RePLANTegem (Reconsider) school environments (100,000,00 euros).
• Assessment of the efficiency of urban drainage systems to reduce polluting assets and make water use more sustainable (99,011,48 euros).
• Expo-Bar: detection of harmful chemical substances that accumulate in pregnant women and in Barcelona’s wastewater treatment plants (90,750,00 euros).

Barcelona Science Plan 2020-2023

Municipal policies in the realm of science fall within the Barcelona Science Plan 2020-2023. The guiding principles for its rollout are based around giving visibility to the international scope of the city’s university and science institutions to generate and strengthen alliances at a European level; allocating specific funding to research to find innovative solutions which benefit people; bringing science closer to local people and fostering vocations through so-called citizen science, as well as incentivising the link between art, science and technology.