Efforts to make buildings environmentally sustainable often focus on the technical side, such as energy efficiency. But there is more to sustainability than just energy efficiency.

When a ship runs aground, or two vessels crash into each other, the damaged one may lose its stability, or worse, sink. But imagine if after a ship accident, balloons popped up like car airbags to keep the disabled vessel upright and afloat .

Wherever fires occur, they strongly affect the air we breathe. They even affect the composition of the atmosphere on a global scale.

Around the world more and more babies are born preterm, according to a WHO report from 2012. Despite medical advances, very small preterm infants may suffer from various complications and diseases, or even die .

Talking or reading. Texting a message or listening. The dilemma of choosing between various tasks is not an invention of the modern information age. Humans and all vertebrates have to prioritise their actions.

Global warming is leading to an increase in mosquito-borne diseases such as malaria . It is considered the plague of developing countries. According to the World Health Organisation , it is responsible for one child death every minute.

The children of prisoners are one of the largest vulnerable groups of children in Europe. They carry the stigma of their parents’ deeds. And some of them are exposed to social exclusion.

It is estimated that 800,000 children throughout the European Union have an imprisoned parent. The real number is not known, because in no country do prisons systematically record data about the children of offenders.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer ( IARC ) has produced a handbook detailing the scientific evidence on tobacco pricing and tobacco control entitled: Effectiveness of Tax and Price Policies for Tobacco Control .

Smoking is the largest single cause of preventable premature death and disease , accounting for some 650,000 premature deaths each year in the European Union, according to official EU statistics.

Imagine that data could be transposed into a tactile experience. This is precisely what the CEEDs project, funded by the EU, promises. It uses integrated technologies to support human experience, when attempting to make sense of very large datasets.

Graphene FET Flagship is an ambitious European project focused on the eponymous new wonder material. Graphene, a one-atom thick layer of carbon, is light, transparent and strong, whose characteristics have yet to be fully discovered.

A technology relying on holography, that involves measuring mechanical deformations, as signature of artworks has previously been developed to address the protection of cultural heritage.

Multiple disasters can have a cumulative impact leading to great human and financial loss. The awareness of all possible risks is of fundamental importance.

The German village of Cappel is home to one of the greatest historical music instruments. The ornate baroque organ here is the work of Arp Schnitger, the grand master of German organ construction who built it in around 1680 for Hamburg.

We are used to the idea of vulnerable environments and species. We are also familiar with cultural vulnerability. For example when traditional peoples meet seductive modern ways of life.

Just like earthquakes, volcanic eruptions are extremely difficult to accurately predict. Yet, the eruption of the Santa Ana Volcano in El Salvador was predicted a few days before it happened on 1 st October 2005.

Martin McKee recently expressed his views at the 2012 European Health Forum in Bad Gastein, Austria. Can we measure the impact of austerity on people’s health? The human cost of austerity has been largely invisible because of lack of data.

Imagine that a hundred years ago it was possible to take the ‘digital fingerprint’ of Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa and store it in an international database.

Communication by Gaze Interaction (COGAIN) is a project that has gathered together Europe's leading experts in computer-integrated eye tracking. The benefit of their work goes to all citizens with physical motor impairments.