21.04.2011 - 30.06.2011

Announcement

of Federal Ministry of Education and Research Regulations Governing Funding in the Area of "Securing Food and Food Supply Chains" within the framework of the Federal Government's "Research for Civil Security" programme

of 14 April 2011

Guaranteeing the safety and security of food products and their supply chain is of central importance for both society and industry. The relevant technical and organizational challenges are increasing as a result of changing risks in the context of globalization and climate change. Furthermore, one must also consider the risks from organized crime, major incidents and terrorism.
With this call, the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) intends to support research on innovative security solutions for the protection of food and food supply chains under the Federal Government's "Research for Civil Security" programme. Applicants are invited to submit interdisciplinary research projects, taking into account technological and societal dimensions. Important criteria for funding are the innovativeness, holistic character and large-scale effectiveness of the approach, consideration of all relevant stakeholders and the importance of the contribution for increasing civil security.

1 Funding purpose and legal basis

1.1 Funding purpose

The "Research for Civil Security" programme (http://www.sicherheitsforschungsprogramm.de) considers security research in an overall context. The programme focuses on improving the protection of citizens against threats resulting inter alia from terrorism, organized crime, natural disasters and major technical incidents. The research is expected to provide solutions that will make innovative contributions to civil security in the field of securing food products and their supply chain, giving serious consideration to technological, economic and societal dimensions.

This call is to be seen in connection with the "Action Plan for Consumer Protection in the Feed Chain"¹ and the "Food Safety Strategies"² of the Federal Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection, the Federal Government's "Freight Transport and Logistics Masterplan"³ and the "National Research Strategy Bioeconomy 2030"⁴of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research.

The aim is to achieve a high level of practicability and marketability in the results produced by involving the entire innovation chain from research to industry to end-users. End-users within the meaning of the Security Research Programme include public authorities, security and emergency services (police, customs, disaster relief, and other aid organizations) and infrastructure operators (e.g. transport and logistics providers, trading firms, operators of storage facilities and transportation hubs for goods and commodities as well as producers of essential goods).

1.2 Legal basis

Project grants will be awarded in accordance with the BMBF's standard terms and conditions for grants on an expenditure or cost basis and the administrative regulations (VV) under section 44 of the Federal Budget Code (BHO). There is no legal entitlement to funding. The funding provider will make a decision after due assessment of the circumstances and within the framework of the budget funds available. The European Commission has approved the programme.

2 Object of funding

Funding will be provided to collaborative projects which develop and conduct research into innovative solutions for securing food and food supply chains in order to improve the protection of society against threats resulting inter alia from terrorism, organized crime, natural disasters or major technical incidents. The projects must aim beyond the current state of the art of research. The starting point for the projects should be an existing or emerging threat, taking into consideration failure risks and the potential consequences, for example supply shortages resulting from the breakdown of production processes or the spread of diseases following the infection of the population with a pathogen.

The emphasis on a comprehensive security scenario is intended to avoid the development of isolated, individual solutions in favour of flexible system innovations. Suitable partners should be selected to integrate the respective sub-aspects of the scenario into the collaborative project. It is important that the work to be performed is of a scientific nature, including not only the natural sciences and engineering, but also the humanities and the social sciences. The envisaged solutions must be compatible with national and international laws and legal provisions, regulations, provisions and standards, or be geared towards improving or harmonizing such standards.

Project proposals should take the aspects of prevention, early detection, reaction and damage limitation into account. Consideration should be given to technologies and measures to ensure the safety of food products and their base materials as well as to concepts for securing the entire food supply chain from the production stage to the consumer.

Possible aspects of research in the scenarios may be, for example:

• Development of methods for the early identification of risks, risk assessment, risk perception and assessment of the impact of risks
• Development of methods for spatial and time-related dynamic threat analyses involving simulation models and epidemiological studies
• Study of the causes, influence and impact of economic and ecological change on the food industry and on food and food supply security
• Risk and security management concepts to increase the efficiency and resilience of the food industry and food supply, also taking into account alternative supply chains and emergency supply strategies
• Technical and organizational solutions to increase interoperability and cooperation between security authorities, companies and the public, for example by improved information and communications systems, optimized control and operations strategies as well as decision-support and assistance systems
• Efficient methods for detecting dangerous biological and chemical substances, for example near real-time, field-capable sensor platforms for emergency teams, inline and long-term monitoring methods to improve security management in companies Development of technologies to ensure product authenticity and increase the tamper-resistance of logistics systems
• Development of concepts and methods for innovative, coordinated food controls
• Methods to assess hazards and identify illegal food imports and other suspicious transactions involving, for example, organized crime, imports of pirate products in the food industry and imports from high-risk countries
• Development of holistic standardization concepts, for example for standardizing test procedures and evaluation methods for detection systems
• Studies of security perception and methods to create greater security awareness in the animal feed and food products supply chain and among the general public
• Improved concepts for communicating risks and crises situations, for example methods to deal effectively with uncertainty in public communication in crisis situations, the role of the media and the Internet and the intentional and non-intentional consequences of the information communicated.

The proposals for collaborative projects must include the following key features:

• Consistent use of the latest findings in science and research
• Detailed description of the security scenario, taking into account all relevant parameters
• Presentation of a robust analysis of threats and/or requirements for the selected scenario
• Clear improvement over current security standards
• Clearly formulated project goal, including the envisaged increase in security, economic efficiency and acceptance.

Technological as well as societal issues are of importance in this context. Societal issues include, for example, aspects of security culture, ethical aspects, value conflicts, threat perception, security and crisis communication, legal framework conditions, data protection requirements for technology design, privacy protection, acceptance studies, analyses of threats and causes, economic aspects, and human-technology interaction. These societal issues must be adequately taken into account and research and development projects must address these issues by linking research and development work in combination with technological questions. Furthermore, funding can also be granted to separate projects dealing with basic and cross-cutting societal issues.

Proposals are invited for collaborative projects. Research institutions (non-university, university), companies and end-users should be involved as partners. As a rule, the project duration will be three years.

3 Funding recipients

Research proposals may be submitted by commercial companies (which are headquartered and exploit their results primarily in Germany), universities, research and scientific institutions, public authorities and their research facilities, as well as similar institutions. As a rule, however, universities and research and science institutions should be involved via R&D (research and development) subcontracts awarded by commercial companies as part of a collaborative project. Research institutions which receive their basic funding from both the Federal Government and the Länder can only be awarded project funding under certain conditions. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are expressly invited to participate; their involvement will be taken into account when evaluating the proposed projects.

The BMBF aims to increase the share of universities of applied sciences which receive research funding.

Universities of applied sciences are therefore particularly invited to participate in the collaborative projects - preferably within the framework of R&D subcontracts awarded by commercial companies (see also para 7.3 below).

4 Prerequisites for funding

The partners in a collaborative project must formalize their cooperation by concluding a cooperation agreement. Before a funding decision is taken, the cooperation partners must prove that they have reached a basic agreement on certain criteria stipulated by the BMBF.

For further details, please refer to the BMBF form 0110, which can be found online at http://www.kp.dlr.de/profi/easy/bmbf/pdf/0110.pdf.

As a rule, the coordinator of the collaborative project should be nominated by an industrial partner or end user.
Cooperation with European partners is desirable. Applicants should, in their own interest, familiarize themselves with the EU (European Union) Research Framework Programme and examine whether the envisaged project includes specific European components that would make it eligible for exclusive or additional EU funding (see, for examplehttp://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/cooperation/security_en.html). The result of this examination should be briefly described in the application for national funding.

5 Type, scope and rates of funding

Funds will be awarded in the form of non-repayable project grants.

The basis for calculating the grants for commercial companies are the project-related costs eligible for funding, up to 50% of which can as a rule be covered by government grants, depending on the project's relevance to application. The BMBF's policy requires an appropriate own contribution towards the eligible costs incurred - as a rule of at least 50%.

The basis for calculating the grants for universities, research and science institutions and similar establishments is the eligible project-related expenditure (in the case of the Helmholtz centres and the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft FhG the eligible project-related costs), which can receive up to 100% funding in individual cases.

The European Commission's Community Framework for State Aid for Research, Development and Innovation must be taken into account when determining the rates of funding. The Community Framework allows differentiated rules on extra percentage points for SMEs, which may result in a higher rate of funding. The EU's definition of SMEs applies (http://www.kp.dlr.de/profi/easy/bmbf/pdf/0119.pdf).

6 Other terms and conditions

The Nebenbestimmungen für Zuwendungen auf Kostenbasis des BMBF an Unternehmen der gewerblichen Wirtschaft für Forschungs- und Entwicklungsvorhaben (Auxiliary Terms and Conditions for Funds Provided by the BMBF to Commercial Companies for Research and Development Projects on a Cost Basis) will be part of the notification of award for grants on a cost basis.

The Allgemeine Nebenbestimmungen für Zuwendungen zur Projektförderung (General Auxiliary Conditions for Grants for the Promotion of Projects) and the Besondere Nebenbestimmungen für Zuwendungen des BMBF zur Projektförderung auf Ausgabenbasis (Special Auxiliary Terms and Conditions for Funds Provided by the BMBF for the Promotion of Projects on an Expenditure Basis) will be part of the notification of award for grants on an expenditure basis.

7 Procedure

7.1 Involvement of a project management organization

The Federal Ministry of Education and Research has entrusted the following project management organization with implementing the call for proposals:

VDI Technologiezentrum GmbH
Projektträger Sicherheitsforschung
VDI-Platz 1
40468 Düsseldorf
Germany
The contact person is:
Dr. Sandra Börner
Phone: +49 (0) 2 11 / 62 14 - 364
Fax: +49 (0) 2 11 / 62 14 - 484
e-mail: boerner@vdi.de

All project outlines must be submitted using the official form, which can be downloaded from http://sicherheitsforschung.vditz.de/aktuelle-bekanntmachungen/ or obtained from the project management organization VDI Technologiezentrum (see above).

Further information, guidelines and the auxiliary terms and conditions are available at http://www.kp.dlr.de/profi/easy/formular.html.

An information event for this call is to be held on 16 May 2011. Further information is available at http://sicherheitsforschung.vditz.de/aktuelle-bekanntmachungen/.

7.2 Two-phase funding procedure

The funding procedure will take place in two phases.

7.2.1 Submission and selection of project outlines

In the first phase, hard copies of the project outlines are to be sent by post and soft copies in electronic form to the project management organization VDI Technologiezentrum GmbH by 30 June 2011 at the latest.
The deadline for submission is not a cut-off date. However, it may not be possible to consider project outlines received belatedly.
The collaboration partners, represented by the coordinator, should in each case submit to the project management organization a project outline of a maximum 20 A4 pages (including annexes, 12 point font) in a form which can be evaluated.

The project outlines must be structured as follows:

1. Goals
   1.1  Overall objective of the project, summary of the project proposal
   1.2 Description of the security scenario, scientific and/or technical working objectives, envisaged innovations
   1.3 Project consortium: Project coordinator, distribution of roles
2. State of the art and applicants' own work
   2.1 State of the art
   2.2 Patents filed (by applicants and third parties)
   2.3 Previous work of the applicants
3. Work plan
   Detailed description of the planned work of the partners in the collaboration (including sub-contractors, if appropriate, and including all scientific and technical issues relevant to the project as well as the proposed solutions).
4. Utilization plan
   Utilization plan (scientific and technical utilization as well as commercialization of the results by the partners involved), translation into marketable security solutions, procurement, strategies for action and forms of organization, provisions, legal framework conditions, relevance of the results for guidelines and standardization, etc.
   
   The utilization plan must provide special information about any utilization activity which is linked to a public procurement measure or requires an amendment of applicable law.
   The utilization plan must include information on compatibility with relevant national and international legal provisions, regulations and standards.
5. Network plan
   Work packages, handover points, milestones and implementing decisions shown over time.
6. Funding schedule
   Estimate of overall costs and breakdown of funding requirements for each individual partner in the collaboration.

Applicants are free to add further points which they consider to be significant for the evaluation of their proposal.
Collaboration partners whose projects are co-financed by industrial partners or other agencies must indicate the amount of external funds expected. A legal claim cannot be derived from the submission of a project outline.

The project outlines received will be evaluated in accordance with the following criteria:

• Significant contribution to the programme's goal of improving the security of the population
• Clear relevance to the content of the call for proposals
• Clearly identifiable innovativeness and knowledge gain
• Specific involvement of end users
• Holistic character and large-scale effectiveness of the approach, taking societal goals and impact into account
• Practicability and marketability of the envisaged solution and its optimized economic leverage
• Quality of the project consortium, involvement of all relevant stakeholders
• Involvement of SMEs.

Suitable project outlines will then be selected for funding on the basis of the evaluation. The project management organization will inform the collaboration coordinator in writing of the BMBF's decision (the result of the selection procedure). The coordinator will, in turn, inform the partners involved in a collaborative project of the result of the evaluation of their project outline. The BMBF and the project management organization reserve the right to consult independent experts when evaluating the project outlines received.

7.2.2 Submission of formal applications for funding and decision-making procedure

In a second phase, applicants whose project outlines have been evaluated positively will be invited to submit a formal application for funding on which a decision will be taken following final evaluation by the BMBF.
The approval, payment and accounting for the funds as well as the proof and examination of the proper use and, if necessary, the revocation of the award and the reclaiming of the funds awarded are governed by the administrative regulations pertaining to section 44 of the Federal Budget Code (BHO) and sections 48 to 49a of the Administrative Procedure Act (VwVfG).

7.3 Special information for universities of applied sciences

Universities of applied sciences which have been successful in the above selection and decision-making procedure for the collaborative projects (cf. para 7.2 above) may receive additional funding. Applications can be made for further funding for an additional research project conducted by a "New technologies qualification or profiling group". The topic and content of this second, separate application must bear reference to the theme of the collaborative project. However, the additional research project must include advanced or new R&D issues and differ clearly from the tasks of the original application in order to avoid redundancy. The work plans/research activities and staffing schedules of the two applications must not overlap. This additional funding is to be used by a small project team to achieve an improved research profile and research expertise in the subject area of the call (bachelor/master/doctoral degrees, specialist publications, research marketing). Evaluations and funding decisions are internal BMBF procedures.

Further information (legal basis, prerequisites for funding as well as "Hinweise für die Erstellung von Projektvorschlägen" (Notes on drafting project proposals, etc. ) can be obtained from the BMBF, Division 515 "Research at Universities of Applied Sciences", Heinemannstr. 2, 53175 Bonn, Phone: + 49 (0) 228 / 99 57-34 or from the BMBF's homepage at http://www.bmbf.de/de/1956.php .

8 Entry into force

These funding regulations will enter into force on the date of publication in the Federal Gazette (Bundesanzeiger) and expire at the end of the first funding period in 2011.

Bonn, 14 April 2011
Federal Ministry of Education and Research

Dr. Wolf Junker
Head of Security Research Division

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¹ The Federal Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection presented a strategic concept for increasing security and transparency for consumer protection in the feed chain in its "Action Plan for Consumer Protection in the Feed Chain", January 2011, available at http://www.bmelv.de
² The Federal Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection presented the "Food Safety Strategies" in November 2008, BMELV, http://www.bmelv.de
³ The Federal Government presented a strategic concept for the future organization of goods traffic in the "Transport and Logistics Master Plan", July 2008, available at http://www.bmvbs.de

⁴ The call supports in particular the priority area "Producing healthy and safe food" of the "National Research Strategy Bioeconomy 2030" of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, presented in December 2010, available at http://www.bmbf.de