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This Agenda for Future Research is part of RESISTIRÉ’s report on solutions for cycle 2. It covers four domains (Care, Work & Pay, Education and Gender-based Violence) and contains the analysis of previous findings from the RESISTIRÉ project, as well as an identification of research gaps. It also puts specific focus on the need for research agendas on intersectional data collection and analysis, and analyses of recovery policy and practice in Europe. It outlines which research questions and topics future research should address, and what questions RESISTIRÉ will focus on in its third and final research cycle.

The Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) deems gender equality to be a crosscutting priority for the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP). Despite this, no specific budget has been allocated to the issue of promoting gender equality, and the issue has not been included among the 11 criteria used by the Commission to assess the plans. RESISTIRÉ analysis of the NRRPs shows that the perspective of women is not sufficiently represented in the plans and very few measures have been taken to concretely address women’s specific needs or the problems they face. Given these shortcomings in the design of the NRRPs, it is imperative that the European Commission take special care to ensure that Monitoring and Evaluation pay special attention to those elements of the performance system that deal specifically with issues related to gender equality

The sudden closure of educational facilities upended the lives of young people, their families, and educators, who were forced to move quickly from traditional onsite teaching to online education. This prolonged suspension of conventional education posed a number of new challenges for students, parents and teaching staff. Students who were already marginalised prior to the pandemic, due to various gender+ vulnerabilities, experienced further detrimental impacts on their educational progress. The experience gained from the global education crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic should be used to develop more resilient education systems that can ensure a balance between the digital and physical space and guarantee that no one is left behind. The insights provided below are developed on the basis of findings from quantitative and qualitative evidence, participatory workshops, and an analysis of National Recovery and Resilience Plans (NRRPs) and other COVID-19 recovery policies.

Most of the National Recovery and Resilience Plans (NRRPs) focused their attention on the economy and finance, support for business, the construction of infrastructures, and economic stabilisation. In most cases the design process of the plans was based on consultations with organisations involved in the production, labour, and economic sectors. Insufficient importance was assigned to engaging with actors representing the interests of vulnerable groups. As a result, even though the European Commission's guide on how to prepare the plans clearly stated the importance of recognising and addressing women and vulnerable groups, in conformity with the principles of the European Pillar of Social Rights, most of the NRRPs lack concrete measures targeting vulnerable groups and address different inequality grounds in cursory terms only. The failure to address gender+ vulnerable and disadvantaged groups in the policy design process means that there is a risk that the NRRPs will not only fail to achieve their set goals, but that their measures will further aggravate the situation of these groups.

Political institutions were not prepared for how much gender-based violence was both triggered and exacerbated by the lockdown restrictions and subsequent lifting of restrictions. While some efforts were made to address gender-based violence in the early pandemic policy responses, it is seldom mentioned in the National Recovery and Resilience Plans (NRRPs) and policies that were subsequently drawn up. Instead, addressing gender-based violence should be a key concern when developing crisis management plans (including prevention, contingency plans, and recovery measures). Policymakers should learn from the COVID-19 crisis in order to design more effective responses to gender-based violence during crisis periods.

The ever-growing importance of the internet and its spread and reach into the physical and social world are developments that have created new risks and that expose people to the threat of digital attacks and abuse. A crisis situation such as the recent pandemic, where these issues have become even more challenging, can be used to test new collaborations and solutions to address these problems. Social media and big tech companies could be a real ally in raising awareness, educating, and preventing the incidence of digital violence. Highlighting corporate responsibility and pressuring tech companies to not only recognise but also address the weaponisation of their platforms and take concrete action to fight this is indispensable for pursuing an equitable and safe digital transformation.

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the significance of a European-level response to crises, for which the development of the National Recovery and Resilience Plans (NRRPs) was an important, yet insufficient, first step. In order to develop the capacity of European countries and the European Union to respond to future crises in ways that do not increase the existing gender+ inequalities or create new ones, there is an urgent need to develop comprehensive, inclusive, multi-actor crisis management plans that build on a gender+ intersectional approach.

In power grids, short-term load forecasting (STLF) is crucial as it contributes to the optimization of their reliability, emissions, and costs, while it enables the participation of energy companies in the energy market. STLF is a challenging task, due to the complex demand of active and reactive power from multiple types of electrical loads and their dependence on numerous exogenous variables. Amongst them, special circumstances—such as the COVID-19 pandemic—can often be the reason behind distribution shifts of load series. This work conducts a comparative study of Deep Learning (DL) architectures—namely Neural Basis Expansion Analysis Time Series Forecasting (N-BEATS), Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM), and Temporal Convolutional Networks (TCN)—with respect to forecasting accuracy and training sustainability, meanwhile examining their out-of-distribution generalization capabilities during the COVID-19 pandemic era. A Pattern Sequence Forecasting (PSF) model is used as baseline. The case study focuses on day-ahead forecasts for the Portuguese national 15-minute resolution net load time series. The results can be leveraged by energy companies and network operators (i) to reinforce their forecasting toolkit with state-of-the-art DL models; (ii) to become aware of the serious consequences of crisis events on model performance; (iii) as a high-level model evaluation, deployment, and sustainability guide within a smart grid context.

Strong winds and heavy rainfall hit western and central Greece on 17–18 September 2020 as the Mediterranean Hurricane (Medicane) “Ianos” made its catastrophic passage through the country. Widespread flooding caused landslides and debris flows, while the erosive forces of water washed away foundation supports and earthworks along swelling rivers, impacting buildings, transport infrastructure, and powerlines. The town of Mouzaki, in Central Greece was one of the hotspots of the event. All five bridges that exist in the area, within a radius of 3 km from the town’s center, suffered extensive damage or complete failure, leading to disruption of transportation and month-long isolation of local communities. The paper presents select outcomes of a comprehensive reconnaissance study where aerial photography and mapping by Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) were used to enhance conventional field investigation and archival research for damage characterization, assessment and recovery. Three dimensional models of select bridge structures are presented and prominent failure patterns are discussed with reference to key response factors and structural characteristics. The paper provides a kaleidoscopic insight into bridge response to a landmark flood event, where the abundance of perishable data was collected in a timely and systematic manner. A universal inadequacy to withstand this flood is identi-fied, raising concerns over what appears to be a new norm of intense weather events in the western Mediterra-nean. Although the use of UAV mapping in disaster reconnaissance has been common practice in the past years, this is a unique case study where UAVs were also employed for monitoring of bridge recovery in a multi-hazard environment. Comparison of imagery captured at different stages after the event allowed inspection of restorations with minimum human interactions amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, it proved useful for the rapid assessment of the impact of a moderate seismic event that affected the damaged structures only a few months after the Medicane. The approach presented provides an effective solution for transport operators man-aging assets in an environment of increasingly severe and complex hazards.

This report highlights the importance of states complying with their obligations under international human rights law in their responses to the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath, in particular those with respect to the rights of women and girls as set out in the 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). Failure to undertake a gender analysis in policy and decision-making with respect to temporary emergency measures to contain the spread of the virus has resulted in variable impacts across different communities and on women within those communities who have experienced disproportionate disadvantage and harm. A gender analysis, therefore, must be carried out, taking into account other intersecting factors that impact women’s lives such as their race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, and able-bodiedness. As the only specific category of women explicitly protected by a separate provision in CEDAW, the situation of rural women provides a useful illustrative case study to show how rurality can operate to create additional disadvantage and contribute to intersectional discrimination. The report examines the position of women in rural areas and the impact of pandemic-related policy responses on their (1) right to adequate living conditions and related right to livelihood; (2) right to security of person; (3) right to healthcare, including reproductive health services; and (4) right to participation in political and public life. Ultimately, the report shows how state failure to comply with the CEDAW obligations has resulted in foreseeable and preventable violations of women’s rights and draws recommendations from the lessons learned.