Workshop & Events

Call for 2025 entries on:

Innovative remediation, monitoring control technologies, products, management options and opportunities machine learning can offer to deal with challenging contaminants, leading to time- and/or cost-efficient sustainable remediation solutions

Deadline for submission: 17 February 2025 COB to the NICOLE Secretariat.

The Awarding Event will take place during the NICOLE & PROMISCES Joint Spring Workshop, held from 27-28 March 2025 in Frankfurt, Germany.

For more than 25 years, NICOLE has undertaken projects and organized workshops, providing a discussion platform in Europe on a sound technical basis for risk based and sustainable management of contaminated land. This is also reflected in NICOLE's name "Network for Industrially Coordinated Sustainable Land Management in Europe". Our network is widely regarded as a leading European network with a truly global reach. Recurring themes are site investigation and remediation technologies, technology and knowledge transfer, risk management and sustainability, cost-efficiency, innovation support and communication. One of NICOLE’s primary missions is the continuous promotion for development and improvement in these fields.

Building on the success of previous awards, NICOLE is proud to announce the NICOLE Innovation Award 2025.

The 2025 call is intended to stimulate and to promote technical innovations that can contribute to an improved practice for successful and sustainable remediation and land management, especially for difficult and “challenging” contaminants.

The NICOLE Innovation Award 2025 is seeking examples of new innovative remediation, monitoring and control technologies, remediation and land management systems and practices, including machine learning opportunities, which can either decrease the lifespan of a remediation project, decrease and/or better forecast the overall remediation cost and/or be able to remediate difficult or challenging contaminants. Submissions capturing all kinds of innovation are welcome, not just new technologies or practices but also fresh thinking and behaviors in new business operating models and practices e.g. new ways of financing or financial modelling, different divestiture programs and/or change of land use. So, if you have a new innovative technology, practice or process which can fulfil one or more of these criteria, you are strongly encouraged to enter it into the competition.

Overall, there is a wide scope for the NICOLE Innovation Award, so the chances are that what you have been pursuing can be entered. The only catch is that the entry must have been proven by a successful field application. Entries which are hypothetical or have not been tested with successful results will not be taken into account.

This award is open to projects from all individuals, organizations or groups of people, irrespective of NICOLE membership.

Entries will be judged on:

• Innovative approach/solution where innovation is considered to be new (invention) and creating value (optimization, streamlining…),
• Demonstrated at least at pilot scale (no lab scale, no “minimal viable product”, …),
• Clear technical description of the innovation,
• Clear mentioning why this is innovative,
• Applicable for NICOLE members.

The Top 3 entries will be offered the opportunity to present their project in front of the members of the NICOLE network during the NICOLE & PROMISCES Joint Spring Workshop, held on 27-28 March 2025 in Frankfurt, Germany, where one of those Top 3 entries will then proceed to win the NICOLE Innovation Award 2025.

The NICOLE Innovation Award is facilitated by NICOLE’s Innovation Working Group. The jury consists of members of the Innovation Working Group, including representatives of the Steering Group. For any questions related to the content or topic of the NICOLE Innovation Award 2025, please contact the NICOLE Secretariat, Ms Chayenne van Dijk.

Time schedule and content of entry:

• Deadline for submission of entries is 17 February 2025 COB.

• Entries need to have a summary and a maximum of 6 pages description, including figures.

• Entries should focus only on technical and scientific content, and not have a commercial character.

• Logos are only permitted on the first page.

• Entries should be sent to the NICOLE Secretariat.

Prizes are:

€1500 FOR THE WINNING INNOVATIVE PROJECT

Pre-selected entries (top 3), unless already a member via their organization, will receive three admission tickets to attend NICOLE workshops (NICOLE organizes 2 workshops a year); in case they are already member via an organization, they may ‘donate’ tickets to a non-member of their choice to attend the workshop in Frankfurt.

Winning authors need to agree to publication of their entry on the NICOLE website and in the NICOLE newsletter, and be prepared to participate in a future technical workshop run by NICOLE.

Footnote:

NICOLE is a network for the stimulation, dissemination and exchange of knowledge about all aspects of industrially contaminated land. With over 100 members from 15 European countries, NICOLE brings together industrial companies and trade organizations (problem holders), service providers and technology developers, universities and independent research organizations (problem solvers), and governmental organizations (policymakers).

The network started in February 1996 as a concerted action under the 4th Framework Program of the European Community. Since February 1999, NICOLE has been self-supporting and is financed by the fees of its members.

Download the Call for Entries here: