Changes due to globalisation, the technological revolution and digitalisation are encouraging organisations to develop new forms of collaborative work through virtual teams and communities. These collaborative tools are relevant business strategies as they allow for improved learning and knowledge management and, therefore, contribute to making organisations more innovative, more visible and more competitive.

The characteristics of collaborative work have recently changed as users of geographically dispersed virtual teams or communities have the possibility of combining different technological applications to respond to the demands of the project or task they are carrying out (e.g. wiki, forum, social/corporate network, etc.). In this sense, important changes occur in the nature of the relationships between users, in the processes related to the resolution of the task and its performance (e.g. identification, sense of community, trust, leadership, conflict, productivity, quality of knowledge...) that need to be addressed.

The aim of our research group is to create ‘frontier knowledge’ about the effects that collaborative technologies have on individual and collective well-being from a basic perspective, which is then transferred to the applied context of businesses. This way, we analyse the functioning of virtual teams and communities that work in dynamic environments with complex tasks with a double purpose: a) to develop training strategies and improve their effectiveness, and b) to offer guidelines for the efficient design of these collaborative tools.

Virtual teams (VTs). During the last decade, the study of VTs has consolidated as an extensive area of research with important results and relevant heuristic models have been developed to explain the key aspects of the successful functioning of these groups. The research carried out in recent years by different research teams, including ours, has focused on the differential study of these teams with respect to those that communicate in a conventional way, i.e. "face to face". However, it is now known that these virtual teams have their own idiosyncrasies and, therefore, from a psychosocial and positive perspective, it is advocated to analyse the aspects that influence their well-being and performance. The specific way in which the virtual team is structured (emergence of subgroups according to the processes of social categorisation) as well as having emotional skills to optimise its resources (training in emotion management) are shaped as areas of interest when developing our research.

Furthermore, the cooperation of teams in today's organisations extends to the exchange of knowledge in virtual communities, interest groups in professional social networks or in internal company networks, which extends our research towards the analysis of the process of sharing knowledge in virtual communities. In this research context, the efficient design of virtual communities of practice with a view to improving their sustainability is of particular interest. These can be defined as groups created by the organisation, with visibility of its members, with common purposes and oriented towards sharing knowledge on web platforms. In this sense, our research group aims to investigate the factors that favour their effective and appropriate use for social innovation and knowledge management.

DATS is a Research Group attached to the University Research Institute on Traffic and Road Safety (INTRAS). The research group was created in 1995 and is formed by professors and researchers of renowned prestige.

The aim of the DATS Group is focused on Consulting, Research, Development, Innovation, Training and Dissemination Projects in the fields of Transport, Traffic, Mobility and Road Safety.

It develops its projects both for administrations and institutions as well as for companies, whether public or private, national or international, in order to respond to the needs of its clients, as well as in general to solve the social problems represented by traffic accidents, poverty and environmental degradation across the world, with special attention to developing countries.

Therefore, one of the main activities is the accompaniment in the diagnosis of problems and detection of opportunities, as well as the definition of solutions and strategies to guide decision-making.

The work of the DATS Group has contributed to increase knowledge in the field. In this sense, the group has made an effort to disseminate findings through books, articles in scientific journals and/or scientific and outreaching conferences. Likewise, the group has actively participated in and with mass media with the aim of communicating and raising public awareness.

Consequently, the following services are included in its Service Charter:

• Preparation/Drafting of Strategic Plans for Transport, Logistics, Sustainable Mobility, Local and Urban Planning, Road and Workplace Safety (in-itinere and in-mission accidents).
• Definition, development and implementation of interventions, measures and counter-measures in the fields of Transport, Mobility and Road Safety.
• Legislative, Regulatory and Normative development.
• Deployment of Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS).
• Assessment and recruitment, especially of drivers, both positive and negative, including the development of instruments to achieve these goals.
• Design and teaching of training and education programmes, as well as the necessary teaching tools and resources (including those based on technologies such as Virtual Reality, especially simulators, and Augmented Reality). It is aimed at scholars, professionals, technicians and users/citizens in general.
• Creation of communication and advertising campaigns, including Corporate Social Marketing campaigns.
• Evaluation of Plans, Programmes and interventions, including those related to legislative, regulatory and normative development (Legislative Assessment).

Study on entrepreneurship, creation of companies in general and social companies in particular. Analysis of the concepts of emissary and entrepreneur, their characteristics and implementation of the different theories on entrepreneurship. Implementation of company-creating tools and definition of company business plan. Special impacts on social companies and the concepts of entrepreneurship and social innovation. Study on administration and management of cooperative companies and Social Economy. Its strategic diagnosis, the design of goal systems working towards mission, vision and values, the formulation of corporate and competitive strategies and the implementation of said strategies via organisational design, planning, control and behavioural studies: these are all included. Implementation of Strategic Administration tools in cooperative and other organisations of Social Economy: stakeholders analysis and power-interest matrix, environment analysis, internal analysis through resource auditing and VRIO analysis, analysis for assessment and design of strategies and organisational design variables. All the various group members will work on research involving the aspects of entrepreneurship and management of cooperative companies and Social Economy so as to apply these tools to the resolution of problems affecting these companies and contribute to the creation of new knowledge on the matter, all through competitive multilevel (regional, national, European) research projects.

The research team's main objective is to develop research and training activities aimed at understanding and improving the educational reality of families and children. In addition to this, the specific objectives of our team are aimed at:

• To understand children's needs and perceptions, especially with regard to their rights to protection and participation, and to put forward proposals for improvement in this respect.
• To analyse the main problems and difficulties faced by families and their members, and to develop proposals for improvement.
• To deepen the tools and specific work strategies in the field of family and childhood. Collaborate with various agencies involved in families and children's lives (schools, social services, primary care centres, specialised services, third sector entities, etc.). To develop research and collaboration projects and agreements with different institutions.
• To propose training proposals in relation to families and children aimed at graduates of the different UV degrees and professionals.
• To disseminate the findings of our research team to the scientific community and society as a whole.

All the members of the team are professors at the Universitat de València as well as specialised professionals working in the field of family and children. The team director, as well as other professors, focuses her teaching and research activity mainly in the field of families and children, with theses directed on this subject, research projects and publications in journals and collective works. Among the projects it has directed the research; Design of an instrument to analyse the relationship between filio-parental violence and family structure and educational style; and participated, among others, in the research; Validation of an instrument for the evaluation of family educational styles and establishment of guidelines for the design of intervention programmes with families; (Universitat de València) and; Family practices and co-responsibility: Analysis of values and proposal of educational strategies for the conciliation of personal, social and working life; (Universidad de Barcelona). Among its latest publications we highlight; Families and minors: challenges and pedagogical proposals.

Likewise, it is responsible for and participates in different specialised training initiatives aimed at both graduates and professionals in this field (Postgraduate course "Specialised intervention with families and children: procedures and techniques for action"; training and research programmes in family intervention aimed at professionals from the specialised family and child services (SEAFIs) of the Valencian Community; national and international congresses -ERNAPE and AIFREF-; conferences; courses, etc.).

Legal analysis of national and international tax regulations from a constitutional, EU law and comparative perspective. Verification of the legality of the procedures for applying the taxes that form part of the tax systems.

The study of floods in watercourses is one of the key pillars for understanding flood risk in Mediterranean environments. These are small basins, with ephemeral circulation, whose configuration is determined by a few high-energy events, where certain hydrogeomorphological thresholds are exceeded, which cause the greatest changes in the fluvial system and the main dangers for man.

Establishing the risk pattern of these basins implies knowing from which rainfall thresholds (quantity, intensity and spatial distribution) surface runoff occurs, and which flow thresholds generate the main problems in the floodplain. Our group is dedicated to estimating these hydrogeomorphological thresholds, based on the detailed study of extreme events. The analysis contemplated three scales of work: a) a general scale, which encompasses the territory assigned to the Júcar Hydrographic Confederation (43. 000 km2), where precipitation thresholds are addressed in relation to the synoptic situation, relief and sea temperature; b) a basin scale (pilot basins of Carraixet, Poyo, La Rambla de la Castellana, Rambla de Gallinera and Riu Vernissa), where runoff production thresholds are studied, in relation to the hydrogeomorphological configuration and land uses; c) a more detailed scale (pilot basins of Carraixet, Poyo, La Rambla de la Castellana, Rambla de Gallinera and Riu Vernissa), where runoff production thresholds are studied in relation to the hydrogeomorphological configuration and land uses; and c) a more detailed, flood plain scale, where risk levels are analysed in relation to overflow, natural hazard and vulnerability thresholds.

The study of specific episodes is based on data from the SAIH-Júcar (Automatic Hydrological Information System), since 1989. Based on this data, a system for storing and filtering the information has been developed that allows working on different time scales, from five minutes to the annual scale. With these records, rainfall episodes are defined and characterised with indicators of accumulated rainfall, intensity, duration, torrential rainfall, irregularity and persistence. The behaviour of extreme rainfall is analysed for different time scales of observation (5', 15', 30', 1 h, 2h, 3h, 4h, 6h, 12 h and 24h) and its spatial distribution in the territory of the CHJ. The maxima are studied in relation to the geographical factors of altitude, orientation and distance from the sea. Risk patterns are also studied in terms of hazard and vulnerability factors of the population, taking into account their spatial distribution and according to the characteristics of spatial occupation, in terms of temporal patterns (days, nights, working hours and public holidays).

All the information is crossed with the data provided by the Civil Protection Services and the Insurance Compensation Consortium in order to obtain relationships between the rainfall indicators and the categories of damage caused by the episodes. This joint study allows us to evaluate the degree of adequacy of the rainfall thresholds in force in the National Plan for the Prediction and Monitoring of Adverse Phenomena, METEOALERTA.

In addition, thanks to a research agreement with the Valencian Agency for Security and Emergency Response, intense episodes are analysed in relation to the calls to 1.1.2 CV (with special attention to on-site rainfall). On the other hand, the Integrated Flood Danger Map of the Valencian Community (MIPICOVA) has been drawn up based on the integration of the official cartography of the Territorial Flood Risk Plan of the Valencian Community (PATRICOVA) and the National Flood Zone Mapping System (SNCZI).

Flood risk in wadis is currently being assessed in the context of climate change (considering new trends in precipitation inputs to Mediterranean systems and response hydrographs).

The Social Welfare Policy Research Group, belonging to the Universitat de València (Spain), is an international reference group specialised in social research, innovation and technology, technical advice and training in the field of social policies. We develop basic and applied research with an interdisciplinary and holistic approach on economic, social, political and technical sustainability of welfare systems, advising the Administration and companies in the design, planning and implementation of resources and policies of social welfare and sustainability.

The group is made up of an interdisciplinary team led by Jorge Garcés Ferrer, Prince of Asturias Professor at Georgetown University in Washington DC (USA) and 20 researchers from different disciplines at the Universitat de València. In turn, the group collaborates with entities and universities in the European Union, the United States, South America and Africa.

Vision: to improve the well-being, sustainability and quality of life of society.

Mission: to achieve greater effectiveness and efficiency in public policies, private entities and the third sector, by means of innovative, integral and inter-institutional proposals through a team with an interdisciplinary and multi-centre approach.

Challenge for 2030: to innovate public policies through information and communication technologies, ICTs.

The Research Group offers the best service in the area of public policy and to do so uses an interdisciplinary team, connected internationally and with a great knowledge of each area of work. Not only its source of knowledge and capacity, but also its cohesion, dynamism and way of working, allow the Group to continue growing towards excellence. The team teaches on degree courses of the Universitat de València, official Universitat de València master's degrees, own master's degrees and postgraduate courses, as well as other training courses.

The concept of “language variation” is key for the study of the evolution of languages and of social, professional and educational communicative systems. Social, cultural, health, economic, technological and educational transformations are developed, conveyed and reflected through their linguistic and communicative manifestations. The aim of the group is to study the progress that current society is undergoing through the analysis of the essential linguistic variables that are involved and interact in human communication. These variables depend on the profiles of speakers (e.g. idiolectal, dialectal variation, according to gender, age, social status, level of education, etc.) and on the uses they make of language according to the interpersonal identities they adopt (i.e. register variation), the codes they use to communicate (i.e. variation of mode), the different textual platforms they use (i.e. variation of discursive genre) and the different persuasive strategies with which they convey their intention and image (i.e. stylistic variation). The analysis of these variables requires approaching the study of communication at different scales, from its macro and hyper discursive aspect (e.g. interrelation between the variables that interact in business or academic communication, or the complexity of multimodal communication of social media and digital platforms) and also of its micro discursive components (e.g. variation of phonetic, morphological, lexical and syntactic units). As highlighted by experts in language variation (Bayley, 2013; Chambers and Schilling, 2018), in order to address comprehensive and innovative studies in this field, it is necessary to keep up to date the methodology needed to define and classify the categories, criteria and parameters essential to understand and analyse these variables and their interrelation.

Some of these have been extensively studied (e.g. dialectal variation) and others are currently being studied (e.g. variation of discursive genre), but there are still many ambiguous and controversial aspects of other relevant variables, such as those involved in communicative register variation. This type of interpersonal and contextual variation covers the whole spectrum of human interaction, from that which takes place in the most sophisticated and conventional contexts to that which takes place in the most intimate and familiar settings. There are different degrees of dependence and interrelation between various registers in the same communicative act, which has posed a difficult challenge for experts, particularly when it comes to accessing real data and compiling large and representative corpora. Moreover, throughout history, its study has been approached from many different perspectives, including heterogeneous, ambiguous and confusing variables that have generated controversy within this field of research. This theoretical heterogeneity and methodological complexity have hindered the development of in-depth and wide-ranging studies on this language variety, which could effectively transfer their results to society and the labour market, offering practical methods and tools for understanding, learning and mastering it. There are other variables in a similar situation (e.g. idiolectal variation, stylistic variation, genolects, chronolects, etc.). 

With the aim of contributing to the advancement of this field, the main objectives of the SILVAGroup are the following:

1. To delve into the fundamental categories, criteria and parameters for the study and analysis of language variation, and the factors involved in its current behaviour in the English language and other majority languages, such as Spanish and German.
2. To investigate language variation from a comprehensive pragmatic approach, highlighting its interpersonal and multimodal dimensions in its fluctuation throughout everyday communication from public to private settings.
3. To work from emerging technologies, corpus linguistics and other multidisciplinary fields of human communication, contrasting advances and results between languages.
4. To design methodologies for the study of language variation, useful in the search and detection of distinctive features that shed light on definition and typology of its parameters of analysis, and also practical for learning and mastering them, especially at a social and professional level.
5. To participate in platforms and projects for the dissemination of research, especially in international conferences and impact publications, in order to encourage further study of RV and to publicise the results of the group’s activity.
6. To constitute a national and international support platform for research in this field and for its dissemination.

The group’s research activity will be structured from the IULMA, based at the Universitat de València, to which most of the members of the group belong, and is made up of a multidisciplinary team of both young and experienced researchers from the UV, UPV and UA.

All the members of the group share the essential research lines for the study of RV: language variation, corpus linguistics and contrastive linguistics. The group also has experts in other relevant research lines. This multidisciplinary nature provides this team with the advantage of approaching language variation from different but complementary areas of knowledge and research lines, allowing an innovative depth and perspective and results that can really bring a significant advance in the field.

Researchers involved in this research group have been working for several years on the study of youth in its different sides, in the central aspects of its development and of transition to adult life.

Education, participation and work are the three fundamental dimensions on which the analysis is focused, bearing in mind all the processes related to the transition to adult life and their life trajectory's design. Labour insertion in a world of work in deep transformation, the decision to become independent and the participation in public life are the central aspects of this group's research.

The intense stage of social change that Western societies have been experiencing for several decades now requires a thorough study of its consequences on a group that will be involved in future development stages. Work transformation, globalisation, new technologies, the crisis of national representative systems and, in recent years, the economic crisis are profoundly transforming Western societies and changing the processes of socialization.

Young people represent a group of great interest in the study of society in a double sense: on the one hand, because of their current condition and because of all the processes related to socialization and preparation for adult life, such as education, training for responsible participation in political life or transition to adult life in a phase of profound change and pluralization of family structures; on the other hand, because they are the foundation of the future society. The transition from Fordist society to post-Fordist society is entailing a deep crisis in the social structures of Western societies and a progressive decline in Institutions, as Dubet teaches us. This is linked to an intensive process of individualisation, in which the individuals themselves will have to build a new social reality, new social structures capable of organising collective life in a way more suited to the new challenges. This is the main challenge that new generations have to face, and the study of these processes must therefore be focused on the study of young people, their condition and the main processes of transformation in which they are immersed.

Globalisation, on the one hand, and the process of European unification on the other hand, also impose a comparative reflection that tries to separate the specificities of concrete contexts, of common patterns, that can help to read phenomena of global transformation, such as those caused by the digital revolution or by the intensification of international mobility. None of these processes can be properly read without resorting to the use of the gender perspective to provide the analytical gaze with the appropriate richness and depth. New phenomena such as precarious work and its consequences, new life paths, new family structures, territorial mobility and new forms of communication and participation are the phenomena at the centre of the group's research activity. For an adequate development of the research activity, the group has decided to formalize the richness of its studies in 3 lines of research.

The first one is focused on the study of work and its transformation in the digital and global society. The second one is directed towards the analysis of young people's different reactions to the crisis, and not only do we refer to the recent economic recession, but also to the structural crisis that is transforming our society at a very fast pace. Finally, the third line of research aims to analyse all the processes related to the socialization of young people, from the level of primary and informal socialization to education, understood as an institutionalized process of young people's insertion into society.

Cotino (Director) has been the PI for three consecutive national projects on these issues, one focused on e-government (2005-2008), another on freedom and participation in the social web (2010-2012) and the current one on Open Government (2013-2015), a subject on which continuity is sought. The new R&D&I project of the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness is pending resolution. It is entitled “The progress of Open Government. Constitutional legal regime of the implementation of transparency policies, access to information, open data, collaboration and participation, especially through ICTs and e-government” DER2015-65810-P (pending resolution). Cotino is also PI. The results are more than evident, both on the web and in hundreds of publications and papers. Besides some readjustments, this time the internationalisation is boosted by strengthening the foreign team. All the members of the team have worked and cooperated actively in recent years.

This UV group also includes two members who are not part of the Ministry’s project, two point researchers in Spain, Fernández Salmerón and Valero Torrijos, from Administrative Law.

The legal treatment of contents and freedoms on the Internet, liability of providers, hate speech, limits, censorship, etc. will continue to be addressed. On the other hand, given the relatively ethereal concept of open government and the predominance of other disciplines, a constitutional legal treatment is needed to legally decant, sediment and distil all these changes and advances that have just taken place in the last few years with respect to the contents of the concept of Open Government (transparency, participation, collaboration, open data, etc.) and its projection in the legal framework as well as the fundamental rights that are involved. Continuity is sought as we are at a crucial moment in the development of the Open Government. We are on the culmination of a process of fundamentalising the right to transparency and access to public information. This process has not been completed neither by the ECHR, nor the CJEU, nor, especially, by our Constitutional Court and Supreme Court. It is going to be especially important to analyse the interpretation by data protection authorities, transparency authorities, ombudsmen with jurisdiction over this area, and, of course, the ordinary and constitutional courts.

The aim is to analyse and monitor both the application of the transparency law and new administrative laws and reform of the law on re-use, the decree implementing the law on transparency, 2015, as well as the wave of regional laws in the 2013-2015 period in the autonomous community.

Beyond the mere normative analysis, it is a matter of taking into account the practical implementation and policies of open government policies, especially in Spain at the different town, region and state levels. It is a booming issue in 2015-16 in Spain. However, given the transnational nature of the phenomenon, it will also be monitored from a comparative and supranational European and Latin American perspective.

The aim is not only to analyse the constitutional legal development of open government, but also, as far as possible, to influence it on the different legal operators.
It has a solid experience in the dissemination of high quality legal content in classic formats (more than nine collective works and ten congresses), partly through www.derechotics.com or the Cyberlaw clinic and highly visible Twitter profiles of some of the members. In addition to generating and disseminating academic knowledge, it will be conducted an observatory of e-administration 2.0, an analysis of websites of Spanish and international reference; a document of practical legal recommendations and precautions.