Since 2025, MRC has been a partner of ITTECOP, a French national incentive research program dedicated to integrating ecological and landscape considerations into infrastructure planning and delivery. Through a four-year commitment (2025–2028), MRC contributes to funding research projects selected through a competitive call for proposals, supporting the development of scientific knowledge at the intersection of infrastructure, biodiversity, and climate change.
ITTECOP is coordinated by the French Ministry for Ecological Transition and Territorial Cohesion (MTECT), in partnership with ADEME and the OFB (Office Français de la Biodiversité), with the FRB contributing its expertise in research governance and project management. The program addresses a wide spectrum of infrastructure types — transport (rail, road, waterways), energy (transmission and production), and interface infrastructure (stations, ports, airports) — and analyzes their effects across ecological, territorial, landscape, social, economic, and heritage dimensions.
The program’s ambition is to foster and sustain a research community capable of anticipating future needs in public decision-making support, and of improving the relationship between infrastructure, landscapes, and biodiversity. Its 2024 call for proposals — “Challenges Facing Infrastructure in Territories Between Global Change and Biodiversity Decline” — resulted in the selection of 35 research projects, funded jointly by ADEME, the OFB, and private sector partners including MRC.