In June and July 2022, PoliRural organised a series of webinars with the intention of promoting key concepts and results to external stakeholders. These webinars serve as a capacity building resource that can be freely consulted by anyone anytime to learn about the PoliRural approach and how it was implemented in practice.
The series covered the main concepts and tools used by the twelve pilot testbeds to advance rural policy objectives at national, regional and sub-regional levels. As well as explaining concepts like foresight, Text Mining (TM), System Dynamics Modeling (SDM), and a mission-oriented approach (MOA), the webinars included case studies of their implementation in different parts of Europe and beyond. By inviting representatives of PoliRural pilots to share their experience, we tried to make theoretical knowledge more relevant and easier to understand, while at the same time illustrating the transferability potential of our framework to new contexts.
Each webinar is a standalone learning resource that provides in-depth insights on a specific topic.
The first webinar introduces basic principles of foresight for rural development and provides a comprehensive overview of the main tasks underpinning the process. The framework’s real-life application is illustrated with case studies from Monaghan, Ireland, and Gevgelija-Strumica, North Macedonia.
The second webinar focuses on a TM tool called Semantic Explorer, or Semex for short. The webinar explains how Semex was built, how it works, as well as its current and future potential based on the experience of the Finnish pilot.
The concept of SDM is outlined in the third webinar, which starts by covering basic assumptions and SDM terms (e.g. positive feedback loop, negative feedback loop) before presenting a model of a generic rural area in Europe built by PoliRural. The generic model served as a template for creating customised, regionally-adapted SDM models for PoliRural pilots, two of which were presented at the event (the region of Central Greece and Apulia in Italy).
In the final webinar, MOA is presented in the context of impending global challenges (e.g. Covid, recession, climate change, biodiversity collapse) that countries are facing. The webinar shows how MOA is reflected in various high-level policies and innovation programmes and how to draft a mission-oriented roadmap that is aligned with EU priorities, such as those reflected in CAP reform and Green Deal. Foresight pilots that illustrate MOA’s application in PoliRural are Slovakia and the region of Galilee in Israel.
If you want to learn more about these topics and case studies, click on the links below to watch webinar recordings at your convenience:
- Action-Oriented Foresight for Rural Development (13 June 2022)
- Semantic Explorer: A Text Mining Tool for Smart Research (22 June 2022)
- System Dynamic Modelling for Enhanced Rural Planning (13 July 2022)
- Mission-Oriented Regional Development: Opportunities and Challenges (19 July 2022)
