One of the key objectives of the PoliRural project is the identification of social, technological, economic, environmental, political, and other factors that affect local development in rural areas.
For this reason, the Greek pilot organized a series of online webinars with local bodies of the region of Central Greece on the 2nd and 4th of February and on the 14th of April of 2021. At all three webinars, representatives from academia and business sector, from local government, as well as representatives of society (cooperatives, associations, etc.) participated. During the webinars, the effects of the covid-19 pandemic on all aspects of everyday life along with the need to support employment opportunities, local transport and more systematic public information on national and European population attraction programs in the region, were highlighted. In addition, the need to improve network infrastructure and to provide well-organized training in modern digital technologies has emerged during the webinars.
PoliRural invites you to participate in the “Open Spring INSPIRE Hackathon 2021”, a series of challenges that will be focused on developments and innovations in agriculture, the environment, transport, tourism, geospatial applications or remote sensing and GNSS.
During the months of April and May, a unique opportunity to try out new technologies and infrastructures will be offered, which will be open to all developers. “Open Spring INSPIRE Hackathon 2021” opens up opportunities for cooperation in the development of various solutions with participants from all over the world, and at the same time offers everyone the enrichment of their own experience.
You can participate in the following challenges:
How to use and improve OLU 2.0.0
Regional Atractiveness
Analysis of Drought Conditions for Selected Use-Cases
Analytical map of traffic accidents in Czechia
SmartAfriHub III – African Agricultural Water Security
Analysis of Sentinel 2 and Sentinel 1 time series for the purpose of Agriculture
Interactive collaborative data capturing at scale – technology and business models
AgroInfo Application
Agrihub Slovakia
Evaluation of OSM 4 purposes of Traffic Modelling
From Smart Points of Interest towards sustainable Points of Interest
More information about the Hackathon can be viewed here. You can also register to the Hackathon here.
You can view the replay of the Kick-off webinar dedicated to the challenge introduction of the Open Spring INSPIRE Hackathon here.
PoliRural has developed and published an Evaluation Based Cluster Map of PoliRural 12 Pilots. The diagram groups pilots according to common themes and priorities identified in a recent policy evaluation. A node linking two or more regions provides common ground for exploration of new policy measures, a task due to start in the coming months. Inter-pilot similarities help facilitate cross-border learning that regional foresight teams can leverage to see what worked, or didn’t, in other places, and why, before developing an optimal intervention for their rural area.
The Evaluation Based Cluster Map of PoliRural 12 Pilots can be viewed here.
PoliRural has developed and published an Inventory of Drivers of Change that aims to understand how changes in rural areas are happening now, the kind of changes that are likely to have an impact in the future, their interlinkages and dependencies, their importance, and the possibility of being able to influence them based on policy choices.
The Inventory of Drivers of Change has found 64 drivers of change across 6 categories, that will be used for the drivers analysis activity in each of the 12 regional PoliRural pilots. It is not by any means exhaustive. But it provides a useful starting point for the ‘drivers analysis’ activity in each of the 12 regional Foresight pilots.
The categories are the following:
Social Factors;
Technological Factors;
Economic Factors;
Environmental Factors;
Political Factors;
Value Related Factors.
The Inventory of Drivers of Change can be downloaded here.
On the 16th of March, a workshop was held in the context of PoliRural Macedonian pilot Gevgelija-Strumica. The workshop was held online and it included the discussion of recent results of the pilot. The meeting also included a presentation of the policy evaluation results, as well as the next steps in Foresight exercise.
PoliRural participated in virtual event Rural Vision Week – Imagining the future of Europe’s rural areas, an event promoted by the European Network for Rural Development (ENRD), in close cooperation with the European Commission, that happened between 22 and 26 March 2021.
This interactive event included high level presentations and discussions, a marketplace, workshops and ‘fringe’ activities. These involved European stakeholder participants in working together to contribute to the preparation of a long-term Vision for the future of EU rural areas in relation to which the Commission is scheduled to adopt a Communication later this summer.
PoliRural contributed to the event with a virtual stall, that included promotional info about the project, relevant documents and more. You can visit PoliRural stall here.
More info about the event Rural Vision Week – Imagining the future of Europe’s rural areas is available here.
On the 19th of February, 2021, the Ypaithros newspaper had a press coverage of the PoliRural project. The article describes the evaluation’s results of Measure 4.1 of the local Leader program 2007-2013 implementation, which was carried out through the use of appropriate questionnaires and telephone interviews.
It also describes the results in terms of investigating the social, technological, economic, environmental, political and other factors that affect the development of rural areas, which were extracted through webinars, organized from the Greek pilot of the project, with local bodies of the region of Central Greece.
On 9 February took place 4. online workshop organized jointly by the Slovak POLIRURAL project team in which participated 25 stakeholders. It was dedicated to the gradual and participative foresight exercise leading to the preparation of „Vision for more attractive rural areas in Slovakia “. Experts from different fields and people from the ground dived deeper into three clusters of connected drivers that will affect the change in the Slovak countryside in the next 20 years.
The first two clusters dedicated to “Sustainable and resilient food system” and “Diversification of rural economy” were presented in the form of deep dives papers available also online for further comments and inputs. The third cluster focused on “Civil engagement” was discussed in the interactive form to gain input for the deep dive paper.
Education and training were highlighted as an area that requires additional attention. Response to the impacts of the current pandemic on rural areas will be discussed in the next workshop that will take place next week on 18 February. Participants were invited to be active in preparation of the next workshop and to provide ideas on how and around what topics to structure the discussion.
In times when people are not allowed to meet in person the Slovak project team has developed a special feature on national POLIRUAL website (https://atraktivnyvidiek.sk), where people can provide their inputs and comments and broader spectrum of views can be incorporated into the vision development. Inclusivity and participation are the key driving forces of the process and can guaranteed the outcome that is more effective, efficient and better centred around people and their future. Thematic groups were created in the online forum to allow structured discussion.
The representative of the European Network for Rural Development delivered presentation on the current status of preparation of the EU long-term Vision for Rural Areas until 2040, where participatory process and cross sectoral cooperation of different Commission services were highlighted. Slovakia was an active player in the public consultation which was appreciated.
The COVID-19 INSPIRE Hackathon was already the 17th hackathon organised by the Plan4All association in cooperation with the Czech Centre for Science and Society (CCSS) and other H2020 projects including SmartAgriHubs. It was based on the traditional model of the INSPIRE Hackathon, which is not a single event, it’s a process that is designed to efficiently exploit the achieved results of previous hackathons on developing new innovations. Due to the limitations caused by the COVID-19 situation, this event was triggered as a virtual hackathon.
Figure 1. The COVID-19 INSPIRE Hackathon 2020 logo.
The main goal of the COVID19 INSPIRE Hackathon was to support innovation in agriculture through information technology, help agriculture recover from the problems that were caused by the coronavirus crisis as well as search for new business models. Overall, thirteen innovation experiments were identified for the COVID19 INSPIRE Hackathon 2020.
The COVID-19 INSPIRE Hackathon was divided into 5 main stages:
Figure 2. The COVID-19 INSPIRE Hackathon 2020 Schedule.
In the period October 15 – November 30 2020 two main stages of the COVID-19 INSPIRE Hackathon took place – the hacking stage and final stage. During the hacking stage, teams work together to bring new solutions regarding 13 Innovation Experiments defined in the preparation stage of the hackathon. More specifically, the team work is to collect technology and data, explore & ideate & co-create the IEs and develop & test the IE solutions. Another important part of the hacking stage is the capacity building actions and dissemination & communication. The capacity building was developed virtually through the webinars & online training (September 25 – October 26) and communication channels that were established for each IE – e.g. Skype, WhatsApp, Google docs. Another important part of the capacity building was mentoring, counselling, coaching and technical assistance executed by 20 IE mentors. Leveraging local knowledge or experience was, besides webinars and mentoring, done via ongoing H2020 projects, initiatives, DIHs: Plan4all hub, PoliRural hub, SIEUSOIL hub, Agrihub and SmartAfriHub.
The COVID-19 INSPIRE Hackathon was terminated by a final presentation of results & awards ceremony held on 19th November 2020. The final virtual event together with the collection of the final reports fall into the final hackathon stage that aims at presentation and promotion of the results of IEs and selection of top 3 solutions by the jury members based on evaluation criteria that were defined in the preparation stage. The jury members: Jovana Vlaskalin (BioSense Institute), Beata Vörösová (CzechInvest), Maris Albers (University of Latvia) and Josef Hnojil (Geobusiness) announced the following winners for the COVID-19 INSPIRE hackathon:
On 24th of November 2020, the leader of the Greek Pilot Mrs Nicoleta Darra, attended the on-line event entitled “The European Researchers ‘Night” which was organised by the University of Foggia. Being a young researcher, Mrs Darra was invited to participate in discussion concerning PoliRural project implementation in Greece. Her presentation, “PoliRural – Policy Development for rural areas”, focused on the main objectives of the project and how to promote rural development and enhance attractiveness of rural areas for established populations and recent or potential newcomers.
The event promoted by the European Commission within the Framework Program for Research and Innovation “HORIZON 2020”, called “European Researchers’ Night Apulia2”, aimed at spreading the scientific culture and the role of Research.
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