Webinar 4 | Mission-Oriented Regional Development: Opportunities and Challenges

General Info:

  • Date: 19 July 2022 | 14:30 CET
  • Focus: Mission oriented approach
  • Moderator: 21C
  • Experts: CKA
  • Pilots: SUA (SK) & MIGAL (IL)

Recording:

Description:

Mission oriented innovation has attracted a lot of international attention. Around the world, governments and national innovation agencies are framing their policy responses around high-level missions in a bid to tackle ongoing societal challenges. In the EU, missions underpin the ambitious Horizon Europe programme, and are an important driver in mobilising resources to act on cancer, climate change, pollution, and biodiversity loss. In addition, mission-oriented thinking is firmly embedded in key EU policy initiatives, such as the European Green Deal, CAP Reform, Biodiversity Strategy, and recovery and resilience from Covid-19. Although formulated at EU level, these mission oriented policies have been implemented by member states, with each country following its own strategy. It’s not clear, however, how exactly these policies will be implemented at regional level, and in particular rural regions, as arguably more progress has been made in cities than countryside. In this webinar, participants will learn about the main principles of a mission oriented approach, why it has become so popular, and why it can be challenging to implement mission oriented policies. The event will also feature case studies from two PoliRural regions trialling the mission oriented approach, and an interactive session at the end to allow participants to ask questions and/or respond to any of the points mentioned in the presentations.

Experts & Pilots:

Patrick Crehan is an expert in the management of research and innovation, linking research and innovation with education, training, and economic development. The framework he provided for use of foresight in the PoliRural project, takes a Mission Oriented Approach supported by the provision and co-development of resources to support stakeholder engagement on high level missions such as resilience based on the rural response to Covid-19, CAP reform with a focus on prosperity, the Green Deal, and the new Biodiversity strategy. He provided coaching on the implementation of a Mission Oriented Approach to each of the regional Foresight teams, in which he advocated for the alignment of regional action plans with the four pillars of the EU Long Term Vision for Rural Areas.

JUDr. Marieta Okenková, PhD. is a long-standing expert in agricultural policy and rural development with experience at national, European and global levels She worked for 17 years at the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development of the Slovak Republic in various management positions. She led the negotiations in the agricultural chapter in the Slovak accession process to the EU and subsequently represented the interests of the Slovak Republic in the Special Committee on Agriculture at the EU Council in Brussels. Most recently, she worked as the Permanent Representative of the Slovak Republic to the UN agricultural organizations based in Rome. Currently, she works as a researcher at the Slovak Agricultural University in Nitra.

Prof Uri Marchaim is the head of the Precision Agriculture and regional Development Department at MIGAL – Galilee Research Institute in Israel. He is a Biotechnologist and is involved in research using anaerobic digestions of wastes and in precision agriculture. He was successful in over 15 EU projects (from FP6, FP7 and Horizon 2020, including a RIS project), part as a partner and also as the coordinator of several European large projects. He is leading the PoliRural activities in the Galilee with the mayors of the Easter-Galilee Cluster and a team of experts.

Webinar 3 | System Dynamic Modelling for Enhanced Rural Planning

General Info:

  • Date: 13 July 2022 |15:00 CET
  • Focus: Semex
  • Moderator: 21C
  • Experts: 22Sistema & AVINET
  • Pilots: AUA (GR) & InnovAgritech (IT)

Recording:

Description:

The first System Dynamic Model (SDM) was invented decades ago when the internet was still in its infancy. We have come a long way since then in terms of a tremendous increase in computing power, the availability of data, and ease of access to sophisticated tools and communication platforms. So, it is time to make SDM tools and the explanatory power of the SDM approach more widely available to those involved in policy and regional development. This is precisely what PoliRural has been doing for the past three years. Our SDM tool is based on a general rural model that contains 8 interconnected modules with over 300 parameters. This general model has been customised to 11 pilot regions, based on discussions with each pilot leadership team. With this tool, rural stakeholders can examine how trends may play out locally under the influence of different drivers of change. They can correct unwanted trends or achieve desired ones by tweaking policy interventions until an optimal mix is reached. This webinar will explain in more detail how the SDM tool was built, how it works, and how it is being used by stakeholders in PoliRural regions to improve rural planning. The event will feature an interactive session to allow participants to ask questions and/or respond to any of the points

Experts & Pilots:

Antoni Oliva is an Agricultural Engineer specialized in environmental management and sustainability. I (He) use(s) System Dynamics as a tool to understand current situation and give qualitative insights and meaningful participation. Free-lance researcher and consultant with more than 20 years of experience in projects for administrations (local, national and international) and corporations. He is a founder of 22SISTEMA (www.22sistema.com).

Incoronata Langianese is a 3rd year PhD student in Health Economics at the University of Foggia, and she specializes in Economics and agricultural policy. Her work concerns not only research on international commerce and the impacts of trade policies on the regional and national agri-food sector but also rural studies and policies and their impacts. She is also a part of the crew at the Rural Development Laboratory at the University of Foggia and collaborates with Innovagritech, a spin-off of the same university.

Nicoleta Darra, Research Associate (Female). Nicoleta DARRA (F) is a PhD student in AUA, holding a M.Sc. degree in GIS and Spatial Analysis. Her research interests revolve around remote sensing applications, precision agriculture and data analysis. The last four(4) years, she has been involved in numerous research H2020 projects (IoF2020, Big Data Grapes, GATES, PoliRural, SHERPA, AgriCaptureCO2, FRIETS) related to rural development, smart farming and ICT technologies. Additionally, she has participated in several national projects as project manager (in research projects) and PA instructor (in educational projects). She has nine (10) papers, one (1) in international conference, five (5) in national conferences and four(4) in peer-reviewed journals.

Webinar 2 | Semantic Explorer: A Text Mining Tool for Smart Research

General Info:

  • Date: 22 June 2022 |11:00 – 12:00 CET
  • Focus: Semex
  • Moderator: 21C
  • Experts: KAJO
  • Pilots: S&L (FI)

Description:

Semantic Explorer, or Semex, is a powerful text analytics tool that works with structured and unstructured data sources to provide insights to policy makers, researchers, foresight practitioners and others who need to make informed decisions while working with large amounts of information under time constraints. A typical foresight workshop, for example, requires a lot of research to prepare briefing notes, background papers, and lists of different kinds e.g. curated reading lists (CRL) with references. In PoliRural, Semex was used to improve the quality of this preparatory work and the productivity of those responsible for its execution. For example, Semex users can find out what the article, оr a CRL, is about by looking at the system-generated summary, geo-location, keyword frequencies, and sentiment scores associated with different paragraphs and topics – all without having to read the whole thing end to end. This workshop will explain how Semex was built, how it works, as well as its current and future potential based on the experience of some PoliRural pilot regions. The event will feature an interactive session to allow participants to ask questions and/or respond to any of the points mentioned in the presentations.

Experts & Pilots:

Denis Kolokol, MS in Computer Science (male), data scientist and developer. Graduated in 2000 from Zaporizhzhya Technical State University (Ukraine), Computer Science and Management Systems, and since then has been busy developing systems of all scales in many international teams. His roles varied from tech designer and software / database engineer to data scientist and researcher. For the last several years he has been mainly focused on the development of intelligent web-services and APIs with streaming data from social resources, natural text processing and big data analysis. Prefers to work on the projects with “open data” philosophy or related to science and/or education. Particularly interested in ML applications to text processing, as well as and computer vision, statistics, and physics. His area of expertise includes languages and frameworks such as Python, SuperCollider, Django, RESTful API, Elasticsearch, Mongodb, PostgreSQL, Docker, etc.

M.Sc Tuula Löytty has contributed to Häme (FI) region’s research, development and innovation actions for 18 years.  The interventions have been addressed to value chain improvements through case studies, experiments,  and capacity building.  The typical target field has been the manufacturing industry and working adults.

Webinar 1 | Action-Oriented Foresight for Rural Development

General Info:

  • Date: 13 June 2022 |11:00 – 12:00 CET
  • Focus: Foresight framework
  • Moderator: 21C
  • Experts: CKA
  • Pilots: MAC (IE) & AgFutura (NMK)

Description:

Foresight as a discipline has been around for decades, with applications spanning a wide range of industries, from retail to rural development. Most recently, foresight has been used by the European Commission to develop a long-term vision for rural areas up to 2040. While foresight has been gaining in popularity, a common error is to think that foresight and future studies are synonymous. Future studies have their merit and are appropriate in certain contexts, but they are not the same as foresight, which is more action oriented and participatory rather than purely research based. This webinar will present the foresight framework used in the PoliRural project as a tool for managing change in rural regions. Participants will be introduced to key concepts and methods underpinning the framework, before learning about preliminary results of its implementation in the region of Monaghan (IE) and Gevgelija-Strumica (NMK). The event will feature an interactive session to allow participants to ask questions and/or respond to any of the points mentioned in the presentations.

Experts & Pilots:

Dr. John J. O’Flaherty (M), Technical Director of MAC, Ireland’s National Microelectronics Applications Centre, which improves people’s lives and communities through project management and person-centred application of innovative technologies and techniques. Working with the community development company, Monaghan Integrated Development, John is proving the PoliRural approach as a successful rural development model for all regions. John is experienced in delivering green IoT distributed-system solutions, particularly for the smart monitoring of power grids, and ICT systems & Apps for people with special needs.

Blagoja Mukanov PhD candidate – expert in Agricultural Economics in Emerging Economies, based on 16+ years of practical experience in policy and business, combined with strong academic background in economics, strategy and management. Main professional focus, introduction and implementation of modern technologies and agricultural innovations in everyday agriculture, both in corporate and individual farming. Managing director of AgFutura Technologies with long experience in agricultural development and innovative projects with special accent of digital technologies as means for agricultural development.

Patrick Crehan is an expert in the management of research and innovation, linking research and innovation with education, training and economic development. He sees Foresight as a change management tool, driving the successful implementation of local policy agendas. In providing the framework for use of foresight in the PoliRural project, he highlights its role in the transformation of rural regions, and in addressing key challenges faced by local governments as they try to align with the new and emerging model of European democracy.