Name of the project: Future Oriented Collaborative Policy Development for Rural Areas and People (PoliRural)
Investigators: Ing. Pavel Šimek, Ph.D., Ing. Jan Jarolímek, Ph.D., Ing. Miloš Ulman, Ph.D., Ing. Jiří Vaněk, Ph.D., Věra Motyčková, M.A.
Duration: 2019 - 2022
Grant provider: European Commission
Programme: Horizon 2020
Website: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/223230/factsheet/en
The ongoing generational renewal of rural areas is a current social challenge in Europe. The depopulation of rural areas is evident and goes hand in hand with declining economic developments and other negative factors that current regional policies cannot effectively address. Policy makers and local government representatives need to have information that is obtained not only in the traditional way, but also from social networks and many other information sources to better anticipate future developments and respond more flexibly to the needs of people living in the relevant area.
The aim of our PoliRural project is to promote the attractiveness of life in rural areas across Europe. Thanks to the broad international composition of the consortium of 37 partners from 16 countries and a combination of modern technologies and action-based research, we will assess the current state of life and assess the effectiveness of rural development policies in 12 selected regions in Europe and Israel. The very ambitious goal of the project and the broad scope of research call for innovative approaches. An important output is software for the analysis of unstructured texts in several languages from over 1,000 identified publicly available sources. Large data and findings from panel and group discussions with farmers, local government representatives and researchers serve to model future developments in target regions by 2040. The knowledge base and models developed will then be applied in pilot projects and become a valuable source of information for local community representatives and local governments.