PoliRural H2020 project

PoliRural is a new Horizon 2020 project which aims to make rural places and professions more attractive for people who already live there and for potential newcomers. PoliRural was created in response to the need for a more strategic approach to rural development, one that captures the diversity of rural life, places and professions.

We want to provide the decision-makers with evidence of how current policies are performing and what the impacts of new measures might be. They often propose policies that lack strong evidence base and they continue to work in silos, neglecting the input from the actual people most affected by those measures. The silos could be broken by combining both traditional survey research methods and advanced text mining techniques. Our software is able to perform text mining on open sources in English and several other languages. The customized text mining libraries will include policy documents, blogs, online press and social media. After evaluating policy performance using this integrated approach, we will be able to highlight areas for improvement that may require; for instance, attracting more young people to the region, adopting more sustainable land use practices, or adapting to changes in the local economy through diversification.

Example of visualizations in PoliRural Semantic Explorer – Design by KAJO S.R.O.

Working with local communities, policymakers, farmers and the agro-industry, we will propose measures to improve the situation in our pilot areas that include 12 different regions across Europe plus Israel. PoliRural recommendations will be based on the results of multiple activities to be performed at this stage e.g. design thinking workshops, expert surveys, panel discussions, system dynamic modelling, and validation sessions attended by rural stakeholders. The outcomes of this work will help us develop region-specific missions that are bold and ambitious yet realistic enough to be implemented. PoliRural consortium works closely with a large network of stakeholders in order to create local action plans to turn the proposed missions into reality.

PoliRural pilot regions

PoliRural project is coordinated by the Czech University of Life Sciences Prague (CZU) and implemented by the consortium of 36 partners in 17 countries from June 2019 till May 2022.

Miloš Ulman, Technical Manager, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague