Periodic Reporting for period 1 - FUTURAL (Empowering the future through innovative smart solutions for rural areas.)
Berichtszeitraum: 2023-06-01 bis 2024-11-30
The FUTURAL project seeks to empower rural communities by addressing key societal, environmental, and economic challenges through innovative Smart Solutions (SS) across five domains: 1) Circular Bioeconomy, Biodiversity and Ecosystem Management, 2) Climate Adaptation and Mitigation, 3) Resilience to Shocks, 4) Citizen Engagement and Quality of Life, and 5) Lifelong Education and Training. The project integrates co-creation and participatory approaches in six diverse Multi-Actor Pilots (MAPs) across Europe, tailored to the specific needs of rural stakeholders. FUTURAL’s SS, along with solutions from other EU projects, will be accessible through a Metasearch Platform, ensuring scalability and replication across rural areas.
The project’s main objective is to develop, test, and demonstrate community-led social, technological, and business innovations. It will deliver a set of digital SS developed in the project, together with solutions available from other initiatives and EU projects, to address key societal, environmental and financial challenges and empower rural communities to engage in change. Key objectives include:
Community-led innovations: Co-design, implement, monitor, and evaluate community-led social and business innovations based on digital smart solutions.
Smart Solutions: Test, pilot, and demonstrate the digital smart solutions for the 5 FUTURAL domains to address social and environmental challenges faced by rural communities.
Capacity Building: Strengthen the capacity of rural communities to realise the potential of community- led innovations based on the proposed SS.
Networking and Synergies: Establish synergies with rural innovator and CAP networks, smart villages, organisations, and other projects to enhance relations and knowledge exchange.
Scale-up: Propose policies and governance frameworks to maximise the project’s contribution in achieving future CAP objectives related to smart villages and develop business models to mainstream solutions.
FUTURAL aligns with the EU’s Green Deal, CAP objectives, and the Long-Term Vision for Rural Areas by strengthening climate resilience, conserving biodiversity, and promoting social inclusion. Its anticipated impacts include empowering rural communities to embrace digital innovations, tackling depopulation, and fostering greater societal engagement, all while contributing to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals.
Social sciences and humanities play a vital role in FUTURAL by ensuring that innovations are co-created with stakeholders to address diverse socio-cultural needs. Social sciences and humanities expertise enables the active involvement of rural citizens in the design, monitoring, and evaluation of Smart Solutions, fostering ownership, inclusivity, and sustainability. This approach ensures that the project’s outcomes are socially equitable, contextually relevant, and capable of driving meaningful change in rural communities.
The project’s main objective is to develop, test, and demonstrate community-led social, technological, and business innovations. It will deliver a set of digital SS developed in the project, together with solutions available from other initiatives and EU projects, to address key societal, environmental and financial challenges and empower rural communities to engage in change. Key objectives include:
Community-led innovations: Co-design, implement, monitor, and evaluate community-led social and business innovations based on digital smart solutions.
Smart Solutions: Test, pilot, and demonstrate the digital smart solutions for the 5 FUTURAL domains to address social and environmental challenges faced by rural communities.
Capacity Building: Strengthen the capacity of rural communities to realise the potential of community- led innovations based on the proposed SS.
Networking and Synergies: Establish synergies with rural innovator and CAP networks, smart villages, organisations, and other projects to enhance relations and knowledge exchange.
Scale-up: Propose policies and governance frameworks to maximise the project’s contribution in achieving future CAP objectives related to smart villages and develop business models to mainstream solutions.
FUTURAL aligns with the EU’s Green Deal, CAP objectives, and the Long-Term Vision for Rural Areas by strengthening climate resilience, conserving biodiversity, and promoting social inclusion. Its anticipated impacts include empowering rural communities to embrace digital innovations, tackling depopulation, and fostering greater societal engagement, all while contributing to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals.
Social sciences and humanities play a vital role in FUTURAL by ensuring that innovations are co-created with stakeholders to address diverse socio-cultural needs. Social sciences and humanities expertise enables the active involvement of rural citizens in the design, monitoring, and evaluation of Smart Solutions, fostering ownership, inclusivity, and sustainability. This approach ensures that the project’s outcomes are socially equitable, contextually relevant, and capable of driving meaningful change in rural communities.
FUTURAL has made notable progress across its work packages. The project established six MAPs as hubs for co-creation, engaging stakeholders in workshops to identify innovation needs. Eight SS have been developed as Minimum Viable Products (MVPs), exceeding the initial target of seven. The MVP of the Metasearch Platform has also been developed and will serve as a central hub for accessing and scaling these solutions. These SS are being refined based on feedback from MAPs and will be integrated into the platform.
Co-creation workshops have been central to FUTURAL’s approach, guided by a co-creation methodology specifically developed to ensure structured and effective stakeholder engagement. Over 130 rural stakeholders actively participated in these workshops, helping shape and tailor the SS to address local challenges. An Open Call process for additional SS attracted 79 applications, highlighting the strong interest and alignment with FUTURAL’s vision. Policy mapping and collaborations with other EU projects have further strengthened the groundwork for impactful policy recommendations and governance frameworks.
These achievements position FUTURAL to deliver impactful, scalable solutions for rural challenges while contributing to EU policy goals.
Co-creation workshops have been central to FUTURAL’s approach, guided by a co-creation methodology specifically developed to ensure structured and effective stakeholder engagement. Over 130 rural stakeholders actively participated in these workshops, helping shape and tailor the SS to address local challenges. An Open Call process for additional SS attracted 79 applications, highlighting the strong interest and alignment with FUTURAL’s vision. Policy mapping and collaborations with other EU projects have further strengthened the groundwork for impactful policy recommendations and governance frameworks.
These achievements position FUTURAL to deliver impactful, scalable solutions for rural challenges while contributing to EU policy goals.
The co-creation of social innovations in the six MAPs has empowered citizens and fostered new relationships between local and external actors, critical for strengthening rural communities and identifying policy needs to support them. This participatory approach ensures that solutions are grounded in real-world challenges and tailored to diverse contexts.
The SS go beyond the state of the art by integrating and enhancing existing methodologies, technologies, and tools into innovative solutions. These SS are designed to address specific challenges identified in each MAP, leveraging data from multiple sources in novel ways. By involving stakeholders directly in the co-creation process, the SS ensure practicality, relevance, and alignment with community needs. Their demonstration and evaluation in real-world settings validate their scalability and effectiveness, setting a new benchmark for rural innovation.
The Metasearch Platform, currently at the MVP stage, also advances beyond the state of the art. It will act as an innovative one-stop shop for rural Smart Solutions, featuring: (i) capabilities to aggregate and search SS information using similarity-based approaches and a shared vocabulary for seamless access to solutions from FUTURAL and other marketplaces; (ii) AI-driven metadata enrichment and curation mechanisms for keyword extraction and text summarization, designed to comply with low-risk AI principles; and (iii) advanced matchmaking capabilities powered by Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Deep Learning technologies. These features will deliver personalized recommendations, support multilingual interactions, and ensure security and accuracy, providing a scalable, transformative tool for rural innovation.
The SS go beyond the state of the art by integrating and enhancing existing methodologies, technologies, and tools into innovative solutions. These SS are designed to address specific challenges identified in each MAP, leveraging data from multiple sources in novel ways. By involving stakeholders directly in the co-creation process, the SS ensure practicality, relevance, and alignment with community needs. Their demonstration and evaluation in real-world settings validate their scalability and effectiveness, setting a new benchmark for rural innovation.
The Metasearch Platform, currently at the MVP stage, also advances beyond the state of the art. It will act as an innovative one-stop shop for rural Smart Solutions, featuring: (i) capabilities to aggregate and search SS information using similarity-based approaches and a shared vocabulary for seamless access to solutions from FUTURAL and other marketplaces; (ii) AI-driven metadata enrichment and curation mechanisms for keyword extraction and text summarization, designed to comply with low-risk AI principles; and (iii) advanced matchmaking capabilities powered by Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Deep Learning technologies. These features will deliver personalized recommendations, support multilingual interactions, and ensure security and accuracy, providing a scalable, transformative tool for rural innovation.