Horizon’s SMART ERA (SMART community-led transition for Europe’s Rural Areas) project, involving 25 partners from 10 European countries will work over the next four years to reduce vulnerability and, above all, to strengthen Europe’s rural areas.
The uneven development of rural areas compared to urban environments is, among other things, contributing to the vulnerability of rural areas and increasing the risks of poverty and social exclusion, as well as exacerbating the wider climate stress.
SMART ERA will use co-creation techniques and intensive engagement with local communities to develop innovative sustainable digital solutions for rural areas, but with the clear understanding that digitisation is not just a technological process, but a broader socio-economic and cultural process.
The SMART ERA project, with a budget of EUR 6.8 million also involves the University of Ljubljana, Laboratory for Telecommunications at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, and the Rotunda Centre, a social centre from Primorska, which will conduct activities in Šmarje’s development pilot.
The project will pursue the following objectives by integrating a set of technological, managerial, business, social and political solutions:
- establish the first large-scale pan-European solutions for systematic rural data verification and smartness analysis.
- develop innovative methodologies and co-design techniques to involve citizens and stakeholders in the creation of new data sources.
- develop uniform methods to assess smartness or digital maturity.
- provide recommendations to build on new local, national and European policy instruments and increase their efficiency and effectiveness in supporting smart villages across Europe.
- promote cooperation between the six project pilot regions and between the four EU macro-regional strategies, the Alpine (EUSALP), the Baltic (EUSBSR), the Adriatic-Ionian (EUSAIR) and the Danube (EUSDR) regions, and improve the capacity of rural communities to address socio-economic and environmental challenges through smart and sustainable solutions.
