Research pillars of PoliRural+

Grounded GeoAI, metadata, participation, territorial systems: what PoliRural+ tries to prove, how it tests it, and where its tools are reused.

What are the four research pillars of PoliRural+, and how does the project show that its tools work beyond the pilots?

Grounded GeoAI, metadata and FAIR data, participation and foresight, and systems and territorial analysis. Reuse in FOCAL, BioClima, INTERESH, FAIR2Adapt and KijaniSpace shows the components working in climate, biodiversity, soil-health, FAIR-data and international settings.

Four pillars, each tied to a platform component and a public deliverable
Usability is tested with cognitive walkthroughs, the System Usability Scale and pilot-by-pilot validation
Five partner projects reuse PoliRural+ assets such as JackDaw, Hub4Everybody, SensLog and the MAA tool
Sustainability means a stable open core kept separate from project-specific configurations

Open in the interactive book · missions, mini-games and memory cards there

PoliRuralPlus research runs in three strands: a literature review of rural-urban linkages and foresight (D2.3, D2.2), eight cross-pilot learnings drawn from the nine pilots (D2.3 section 5), and cooperation with five other projects that test and extend the platform (D4.2 chapter 9: FOCAL, BioClima, INTERESH, FAIR2Adapt, KijaniSpace). All three feed the platform and the pilots' Regional Action Plans.

Four research questions behind the PoliRural+ platform

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PoliRural+ is a Horizon Europe Innovation Action (January 2024 to December 2026) coordinated by the Czech Technical University in Prague (project fact sheet). Its research follows from what the platform and the pilots have to prove.

Pillar	Research question	Where the evidence is
Grounded GeoAI	Can plain-language AI answer territorial questions from traceable data?	JackDaw, the Advisor, GeoRAG (D4.2 §3.7, §12)
Metadata and FAIR data	Can metadata, rather than code, decide which data and tools apply?	Raven, Magpie, the FAIR2Adapt cooperation (D4.2 §3.2, §9.4)
Participation and foresight	Can multi-actor engagement and foresight become traceable workflows?	The MAA tool, revised RAPs (D4.2 §3.9; D2.3 §5)
Systems and territory	Where and how do rural-urban linkages work?	System dynamics (objective O6, pilot TP1), a 1 km innovation-potential grid (D4.2 §3.10), a literature review (D2.3 §3)

How the project tests its tools

The tools are evaluated with established usability methods. The Advisor went through a cognitive walkthrough, the System Usability Scale (on which 68 is the average score) and a feedback form that includes a Net Promoter question (D2.3 Annex B). The Beta platform is tested pilot by pilot. The criteria are functional correctness, ease of onboarding, data readiness, interoperability, language, responsiveness on real networks, relevance to planning tasks, and whether users understand where results come from (D4.2 §6.1). So far this validation has been case-by-case and qualitative. For the final release (D4.3), it moves to systematic consultation with WP5 (D4.2 §11.1).

Research that travels: five partner projects

Project	Focus	What is reused or exchanged
FOCAL	Local climate services, Earth observation processing	JackDaw querying climate data through STAC and OGC API – Records catalogues
BioClima	Biodiversity and climate monitoring	Hub4Everybody, SensLog sensor data, JackDaw as an analytical orchestrator
INTERESH	Soil-health Living Labs	The MAA tool, Hub4Everybody, SensLog, JackDaw-based retrieval
FAIR2Adapt	FAIR data for climate adaptation	Provenance, RO-Crate and I-ADOPT patterns brought into PoliRural+
KijaniSpace	Climate-smart farming, Lake Victoria Basin	Hybrid Hub4Everybody deployment, sensor integration, a multilingual JackDaw

(D4.2 §9.1–9.5)

D4.2 draws one lesson from these cooperations. Reuse needs a stable open core of generic assets kept separate from project-specific configurations, such as local datasets, vocabularies and licences. It also needs documentation, training and maintenance (§9.6). The tool ecosystem is built around that split.

The PoliRural legacy: what PoliRural+ inherited

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PoliRural+ continues the H2020 project PoliRural: 8 of its 9 pilots carry on from it (project fact sheet). The technical inheritance is listed in D4.1 §2.1.1.

What was inherited

The PoliRural Digital Innovation Hub. A place to share knowledge, tools and best practices, with social-space features (forums, blogs, wikis, science shops) on OpenStack cloud infrastructure. D4.1 notes that some components “require modernization” to keep up with AI and GeoAI.
The Rural Attractiveness Explorer, which produces a composite Rural Attractiveness Index (today’s version).
The Atlas of Best Practices, refined under PoliRural, with region-specific practices from projects such as Enabling, Dalia and Data4Food2030.
Map Whiteboard, which lets several parties edit spatial data on one map and store the results.
Pilot-specific action plans and methods from each region.

D1.1 adds the Hub’s history. The user portal moved from Liferay to Wagtail CMS to make content easier to edit, and it offered a geoportal, social communication, storyboards, data management and legislative support. The PoliRural Hub then became part of the more generic Hub4Everybody framework (D1.1 §2).

What is new in PoliRural+

D4.1 names three gaps that advances in large language models and GeoAI made it possible to close: JackDaw as a GeoAI layer combining LLMs with geospatial analytics, simpler interfaces through natural-language interaction, and broader data integration, including IoT and European Data Spaces (§2.1.2). Components from Data4Food2030, THEROS and ALIANCE joined the stack.

One common confusion: the MAA tool is the Multi-Actor Approach tool. Social InnoLabs first developed it in the Cities2030 project, and PoliRural+ is redesigning it (the tool).

Builds on: The PoliRural+ project
Leads to: Public research outputs