GSS EU Science Funding Gateway

Proposals should explore innovative and out-of-the box ways to describe and characterise rural areas or various forms or degrees of rurality in multi-dimensional ways, screening a wide range of possible (including new) data sources. Proposals should screen and benchmark the performance and cost efficiency (infrastructure needs, ease and frequency of updates etc.) of data collection methods and technologies including new ones (e.g. digital technologies, geolocation and geospatial techniques, crowd sourcing, citizen science) that could be used to collect the necessary rural data at the local level across a majority of EU Member States and Associated Countries in Europe, at affordable costs and select viable options for testing these options. They should strengthen rural evidence and data collection, in particular in the environmental, climate and social fields by generating data and designing, testing and implementing methods to:

• calculate climate and environmental indicators for rural communities, including rural dwellers and secondary-homers;
• upgrade socio-economic (including culture) assessment, analysis, monitoring and evaluation tools (stats, indicators, including the measurement of well-being, quality of life and attractiveness including gender and age differences);
• assess resilience to major threats, with particular emphasis on resilience and vulnerability factors under the COVID-19 pandemic.

Proposals should propose innovative schemes to reach climate neutrality by 2050 while taking advantage of the ecological transition and preserving ecosystems, landscapes etc. They should support rural proofing by developing tools completing those already existing on territorial impacts to assess the impact of EU policies and programmes on rural areas and communities. Projects outputs should be developed using data from a representative diversity of rural contexts across the EU. Proposals should strengthen evidence on rural areas and communities in a multi-dimensional way and engage with both national authorities and rural communities on their understanding of rurality and on project developments. The participation of the JRC in the project will consist of connecting project activities to on-going work on integrated territorial strategies to ensure complementarities and synergies. The contribution is framed on the context of the Knowledge Centre for Territorial Policies.