CAENTI potential impact

Being a coordination action, the CAENTI proposal is directed towards dissemination, its added value lying mainly in its foreseen impact.

Teams of research and territorial actors -some of which have been working for over ten years to participate in the emergence of the Territorial Intelligence concept -altogether constitute the European Network of Territorial Intelligence, which has two years of existence.

Without specific dedicated means, the REIT has allowed the organisation of three international annual conferences, common research activities by gathering partners of the same country, to reinforce member integration and to attract new partners (participation in scientific demonstrations and occupational workshops, reception of researchers and professionals). The dedicated web site (http://mti.univ-fcomte.fr/reit/ ) has started to offer visible results of the partners’ joint specific research activities

This two-year period of experimentation has made it possible for the REIT to structure itself with an executive and an editorial committee, each of them having meetings on a regular basis, planning to set up common research projects, gathering new partners and improving its visibility and that of its members, particularly at the international level.

The participants of the CAENTI project constituted the core group of the REIT network. They have in common the organisation of joint common activities based on the works achieved by each member. These research activities give similar results but remain scattered from a European prospective. The building-up of the CAENTI project has already improved the mobilization within each participating institution, by inscribing the CAENTI activities in the official agendas of its members and by providing them with human and financial resources. The CAENTI project aims at enhancing the impact of a whole set of activities whose significance and the REIT network has underlined possibilities. Besides, the REIT will help towards the dissemination and exploitation strategy planned in the CAENTI project.

At the scientific level the CAENTI will contribute to improve research conditions within the social sciences thanks to a better diffusion of the fundamental instruments. It is expected many research outcomes, through the development of territorial intelligence tools, for a better understanding of territorial structures and dynamics, as well as for the analysis of the impact of territorial intelligence on citizenship and democracy.

At the fundamental research level, the diffusion of fundamental tools and methods will reinforce exchanges between disciplines aiming at studying territories, in order to federate a multi-field approach confronting, according to various space and temporal scales, and in a balanced way, the whole territorial resources and activities.

CAENTI's research activities will also have an impact on technological research which is only little developed in the social and human sciences by improving knowledge of its methods and by training its researchers. Information technologies as well as fundamental tools applicable for territorial intelligence research constitute common instruments of broad applicability; thus, the impact of their diffusion will not be strictly limited to territorial intelligence.

Applied research in territorial intelligence is the object of a keen social demand often supported by a political demand. The promotion of research-action is full of potential in terms of transfer possibilities in the field of the social sciences where research valuation is still quite marginal.

The CAENTI strategy, which consists of a double professional and scientific evaluation, will reinforce the fragile and complex balance between research teams and territorial actors. In that sense, this partnership that has been initiated by the REIT network is merely unique.

By providing knowledge, information and more accessible tools to the territorial actors of sustainable development thanks to a joint set of common research and professional evaluation activities, the CAENTI consortium intends to contribute to an increased efficiency of development actions, to the improvement of working conditions of the territorial actors and eventually to the citizens’ well-being.

We really want to insist here on the fact that territorial actors rarely have at their disposal simple, cheap and convivial tools to elaborate their action projects, then later to manage and evaluate them. However, such tools have been clearly required by the European Union for years in the programs and local projects benefiting from EU funding.

The CAENTI coordination action will show that far from being technocratic control methods, those requirements allow a more transparent and more efficient management of a set of actions, which directly contribute to the well being of the EU citizens.

Territorial intelligence tools is of great interest for the actors willing to promote sustainable development policies, citizen participation, a more global and balanced approach in terms of territories, and actors partnership.

Territorial intelligence also participates in the development of information technologies in professional sectors where they still are of little use (social services, charitable associations, accommodation centres, cultural services, etc.) and in geographical areas that are excluded from it (rural zones, poor areas, trans-border zones, declining areas, EU candidate countries, etc).

The “Observatorio Local of Empleo de HUELVA”, created from 1994 to 1999 within the framework of a Urban program, is now a fully autonomous observatory (http://www.ole.uhu.es). The evaluation system adopted by the “Asociacion Comision Catolica Espagnola de Migraciones” links together over ten centres spread throughout Spain dedicated to hosting refugees and migrants. It allows the evaluation of the association’s activities and of its various centres activity, based upon a flow of over 7000 cases per annum (http://www.accem.es). The Optim@ observatory created in 1996 in Seraing (Belgium) is a recognised partner of the industrial conversion plan of the Liege area (http://www.optima-obs.org). The rural observatory created in 1996 in Durbuy (Belgium) allowed each of the social assistance public centres based in five different towns to work together (http://mti.univ-fcomte.fr/IntegraDH). The inter-town development DIAPO observatory from the border area of Ormansag in Hungary enabled data processing and Internet equipment of fourteen towns, which provide relevant information for a socioeconomic and patrimonial diagnosis (http://www.ormansag.hu). Such results obtained with robust, simple and very economical tools, illustrate the considerable impact, proved sustainability and significant added value of territorial intelligence methods on territorial development.

The CAENTI project wishes to contribute to the promotion of the EU policy guidelines in terms of territorial development, knowledge economy development, as well as in all related fields where project management, evaluation, and respect of sustainable development principles are concerned.

The Lisbon Council of March 2000’s main strategic objective was to make the European Union the most competitive and dynamic knowledge economy in the world, able to a durable economic growth accompanied by a quantitative and qualitative improvement of the employment and a greater social cohesion.

Research activities and local actions proposed by the CAENTI consortium will primarily aim to strengthen social cohesion as well as contribute to an effective implementation of sustainable development policies. They also have an impact on employment policies by improving the efficiency of the work of the local actors of territorial development. Eventually, the CAENTI project also wishes to take an active role in improving the international visibility of European policies economic and social guidelines.