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European Projects
EU PROJECTS
The West Regional Authority is currently participating in a range of EU co-financed Projects involving inter-regional, cross-border and transnational co-operation. The aim of these projects is to promote the strengths of the West Region at a European level and also to benefit from experiences in other regions in Europe.
CURRENT EU PROJECTS
DART - Demographic change in European Regions
Declining, Ageing and Regional Transformation (DART) are challenges for many regions across Europe. For this reason 13 regions – all affected by declining and ageing – are co-operating to benchmark, identify and transfer appropriate solutions for dealing with demographic change.
DART will define new common indicators for measuring decline and other symptoms of demographic change in European regions. These indicators will allow a comparison of data to be made between different regions.
DART will identify good practices which strengthen the economy and which concern educational as well as health care and social services in each region. It is envisaged that the best of these practices will be transferred to other regions.
DART will make political recommendations to regional and European stakeholders and raise public and political awareness with regard to declining and ageing regions.
Dart is a 24 month project under the Interreg IVC Programme with participation from 13 partners from Ireland, Germany, Finland, Spain, Italy, Slovenia, Romania, Prague, Austria and Poland.
Period of Project: January 2010 - December 2012
Website: www.dart-project.eu
TG4NP - Tourist Guide for Northern Periphery
The aim of the TG4NP project is to support the tourism industry of peripheral regions by enhancing the visitors’ experiences in cultural and natural heritage destinations with the help of multimodal mobile information services. Project will develop potential new approaches to efficient and sustainable management and utilisation of resources in natural and cultural heritage. The idea is to exploit the latest existing mobile and web technologies to address the information needs and to enhance the experience of the visitors in a new way.
The created services will include multimodal (different modes of communication e.g. text, sound, pictures, videos…) guided tours for resorts and tourist services (accommodation, restaurants, programme services, events), as well as new kinds of service concepts, intelligent routing and interaction between enterprises and customers.
The West Regional Authority’s contribution to the TG4NP project will be the support of tourism in peripheral regions by enhancing visitor experience with the aid of Mobile Information Services. The proposal is to develop an outstanding Mobile Tourism Phone App which will enable the potential tourist to plan their Cycling and Walking Routes and note Points of Interest (POI) along the way. These Points of Interest will incorporate Historical monuments, Churches and places of immense importance with regard to Biodiversity.
The proposed technology will establish a Mobile Location Information Service, locally adapted for the integration of future and current web services with the use of mobile phones, as an added value to visitors in the rural and remote area of the West Region. In addition the App will give these directions from the user’s current position using GPS location technology utilized by the App and users will be able to access photos and text information and will be encouraged to share the App on social networking sites.
This project is part funded by the Northern Periphery Programme and has a total of 10 partners.
Period of Project: June 2010 - September 2013
Website: www.tg4np.eu
SECRE (Sustainable Enterprises in Community Renewable Energy)
SECRE is a Northern Periphery Project (NPP) involving 10 partners .
It will identify and analyse good practices of Community Renewable Energy applicable to the characteristics of the NPP area.
The case study methodology will be based on jointly developed protocols to ensure high quality data.
Case studies will be compiled into the knowledge base, and disseminated as case study reports.
In the West Region, our Authority will focus on a good practice in the Aran Islands where a monitoring scheme has been established in the operation of Electric Cars in that excess energy produced from renewable energy at night time can be used to charge Electric Vehicles which would act as a source of income for local community groups and reduce reliability on petrol/diesel.
Period of Project: August 2011 - February 2014
TOURAGE - Developing Tourism for Ageing in External Border Regions
Tourism is one of the fastest growing and among three biggest industries in Europe. Tourism cluster and networks are as fragmented and loose as innovative concepts of the field. Likewise, the demands of target groups require more studying and anticipating.
There is a wide range of innovations that are newly deployed or under construction, but only few regions can benefit them. In this project the innovative practices of the field will be identified and exchanged among partners. This will be done by joint training sessions, interregional workshops and study visits and dissemination events. Also needs of the target groups will be studied. The overall aim is to foster employment, education and regional economy through development of senior tourism. Results of the project help to develop new policy tools for regions and improve the effectiveness of the regional development policies.
In addition, during the project, the awareness and acknowledging of the need of “age-sensitive tourism products” will be increased among actors. As a result, new solutions will be at use among actors all over EU.
The West Regional Authority is one of 12 partners involved in this project.
Period of Project: January 2012 – December 2014
GRISI PLUS– Geomatics Rural Information Society Initiative PLUS
The Grisi Plus Objective is to improve the effectiveness, modernise and enrich economic development policies in rural areas by increasing the use of geographical information and geomatic tools in order to face the major stakes of rural territories.
GRISI Plus will:
- Improve and modernize economic development policies of rural areas.
- Contribute in the revitalisation, attractiveness and economic development of isolated rural territories.
- Contribute in bringing new inhabitants, entrepreneurs and tourists in rural areas.
- Provide to decision-makers policy support tools for the economic development of rural territories.
- Develop new methods for the promotion of local traditional products thanks to the new ICT.
- Contribute in developing and promoting local brands, in line with the specific characteristics of rural territories.
- Reinforce the visibility and importance of independent telework at local, national and European level.
- The West Regional Authority are one of 13 partners involved in this project with partners from France, Latvia, Cyprus, Romania, Estonia, Greece, Bulgaria, Malta, Slovenia and Czech Republic.
Period of Project: January 2012 - December 2014
LAKES ADMIN – Regional Administration of Lake Restoration Initiatives
The project intends to identify, to exchange and to transfer existing good lake restoration practices within the partnership and lake management networks in Europe. The point is to develop a set of criteria to assess lake restoration needs and applicable methods, and specifically, a process how to prioritize lake restoration cases within particular European regions having lakes as an integral factor in their landscapes.
This is planned to be done through multiple criteria decision analysis methods successfully used in Finland since 1990s. The purpose is to create nationally uniform practices for evaluation of initiatives and comparison of lakes to be restored and to lay ground guidance about what kind of incentives regional administration authorities can provide to promote lake restorations, and at the same time, to treat citizens equally within the framework of lake-restoration-related public-private partnerships
Period of Project: January 2012 - December 2014
PREVIOUS EU PROJECTS
MicrE - Micro Waste to Energy Business: Micro energy to Rural Enterprise
MicrE will provide a service that exploits technologies for renewable energy solutions, as well as energy generation from by-products and waste, which can be adapted for rural SME’s.
MicrE is a transnational service that will make small scale renewable energy generation available to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in rural NPP partner regions on a scale that is viable and economically feasible.
Rural areas in the Northern Periphery (NP) have traditionally been very resource intensive and dependent on fossil energy due to their remote location and long winters.
Small-scale biomass- and waste based energy solutions are able to answer the challenges of resource availability, while progressively reducing the impact of human activities on the environment.
The aim is to generate energy on site from enterprise’s own wastes and by-products, solving simultaneously the waste disposal problems and diminishing GHG emissions.
MicrE has created a Booklet setting out the most promising technologies to create energy from waste and by-products. These technologies include Alcohol Fermentation, Anaerobic Digestion, Gasification and pelletization. Booklet can be downloaded by clicking here.
MicrE service develops and promotes innovative small scale renewable energy solutions for rural SME’s and local organisations in the Northern Periphery. These solutions will use new and existing technologies which have not been tried in a rural environment before, especially those which generate energy from by-products and waste, and adapt th... More...
To enhance the capacity for self-sustaining business and organisation life in rural Northern Periphery regions. Particular attention will be given to energy from waste (EfW) technologies. The technologies provisionally identified for development work, among others, are: Micro pyrolysis of wood based products to energy and fuel Micro biomethan.
Objectives of MicrE
- Promoting competitiveness in rural and peripheral areas by innovations and networking.
- Strengthening the synergies between environmental protection and growth.
- Increasing the energy efficiency and saving costs in SMEs.
- Developing new but long term sustainable renewable energy source schemes for SMEs.
- Reducing waste and its increasing cost to SMEs
Period of Project: January 2009 – December 2011 (Completed)
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Website: www.micre.eu |
GASD - Green Atlantic for Sustainable Development
This project brought together the Atlantic area’s maritime regions exposed to the risks of shipping routes as well as those with strong experience in the prevention, management and clean-up of maritime ecological disasters.
This INTERREG IIIB Atlantic Area project which concluded in June 2008 saw the West and South-West Regional Authorities engage in a partnership to create a European platform of expertise and action for maritime and environmental safety issues. The GASD Project was designed to take stock of the collective public and private sector expertise of maritime regions in working on issues such as shipping route risks and dealing with maritime ecological pollution (prevention, management and clean-up) and to use these as a basis for developing informed recommendations on durable operational solutions.
The importance of being able to anticipate change and act accordingly is crucial to the partner regions’ maritime economies, which are largely dependent on fishing and tourism and on protecting existing assets. To this end, the project pioneered a sustainable economic development vision, based on an innovative approach to maritime safety and applied to their collective maritime activities. This vision was translated into practical demonstration actions on which future European policies and legislation integral to maritime safety; technical, scientific and technological innovation; and economic development can be built. A multidisciplinary ‘cluster of Maritime and Environmental Excellence’ to reinforce the attractiveness of Atlantic Area regions as a leading hub for knowledge and competitiveness in the field of maritime and environmental safety was a further output.
For Further Details please visit: http://www.interreg-atlantique.org/iiib/eng/projet/index.html
TECHLINK
Project Summary:
Traditionally industrialised, the regions taking part in this project are currently faced with new competition from countries with low production costs. In order to stay competitive and avoid the risks of delocalisation, these regions must build new competitive forces based on knowledge and innovation, taking as targets important themes like the environment, alternative energy and urban mobility.
In this framework, the TECHLINK project is intended to create, in these regions of the Atlantic Area, a culture of innovation and of the exchange of good practices, while developing trans-national co-operation between public and private organisations in the sector of technological innovation (universities, SMEs, technological centres…). On the basis of study of the current situation, the project consists of creating a network of trans-national co-operation which will develop methodologies and tools making it possible to control and guide the evolution of innovation in a continous manner.
Results:
Development of a method to assess the situation of the partners in the project in terms of innovation: an auto-questionnaire has been drawn up which each partner can answer. The results of the questionnaires have been summarised and on the basis of this a training programme has been created and implemented.
Development of a strategic innovation plan for each region participating in the project. The plan lists the strategic intervention zones in each region.
Development of tools to aid the dissemination of a culture of innovation and the project: development of an Internet platform and organisation of several video-conferences
Promotion of the project to SMEs, universities and technical institutes: organisation of seminars, conferences and workshops. A common methodology has been developed to organise regional events on the subject of innovation.
For further details please visit: http://www.interreg-atlantique.org/iiib/eng/projet/index.html
