IPN - Instituto Pedro Nunes

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SMART RURAL LIVING LAB
Valuation and Economic Empowerment of Penela County

Challenge

Promote economic development and innovation in a sparsely populated territory with the different problems associated with its specific geographical and economic characteristics.

Solution

Penela, facing problems arising from the rurality of its territory, has acted to improve its local economic base, develop endogenous resources, foster citizenship and entrepreneurship, promote social development and well-being, enhance the tourism sector and preserve its identity. In this way, the Smart Rural Living Lab (SRLL) allows the County of Penela to leverage its potential by finding new approaches and innovative solutions and creating competitive advantages by developing the concept of Triple Helix, a model that results in cooperation and innovation between education, the business community and the administration.
The SRLL's mission is to promote innovation and the development of research into new technologies, methodologies and applications enabling the appearence of new services / systems / products through citizen participation in their definition and tests in order to enable the integration of an area of low population density within a competitive global world.
In this Living Lab environment, companies can test their products / services in a real context and get the necessary inputs from users.
Before the end of 2014, it managed to attract 2 innovative projects to the territory that originated by the higher education institutions mentioned.

The SRLL aims to contribute to Penela's economic and social development by investing in four strategic areas:

  • Natural resources (e.g. agriculture, forest, forest fire prevention, grazing);
  • Social development and well-being (e.g. healthcare and nursing homes);
  • Tourism and identity (e.g. heritage preservation, virtual hunting, etc.);
  • Citizenship and entrepreneurship (e.g. internet access and public participation).

Objectives, Activities and Results expected / achieved

Strategic objectives:

  • Establish the SmartRural Living Labs model as an innovation, entrepreneurship and rural sustainability development model, mobilizing traditional and current low profitability sectors;
  • Generate knowledge in areas identified at the strategic level in the context of collaborative networks and their transformation into a knowledge cluster;
  • Achieve effective cooperation between innovation agents, sponsors and end users, in the framework of knowledge sharing strategies, in order to validate the ideas of the Living Lab;
  • Disseminate widely the projects and the SRLL, nationally and internationally, to specialized audiences or the general public;
  • Enhance and leverage the investment present in the territory, avoiding the need for parallel and redundant interventions.

Project Reference

CENTRO-07-0828-FEDER-004026

Funding

Programa Mais Centro (SIAC - Sistema de Incentivos às Acções Colectivas)
Programa Mais Centro (SIAC - Sistema de Incentivos às Acções Colectivas)

Total Investment

254.350,61

IPN Investment

254.350,61

Total Eligible

254.350,61

IPN Eligible

254.350,61

EC Funding – Total

178.045,43

EC Funding – IPN

178.045,43

Duration

24 Months

Start Date

2011-11-02

End Date

2014-03-31

Approval Date

2011-12-31

Consortium

IPN Incubadora (PT);
Município de Penela (PT)

Website

http://www.smartrural.pt

Keywords

Value enhancement;
Capacity;
Rurality;
Territory;
Living lab;
Penela;
Local resources;
Citizenship;
Entrepreneurship;
Social development;
Innovation
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