[foundation-board] AI4S: another EU FP7 proposal

[Jonathan Gray]

A quick note to inform the board that we are also involved in another
EU FP7 bid. Our involvement in this bid has been much more recent than
CIVIS, which has been in the pipeline for several months. OKF Advisory
Board member Sören Auer invited us to be part of the consortium. Jo
also has been helping to try to procure letters of support from OS Geo
/ Open Street Map.

A very brief summary of key things:

  * OKF will be involved in work packages on:
    - policy modeling as linked open data
    - involvement in a workpackage on Connecting the Webs of People
and Data (i.e. Crowdsourced LOD sources, Collective problem solving,
Social network integration, Analysis and visualization in Web 2.0/3.0)
    - involvement in the dissemination and publicity activities
* 200k€ funding for approx. 30 person months work in the 36 month project
* project would start late 2011/early 2012

A short description is available below. This will also be submitted tomorrow.

All the best,

Jonathan

## AI4S - Accountable Infrastructure for Sustainable Spatial and
Societal Strategy

The fundamental role of spatial planning as an instrument in achieving
the goal of sustainability has long been recognized, establishing the
need for effective modeling and monitoring frameworks to assess policy
effectiveness in achieving this goal.  In parallel, the sustainability
paradigm shift introduced the need for openness, stakeholder and
community involvement throughout policy decision making life cycles
and governance processes.   The multitude and complexity of
multi-scale governance and spatial planning processes for sustainable
development, is increasingly being met by the challenge of obtaining
data and appropriate societal interaction media which will enable
effective policy development and implementation. The literature is
abundant with sustainability indicator frameworks and modeling tools
whose implementation however has been hindered in practice, due to
their data intensity, and top down approach amongst other factors.

Data requirements for policy modeling and monitoring purposes are
increasing at an unprecedented rate. International treaties and
programmes, EU directives and policies are continually establishing
new requirements upon governments and the public sector at different
levels, for modeling, monitoring and reporting, as well as stakeholder
and community engagement practice. Yet an effective solution in
ensuring the long term feasibility and financial viability of meeting
these requirements, has yet to be found, inherently jeopardizing the
sustainability of spatial planning and policy development processes.
This innovative project proposes the investigation of the potential of
novel ICT solutions and opportunities presented through the use of
Linked Open Data, to address effectively data and participation needs
required for sustainable policy modeling and monitoring needs.

The vision of AI4S is twofold. First, we will facilitate governments
on a national and regional level to model, propose and implement
policies for sustainable spatial planning based on transparent,
participatory and accountable processes, and technical means. Second,
we will leverage societal interaction, participation and inclusion for
sustainable growth as an intrinsic part of sustainability policy
making.

The goal of AI4S is to provide the theoretical foundations and
technical instruments to support open spatial policy modeling for
sustainable national and regional spatial planning. The cornerstone of
our approach is the development of policy modeling techniques that
fully embrace the principles of Linked Open Data (LOD). LOD inherently
enable openness, transparency and accountability. Further, they apply
to multi-faceted and interdisciplinary groups of individuals,
providing great exposure to the general population. AI4S will build on
these significant properties of LOD, grafting policy modeling with the
same properties. Policy models and the policy making lifecycle as a
whole will be delivered as LOD, establishing a sustainable and long
term alternative policy making framework. This will enable
accountability and transparency, providing automatic validation of
policy models. Further, LOD allow citizens to participate in the
policy making process on an even field: question decisions,
indicators, policies, and actively participate with data, indicators,
and policy models. Further, citizens will be able to repurpose
existing Web 2.0/3.0 data analysis and visualization tools that
support LOD.

-- 
Jonathan Gray

Community Coordinator
The Open Knowledge Foundation
http://blog.okfn.org

http://twitter.com/jwyg
http://identi.ca/jwyg