System Dynamics is a component of system theory as a method to understand the dynamic behavior of complex systems. System Dynamics is a growing field, and its applications can be found in a wide range of areas, for example population, ecological and economic systems. In the context of EU rural development, System Dynamics has been found as a very relevant and unique innovative method for rural policy making.

In PoliRural, the development of System Dynamics model will be a long and laborious process, spanning just over two years. The model will be built from theories, values and ideas proposed by dozens of partners, associates and other stakeholders with different disciplinary, cultural, geographic and linguistic backgrounds. These differences need to be accommodated into the System Dynamics framework along with quantitative and qualitative inputs from first phases of PoliRural.

During the first year of PoliRual project, a template model of System Dynamics has been built, as well as some sample models to understand the usefulness of modelling. One of the created sample models deals with Rural Attractiveness, a central issue in PoliRural. It considers Rural Attractiveness as the main factor regulating urban/rural population flows. In this example, Rural Attractiveness is defined by two factors: the perception of natural capital and the relative cost of living. Each of these factors has a weight in the final definition of Rural Attractiveness, and it can be regulated in the interface. At the same time, Rural Attractiveness is affecting three key variables: employment, commuters and migration. Over the next months, PoliRural will create a System Dynamics solution with a strong explanatory and sustainability potential.

PoliRural believes that if the project is implemented in a truly participatory way, the result becomes a process of collective learning, leading to a stronger commitment to final outcomes. PoliRural interprets participatory foresight as a powerful combination of strategic anticipatory intelligence, sense-making, visioning, scenario development and systems modelling all coupled with deep participatory engagement that is not limited to the expert community. A participatory assessment approach is emerging as a more holistic method for measuring sustainability in rural areas. In this approach, local stakeholders play an integral part in the assessment process, assisted by experts.

PoliRural participatory foresight for rural policy making is being applied to 12 pilot areas. In this process, PoliRural has been building a community of interest around each pilot, and these regional stakeholder panels include policy makers, experts, farmers, rural dwellers and new entrants. Each pilot has chosen the most appropriate approach to set up a regional panel and ensure efficient collaboration. Every pilot is being surrounded with a community of stakeholders whose input will be required several times during the project to ensure efficient access to knowledge whenever it is needed.

The main focus of PoliRural foresight is on gaining a well-rounded understanding of change, and how local and regional policy decisions can influence it for the benefit of grassroot communities. The chosen foresight approach is also strategic and modular. Tools such System Dynamic Modeling are being used for exploring alternative future visions for rural areas based on scenarios using a participative approach that supports high levels of stakeholder engagement.

PoliRural combines survey research with innovative text mining techniques that are both rigorous and versatile. Text mining can help process vast amounts of information from structured and unstructured sources and discover new knowledge at low cost. Text mining applications can save time on data collection and information processing, allowing decision makers to focus on more important tasks like service delivery.

In PoliRural, text mining is extensively used at one of the foresight stages called current situation analysis. It aggregates findings from survey and textual analysis to provide an overview of the current situation that is more complete than the one based on either method alone. PoliRural's innovative approach enhances text mining results by blending them with those of Foresight and System Dynamic Modeling. This allows a more in-depth analysis to be undertaken in each of the 12 pilot areas, as the focus is not limited to the present but also covers possible future developments. The iterative nature of System Dynamics drove developers to design a dynamic system with a series of structured text mining functions, blending together some of the solutions for enhancing the overall functionalities. The ambition is to create a system that can support policymakers by using the massive amount of information available on the Internet thanks to text mining for simulating the possible impacts of policies through System Dynamic Modelling.

In conclusion, PoliRural will promote the use of text mining in rural policy making by creating an advanced tool for heavy-duty knowledge extraction and will demonstrate the capacity of text mining to advance rural policy objectives by testing the tool on multiple languages and different occasions.

PoliRural is a research and innovation project designed to advance rural policy development in a co-creation process. It brings together decision makers, experts and rural inhabitants to better understand and tackle regional challenges, and ultimately make rural areas more attractive and resilient.

PoliRural methodology is being tested in a total of 12 regions, covering Western, Eastern, Central, Nothern and Southern Europe plus Israel. The pilot selection was guided by a desire to include a wide spectrum of areas in relation to climate, geography, topography, social and economic conditions.

PoliRural pilot study areas are: Flanders (Belgium), Monaghan (Ireland), Segóbriga (Spain), Vidzeme (Latvia), Mazowieckie (Poland), Central Bohemian Region (Czech Republic), Slovakia Region, Häme (Finland), Central Greece (Greece), Apulia (Italy), Gevgelija-Strumica (Macedonia), and Galilee (Israel).

For each pilot, PoliRural is creating new knowledge and insights taking into account unique regional characteristics, policy landscape, and the needs of both people and industry. Additionally, PoliRural has been building a community of interest around each pilot. These communities, also known as regional stakeholder panels, comprise many different stakeholders with direct knowledge and experience of the region: public authorities, rural communities, experts and industry, among others.

In addition to surveying panel members, PoliRural pilot areas are working with a large corpus of online sources (big data), using text mining to identify global issues and local needs, ongoing developments and emerging trends, existing measures and public perception of their effectiveness.

PoliRural intends to transform rural policy, avoiding the pitfalls of old practices and advancing new knowledge fit for the post-2020 society. To contribute to this, PoliRural is designing a multi-governance policy Innovation Hub that makes all regional stakeholders active participants, fostering cross-sharing of knowledge and building a strong enabling stakeholder community for the rural ecosystem.

The aim of the Polirural Innovation Hub is to offer a public user interface and introduction to the innovations of the project. It will be a central and virtual space, where all stakeholders (policymakers, public servant, regional development agencies, NGO, citizens, scientists, developers, data experts, planners) will meet and share their needs and achievements to improve policy and decision making on local, regional and eventually national level. The core of the Innovation Hub will be the Digital Innovation Hub platform, which will support the sharing of information with other projects and initiatives.

To this end, the Polirural Digital Innovation Hub will provide four distinctive sections, or spaces, that cater for both internal and external users:

• An interaction space with forums, dialogue and Wiki capabilities to support stakeholder interaction;

• A learning space for Massive Open Online Courses to facilitate dissemination and uptake of knowledge and methodology developed through the project;

• An experimentation space for testing analytics and visualization including text mining and system dynamics based on real data;

• A development and hosting space for creating virtual instances of the shared reference to be used by each pilot when developing their applications.

Changes in rural areas, such as depopulation, land abandonment and the loss of biodiversity, may proceed very slowly yet are often irreversible. Policymakers can steer these developments in order to reduce their negative impacts but this requires knowing whether

current policy instruments are effective, who is benefiting from them and in what measure, what driving forces will be most influential and how they will affect people, planet, profits and land-use. To be truly useful, this knowledge must transcend siloed thinking and be the

corollary of a joint effort uniting different actors under a common cause. PoliRural will provide this knowledge by combining several key activities needed to design effective placebased, human-centric and forward-looking rural policies. These include actionable research that takes place within an inclusive learning environment where rural populations, researchers and policymakers come together to address common problems; an evaluation exercise that uses text mining to assess the perceived effectiveness of past or planned policy interventions; and a foresight study that tries to glean the development trajectory of agriculture and its allied sectors until 2040 using several scenarios in which the evolution of rural populations occupies a central place. As a result of these activities, PoliRural will leave decision makers at different levels of government better equipped to tackle existing and emerging rural challenges, rural populations more empowered and rural areas more resilient.