The Eururalis challenge
What will happen to Europe in the forthcoming time? How will it impact on European
agriculture and rural areas? What kind of threats and opportunities for
socio-cultural, economic and ecological values can we expect? How do global
issues (climate change, competing claims, world food prices, food security,
sustainability) shape agriculture inside the EU and other regions in the world?
What are adequate international policies and what is their effectiveness?
The Eururalis discussion tool
The Eururalis consortium has developed a discussion-oriented tool that addresses
these challenges for Europe in detail, and with the focus on the global
dimension becoming more important.
The ambition of the EURURALIS project is first to develop a discussion-oriented
tool to support policy makers in discussions about the future of agriculatural and
rural areas with scientifically sound data and methodologies for Europe in detail and
with the global dimension becoming more important. An important feature of the Eururalis
tool is the constant linkage between economic and biophysical domains and the linkage between
global and local scales.
The three versions
Version 1.0 was released in 2004 to give an impulse to the discussion on rural development in the EU.
Version 2.0 followed in 2007. Focus was especially on Europe. The 2 versions were used on many occasions
by policymakers and scientists as well as in education. Results of Eururalis 3.0, released in 2010,
are the development and implementation of innovative methodologies for policy assessment (e.g. new agro-biodiversity
indicator) and the assessment of the impact of the agricultural policies on people, planet and profit indicators
and land use.
The EURURALIS project has been leading the way in providing tools for stakeholders
to browse results of the integrated multi-scale modelling with Eururalis 1.0 and 2.0.
As part of Eururalis 3.0, a new version is made available in the form of a web-based tool - so
now need to download and install anything - which allows everyone to view Eururalis 3.0 results
in a dynamic and interactive way. With an increase of public scrutiny towards science and its results,
transparency and public availability of scientific methods and results become crucial to maintaining
trust and credibility of the general public in science.
Eururalis 3.0 works with maps, allowing for easy interpretation of results at multiple spatial scales.
Results of Eururalis 3.0 includes various people, planet and profit indicators for different scenarios
which can be compared through time and on different spatial resolutions.
If you want to play with the intermediate version of the Eururalis 3.0 tool interactively,
then ...
Version 1.0 was released in 2004 to give an impulse to the discussion on rural development in the EU.
Version 2.0 followed in 2007. Focus was especially on Europe. The 2 versions were used on many occasions
by policymakers and scientists as well as in education. Results of Eururalis 3.0, released in 2010,
are the development and implementation of innovative methodologies for policy assessment (e.g. new agro-biodiversity
indicator) and the assessment of the impact of the agricultural policies on people, planet and profit indicators
and land use.
