The step project:societal and political engagement of young people in environmental issues

Decisions on environmental topics taken today are going to have long-term consequences that will affect future generations. Young people will have to live with the consequences of these decisions and undertake special responsibilities. Moreover, as tomorrow’s decision makers, they themselves should learn how to negotiate and debate issues before final decisions are made. Therefore, any participation they can have in environmental decision making processes will prove essential in developing a sustainable future for the community.However, recent data indicate that the young distance themselves from community affairs, mainly because the procedures involved are ‘wooden’, politicians’ discourse alienates the young and the whole experience is too formalized to them. Authorities are aware of this fact and try to establish communication channels to ensure transparency and use a language that speaks to new generations of citizens. This is where STEP project comes in.STEP (www.step4youth.eu) is a digital Platform (web/mobile) enabling youth Societal and Political e-Participation in decision-making procedures concerning environmental issues. STEP is enhanced with web/social media mining, gamification, machine translation, and visualisation features.Six pilots in real contexts are being organised for the deployment of the STEP solution in 4 European Countries: Italy, Spain, Greece, and Turkey. Pilots are implemented with the direct participation of one regional authority, four municipalities, and one association of municipalities, and include decision-making procedures on significant environmental questions.</p

Competitiveness and viability of rural tourism enterprises in Greece

In Greece, the development of rural tourism was slow compared to the rest of Europe and was based mainly on the use of initiatives and programmes designed to finance these investments. The aim of these programs was among other things, to create new job places and higher incomes for the residents of rural areas. This thesis explores the competitiveness and viability of rural tourism enterprises that were set up by funding programs and reviews the objectives of these programs. We studied all rural tourism accommodations in Central Macedonia that were subsidized by a funding program. It was found that the lines that determine the competitiveness of rural tourism enterprises is the use of available resources, the competitive environment in which they operate and the human factor. The rural tourism enterprises have low effectiveness in terms of resources used, placing their viability in a precarious position. The most important factor in improving competitiveness of these enterprises is the entrepreneur himself and in particular its business profile that defines the his strategy and the way he sets his objectives. Ensuring the sustainability of rural tourism enterprises will depend on how quickly the entrepreneurs can cope with environmental changes and adapt their operations in order to operate effectively. The location of the enterprise and the available agrototourism resources are essential to the competitiveness of rural tourism enterprises and should be taken into account when designing financial programmes. Rural tourism enterprises can play a key role in the development and regeneration of rural areas, provided that they can meet the demands of modern business environment. Financing rural tourism investments is crucial for the development of rural tourism and the stimulation of rural economy.Στην Ελλάδα, η ανάπτυξη του αγροτικού τουρισμού άργησε σε σχέση με την υπόλοιπη Ευρώπη και βασίστηκε κυρίως στην αξιοποίηση πρωτοβουλιών και κανονισμών που αποβλέπουν στη χρηματοδότηση αυτών των επενδύσεων. Στόχος των προγραμμάτων αυτών ήταν μεταξύ άλλων, η δημιουργία νέων θέσεων απασχόλησης και η βελτίωση του εισοδήματος των κατοίκων των αγροτικών περιοχών. Η παρούσα έρευνα διερευνά την ανταγωνιστικότητα και βιωσιμότητα των επιχειρήσεων που δημιουργήθηκαν από τα προγράμματα χρηματοδότησης και εξετάζει την επίτευξη των στόχων των προγραμμάτων αυτών. Μελετήθηκαν όλα τα καταλύματα αγροτικού τουρισμού της Κεντρικής Μακεδονίας, που επιδοτήθηκαν κατά τη δημιουργία τους από κάποιο πρόγραμμα χρηματοδότησης. Διαπιστώθηκε ότι οι άξονες που καθορίζουν την ανταγωνιστικότητα των αγροτοτουριστικών επιχειρήσεων είναι η αξιοποίηση των πόρων που διαθέτουν, το ανταγωνιστικό περιβάλλον στο οποίο λειτουργούν και ο ανθρώπινος παράγοντας. Οι επιχειρήσεις αγροτικού τουρισμού έχουν χαμηλή αποτελεσματικότητα σε σχέση με τους πόρους που χρησιμοποιούν, θέτοντας σε επισφαλή θέση τη βιωσιμότητά τους. Σημαντικότερος παράγοντας στην ενίσχυση της ανταγωνιστικότητάς τους είναι ο ίδιος ο επιχειρηματίας και κυρίως το επιχειρηματικό του προφίλ που καθορίζει τη στρατηγική που έχει για την επιχείρησή του και τους στόχους που θέτει. Η εξασφάλιση της βιωσιμότητας των επιχειρήσεων αγροτικού τουρισμού θα εξαρτηθεί από το πόσο γρήγορα θα μπορέσουν να αντεπεξέλθουν στις αλλαγές του περιβάλλοντος και να προσαρμόσουν τη λειτουργία τους έτσι ώστε να λειτουργούν αποτελεσματικότερα. Η περιοχή στην οποία βρίσκονται οι επιχειρήσεις και οι αγροτοτουριστικοί της πόροι παίζουν καθοριστικό ρόλο στην ανταγωνιστικότητά τους και πρέπει να λαμβάνονται υπόψη στο σχεδιασμό των προγραμμάτων. Οι επιχειρήσεις αγροτικού τουρισμού μπορούν να παίξουν καθοριστικό ρόλο στην ανάπτυξη και αναγέννηση των αγροτικών περιοχών, αρκεί να μπορέσουν να αντεπεξέλθουν στις απαιτήσεις του σύγχρονου επιχειρηματικού περιβάλλοντος. Η ενίσχυση των επενδύσεων αυτών είναι καθοριστική για την περαιτέρω ανάπτυξη του αγροτικού τουρισμού και την τόνωση της οικονομίας της υπαίθρου

Developing an intelligent ICT system for environmentally optimized irrigation management in agriculture

Globally, agriculture makes use of 70% of all water withdrawn from aquifers, streams and lakes. Agriculture accounts for 22% of freshwater abstraction in Europe, outnumbered only by freshwater abstraction for cooling in energy production (45%). In the light of the real need to practically improve the environmental performance of irrigation systems and prevent the misuse of water, the ENORASIS project was established aimed to develop an intelligent, integrated Decision Support System (ENORASIS Service Platform and Components) for environmentally optimized and thus, sustainable irrigation management to be used by farmers and water management organizations. To achieve so, the ENORASIS project developed and integrated a bouquet of advanced technologies, methodologies and models in the fields of: (i) weather prediction systems that exploit satellite observations; (ii) irrigation optimization techniques and (iii) smart irrigation systems; and (iv) wireless sensor networks (functioning with solar energy) as key enabling technology for field measurements and monitoring conditions.The system was tested in 5 pilot locations in Poland, Serbia, Cyprus and Turkey, providing large savings in water use as comparted to other irrigation practices while not compromising crop yields. The highest savings were observed in raspberry and potato plantations in Poland, reaching 90%and 59% respectively

Wide-Area GNSS Corrections for Precise Positioning and Navigation in Agriculture

This paper characterizes, with static and roving GNSS receivers in the context of precision agriculture research, the hybrid ionospheric-geodetic GNSS model Wide-Area Real-Time Kinematics (WARTK), which computes and broadcasts real-time corrections for high-precision GNSS positioning and navigation within sparse GNSS receiver networks. This research is motivated by the potential benefits of the low-cost precise WARTK technique on mass-market applications such as precision agriculture. The results from two experiments summarized in this work, the second one involving a working spraying tractor, show, firstly, that the corrections from the model are in good agreement with the corrections provided by IGS (International GNSS Services) analysis centers computed in post-processing from global GNSS data. Moreover, secondly and most importantly, we have shown that WARTK provides navigation solutions at decimeter-level accuracy, and the ionospheric corrections significantly reduce the computational time for ambiguity estimation: up to convergence times for the 50%, 75% and 95% of cases equal or below 30 s (single-epoch), 150 s and 600 s approximately, vs. 1000 s, 2750 s and 4850 s without ionospheric corrections, everything for a roving receiver at more than 100 km far away from the nearest permanent receiver. The real-time horizontal position errors reach up to 3 cm, 5 cm and 12 cm for 50%, 75% and 95% of cases, respectively, by constraining and continuously updating the ambiguities without updating the permanent receiver coordinates, vs. the 6 cm, 12 cm and 32 cm, respectively, in the same conditions but without WARTK ionospheric corrections