Roadmap for ICT solutions for rural areas and maritime regions

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Roadmap for ICT solutions for rural areas and
maritime regions

• Karel Charvát
• Czech Centrum for Strategic Study

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Vision

• Bridging divide between urban and rural
• To give equal opportunity to access ICT in all
  Europe until 2010

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Existing barriers.

• Distance barriers their access to administrative
  and governmental services and structures (taxes,
  subsidies etc.)
• Economic barriers their access to wider business
  and labour markets (suppliers, customers,
  opportunities)

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Existing barriers.

• Social barriers of rural inhabitants to
  information, education training facilities,
  health and social services etc.
• Information barriers currently the amenities of
  many rural areas are "invisible" to the "outside
  world" (inhabitants of other areas, urban centres
  or citizens of other states rural tourism,
  local products etc.)

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Rural typology

• Definitions of 'rurality' are based on low
  population densities, special sectoral structure
  and even on the negative definition of non-urban.
  Geographers and governments have tended to define
  rurality by population density. National
  variation results in enormous disparity between
  the definitions of rural communities

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Rural typology

• Integrated rural areas
• Intermediate rural areas
• Remote rural areas

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Integrated rural areas

• Integrated rural areas are areas with a growing
  population, the employment basis is in the
  secondary and tertiary sectors, but with farming
  still being important use of land. The
  environmental, social and cultural heritage of
  some of these areas, relatively close to urban
  centres, may be under pressure of "urbanization".
  The rural character of some of these areas is at
  risk of becoming predominantly dwelling areas.

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Integrated rural areas

• Integrated areas could be divided into three
  groups according to their functionality. They
  are
• Regions close to large cities,
• Regions under the influence of the tourism
  industry
• Industrialised rural regions

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Intermediate rural areas

• Intermediate rural areas, relatively distant from
  urban centres, with a varying mix of primary and
  secondary sectors in many countries larger scale
  farming operations are found in these areas.
  Intermediate rural areas form the greatest part
  of agricultural Europe. The level and
  productivity of agriculture could vary. The
  manufacturing and services are usually provided
  by SMEs. The influence of the SMEs sector is very
  strong. Parts of these areas are Less Favoured
  Areas (LFA), which require financial support.

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Remote rural areas

• Remote rural areas with the lowest population
  densities, often the lowest incomes, and an aging
  population, which depends in most of Europe
  (excluding parts of Scandinavia) heavily on
  primary rural activities like agriculture,
  fishing, forestry and logging, hunting, breeding
  cattle, sheep or reindeer etc.

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Remote rural areas

• Remote rural areas these include EU's Outmost
  Regions, some northern European regions,
  mountainous regions, and part of islands, such as
  Madeira and Azores with low population density,
  usually in decline, with underdeveloped
  infrastructure. These areas generally provide the
  least adequate basic services isolating features
  are often topographic characteristics, like
  mountains, or their remoteness from transport and
  communication networks.

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Services

• Integrated rural areas -In general, integrated
  rural areas are expected to have high activity on
  the Internet. High proportion of well-established
  middle class rurbanizers and local entrepreneurs
  may be expected to be on the customer end of
  eBanking, B2C eBusiness, eShoping and eGovernment
  where available. Entrepreneurs and secondary and
  tertiary sectors may be expected to use
  communication and Internet for marketing, B2B and
  B2C transactions. Teleworking and eLearning would
  most probably not be exceptional.

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Services

• Intermediate rural areas -. eBanking, B2C
  eBusiness, eShoping and eGovernment may be
  expected to be less developed in intermediate
  rural areas. Teleworking and eLearning would be
  reasonable activities to help to cut unemployment
  rate and to expand economic activities beyond the
  region borders. Recreational and tourist
  businesses would use Internet for promotion and
  marketing purposes as well as e.g. for
  accommodation bookings.

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Services

• Remote rural areas - Main activities are usually
  connected with basic rural activities. Other
  activities that are supported are eco and rural
  tourism, tracking sport, mountaineering, yachting
  and other recreational and sporting activities.
  In northern Europe a large proportion of the
  inhabitants are occupied in governmental services
  such as care of elderly, teaching, etc. ICT based
  activities can overcome the physical distance
  barrier. This in the case for tourism,
  e-services, etc.

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IC technologies

• Integrated rural areas A high-speed cable
  connection would be feasible due to relatively
  high population densities. It can in most cases
  be financed by the market. May be substituted or
  supplemented by high-speed satellite connection
  or satellite connection combined with WLAN.

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IC technologies

• Intermediate rural areas - A high-speed cable
  connection probably would be realised only in
  towns with population size large enough to make
  the necessary investment economically feasible.
  It may be substituted where needed by wireless
  communication or high-speed satellite connection
  or satellite connection combined with WLAN.

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IC technologies

• Remote rural areas -The applicable technology
  would be wireless communication, high-speed
  satellite connection or satellite connection
  combined with WLAN. The possibility of fixed
  broadband is not excluded, but feasibility
  studies for different regions and solutions would
  be necessary. The fixed broadband alternative can
  be illustrated with the case of Madeira where
  many of the transatlantic fiber-optic cables
  "touch but the opportunity for lower cost band
  access is not used due to the National Regulatory
  Environment.

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Future communication technologies research

• The important research topics will be
• Satelite systems
• WLAN
• Hyperlan
• Terminals, which will be able to work in
  different networks (GPRS, WLAN, UMTS, S UMTS)

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ICT research fields

• WEB technologies knowledge management, semantic
  WEB, personalised WEB multilingual WEB
• Data and network security
• LBS
• Distributed system and interoperability
• GIS and earth observation
• Visualisation, image processing simulation
• Peripherals for disable and telemedicine

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Vision for future 5 years

• With the respect to the e-Europe 2005 and the
  Lisbon initiative of2000 it is necessary to
  offer equal opportunity to access information for
  all citizens of Europe
• It is necessary to build broadband access points
  in rural regions mainly in municipalities using
  alternative communication platforms according to
  the local conditions. This broadband access point
  will be base for future covering of regions using
  last mile technologies, but also for establish
  public access points.

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Vision for future 5 years

• Important is also to offer a flat rate
  connection, which supports wider usage of
  communication technologies.
• Internet is a universal platform for fixed and
  mobile networks. The idea that the Internet and
  other technologies are a key for the future of
  rural communities and that it will be beneficial
  for European citizens and enterprises as a whole
  is widely extended among the experts.

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Vision for future 5 years

• There are challenges at every level regarding to
  application of ICT in rural development, e.g.
  awareness, research, access, adoption, bandwidth,
  applications, etc. One of the important goals in
  next five years will be to transfer all
  applications to Internet platform. The Ipv6 will
  be introduced

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Vision for future 5 years

• With the transfer of applications to the Internet
  platform, it will be necessary to increase the
  security of transactions and also to support the
  work with distributed data sources.
• It will be necessary to develop new open GIS
  systems.using the European Galileo satellite GIS
  tecnologies are important in agriculture
  forestry, environment, transport, emergency
  services, partly also in e commerce.

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Vision for future 5 years

• A significant progress is also expected in
  Location based services. Based on combination of
  different network technologies, GPS and Galilee
  system
• Earth observation methods, image processing
  visualisation etc. increase possibility of
  environmental monitoring and emergency systems,
  but also data presentation.

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Vision for future 5 years

• Important task for next five years will be
  training of users and service consumers to be
  able to adopt new technologies. New methods of
  education based on distance learning technologies
  will be developed. There are no principal
  possibilities, how to provide such training using
  conventional methods.
• It is necessary to prepare standardisation steps
  for forming a single European marketplace
  especially for typical rural products like
  AgriFood products, wood products, but also for
  rural tourism services.

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Vision for future 5 years

• Interoperability will play important role in many
  ICT applications (Emergency, Environment, Health,
  Transport, e government, etc.)
• The importance of teleworking will grow primarily
  in integrated rural areas.
• The role of assistant healthcare services will
  grow in rural regions, where nurses will be able
  to provide basic diagnostic using telemedicine.

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Vision for period from 5 to 10 years

• All European citizens will have a possibility to
  use broadband access in different alternative
  ways.
• All software applications will run as well on
  Internet platform
• Building of hyperlan is expected on the base of
  Ipv6.

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Vision for period from 5 to 10 years

• Reconfigurable terminals (which will be able to
  switch among different terminals (GPRS, UMTS,
  SUMTS, WLAN and others) will be available. Multi
  platform solutions will be important solutions.
• A Single European Electronic Marketplace will be
  in full operation.
• Teleworking will be used on wide scale in
  intermediate and remote rural areas

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Valencia declaration

• Step to building e rural policy
• Support from Sec 2003
• Next action
• EFITA Budapest
• E rural conference June Brussels