Examinando por Autor "Drosou, Anastasios"

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    Engagement and accessibility tools for pro-environmental action on air quality: the SOCIO-BEE paradigm
    (Springer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH, 2024-01) Atutxa Ordeñana, Ekhi; García Torres, Sofía; Kyfonidis, Charalampos; Karanassos, Dimitrios; Kopsacheilis, Evangelos; Tsita, Christina; Casado Mansilla, Diego; Emvoliadis, Alexandros; Angelis, Georgios; López de Ipiña González de Artaza, Diego; Puerta Beldarrain, Maite; Drosou, Anastasios; Tzovaras, Dimitrios
    The involvement of citizens and all stakeholders is crucial in tackling environmental and social matters. This, addressing equity and diversity issues, although challenging, is a necessary condition for achieving positive outcomes and ensuring that no one is left behind. To help ease this challenge, this work presents a systematic approach to ensure inclusive participation and leverage non-technical and technical elements to maximise stakeholder engagement in scientific activities to successfully address sustainability concerns. For that, it builds on the interim results of the H2020 SOCIO-BEE project, a Citizen science (CS) proposal to reduce air pollution through inclusive community engagement and social innovation. As part of an interdisciplinary CS project, an abductive systematic combining methodology was employed, which allowed for dialogue and collaboration between theory and practice throughout the whole process, during which separate groups of experts and potential end-users were involved. The article presents (i) the stakeholder engagement strategy codified in the SOCIO-BEE toolkit as a robust, actionable and inclusive foundation of engagement to CS activities; and (ii) the digital platform UX that allows setting up campaigns for measurements and assignment to citizens, incorporating the requirements for flexibility, accessibility, limited digital literacy, inclusion and legal and ethical considerations. Their combination and mutual interaction aim to leverage the pros of CS and technology whilst reducing their cons to ensure the four pillars of applicability, scalability, actionability, and inclusion. This is supported by the presented hybrid model which combines physical and virtual spaces and individual and collective action.
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    Mind the gap: the AURORAL ecosystem for the digital transformation of smart communities and rural areas
    (Elsevier Ltd, 2023-08) Gómez Carmona, Oihane; Buján Carballal, David; Casado Mansilla, Diego; López de Ipiña González de Artaza, Diego; Cano de Benito, Juan; Cimmino, Andrea; Poveda Villalón, María; García Castro, Raúl; Almela Miralles, Jorge; Apostolidis, Dimitris; Drosou, Anastasios; Tzovaras, Dimitrios; Wagner, Martin; Guadalupe Rodríguez, María; Salinas, Diego; Esteller, David; Riera Rovira, Martí; González, Arnau; Clavijo Ágreda, Jaime; Díez Frias, Alberto; Bocanegra Yáñez, María del Carmen; Pedro Henriques, Rui; Ferreira Nunes, Elsa; Lux, Marian; Bujalkova, Nikol
    Rural areas play a crucial role in addressing challenges related to climate change, food provision, biomass, and energy. At the same time, digital solutions have proven essential in improving safety, quality of life, and resilience in daily life. However, the lower population density and the lack of digital infrastructure in such rural areas make it difficult to develop technology-driven private businesses and public services. This can negatively impact socio-economic indicators and hinder the development of new services to cover peoples’ needs. For this reason, in this document, we seek to provide a stronger focus on rural regions in digitalization efforts and create new opportunities for rural communities. For that, we analyze the barriers and needs of the rural environment and present AURORAL, a digital service platform designed to meet the needs and contexts of rural areas. This ecosystem, comprising sustainable and multi-interoperable apps and services, can help communities succeed in innovation and smart transformation, providing the necessary infrastructure to facilitate long-lasting social, environmental, and economic benefits by prioritizing openness, interoperability, and decentralization. On the principle that the full potential of these technologies can only be realized when they are integrated into societal and economic activity and organization, AURORAL aims to promote economic growth and digitalization in the rural domain and contribute to bridging the digital divide between rural and urban areas.
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    Towards smart, digitalised rural regions and communities: policies, best practices and case studies
    (Elsevier Ltd, 2025-06) Leviäkangas, Pekka; Sønvisen, Signe; Casado Mansilla, Diego; Mikalsen, Marius; Cimmino, Andrea; Drosou, Anastasios; Hussain, Shahid
    Rural communities and regions face specific challenges in terms of thin markets, low population density, and long distances. Also, the demographics of these communities are often skewed towards the elderly, and the socioeconomics is characterized by higher share of low-income populations. While the concept of urban smart communities is quite well established, such as Smart Cities, the concept of smart rural region communities is only beginning to gain scholarly attention. Smart rural communities can be understood as rural areas and communities that build on their existing strengths and assets as well as on developing new opportunities based on the aforementioned. Traditional and new networks and services can be improved by utilizing digital telecommunication technologies, innovations, and better use of data and knowledge to benefit the communities. Investing in both physical and digital connectivity, and building digital environments for innovative services, economic sustainability, jobs, and social capital can be enhanced, thus contributing to active and live rural communities. Consequently, the development of smart rural communities and regions begins to emerge in research. What is becoming evident is that achieving the ambitions of smart rural communities requires not only digital technologies but also innovation of commercial and social services, as well as better digital capabilities and skills to bridge the existing – and in places the widening - divide between rural and urban communities.