‘VALERIE’ (VALorising European Research for Innovation in agriculturE and forestry) was a four-year EU FP7 project which concerned research to underpin innovation in the agri-rural sector.
Project summary:
There is a compelling need for research to play a significant role for the future, in meeting the challenges of increased demand for food balanced against the need to deliver other ecosystem services. If this role is to be fulfilled, outreach and translation of research for innovation must be drastically enhanced. The VALERIE project responded to the challenge of boosting innovation by facilitating the uptake of knowledge, and its integration into field practices, through the following activities:
- developed and implemented a co-innovation methodology with stakeholders in farming and forestry case studies across Europe to identify innovation issues and evaluate innovation solutions from research and practice
- developed a highly interactive smart search tool for advisers and practitioners, named ask-Valerie.eu. It uses web-semantics technology and a ‘built-for-purpose vocabulary’ of key terms that cover the domain of sustainable and profitable agriculture and forestry. It helps practitioners and advisers in the field of agriculture and forestry to find and share documents that respond to their specific queries and gives access to a large number of document collections. Further details and launch date news to follow.
CCRI developed and implemented the co-innovation methodology working with stakeholder communities using participatory methods in ten case studies across Europe. Talking to stakeholders we learned how they identify innovation needs and how they seek, interpret, and integrate (i.e. translate) new information from research. In the process, the project provided the case studies with information on innovations and gave them the opportunity to test selected innovations in trials. Case study stakeholders and partners also helped to build ask-valerie.eu by iterative testing and evaluation.
CCRI together with project case study partners authored the following outputs which describe the methodology used and the findings:
More information can be found at http://www.valerie.eu/
Follow VALERIE on Twitter
CCRI Press Release 19 March 2014
VALERIE Project Update – Autumn 2016
VALERIE Winter Newsletter 2016/17
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 613825.
