caENTI prospects

By Jean-Jacques GIRARDOT (Coordinator, Université de Franche-Comté, France)

Slides of the presentation

The caENTI started a process that will go on after the end of the coordination action. We should think to the future. On the basis of the progress and results, we defined the tasks that shoudl be made on the short term.

• Developing experimentations (as for instance software or computer systems development) involves homogeneizing regularly the guide, the repertory of services and the territorial indicators. This homogeneization will then involve an evolution of the tools that must too adapt to technical changes rythms. It will then require regular updates.
• The European portal of territorial indicators remains a prototype that will have to be maintained and widened. The questions concerning the infracomunal and the intercomunal levels require solutions on the long term.
• The Catalyse Community website that regularly diffuses the new versions of the Catalyse tools also implies maintenance.
• We widened thinking about the territorial intelligence community systems that imply important developments.
• The publication of the base of territorial intelligence actions remains a sketch to be materialised, that can get an international dimension.
• The follow-up of the initiated experimentations will overcome the caENTI horizon too.
• The works on the governance principles generate debates on the ICT use and on the participative methods the caENTI will not be able to conlude. The European repertory of research teamsfor which territory is an object is also a logn term project, which can quickly acquire an international dimension.

To ensure the continuity of the caENTI actions, we started an action of foreshadowing of a network of excellence in territorial intelligence, anyway of an international scale project of which there are already some foundation:

• The , that aims at providing the international community with a quality scientific journal in the territorial intelligence field, is a project that has already started, and which editorial committee is constituted and that is recluting its reading committee.
• A project of European master in territorial intelligence is advanceed enough to allow us answering to the next call for projects Erasmus Mundus (March-April 2009).
• The website www.territoriesnet.org will be the federative element of the European Network of Territorial Intelligence, Intelligence.eu and of the Latino-American Network of Entendimiento Territorial, territoriosposibles.org. It is open to other research and action networks which object is territory.

The project of excellence network, supported by the French National Center of Scientific Research, aims at constituting a virtual laboratory at the international scale, which taks, shared among the partners, will be integrated order to work towards a common objective. A first proposal of scientific objectives integrates the caENTI main results and lessons.

Three research activities are presently foreseen:

1. Making a multi-disciplinary syntheiss of territory sciences
2. Developping territorial information and disseminating the territorial observation and spatial analysis methods, especially towards vulnerable people and territories
3. Improving the contribution of territorial information systems to an equitable governance and to sustainable development, through a better integration in the territorial decision-making process

This proposal is presently on debate.

The sixth International Conference of Territorial Intelligence “Tools and methods of territorial intelligence” that took place in Besançon (France) in October, 2008, was successfull: 152 paper proposals, 104 communications and 83 published papers. It mobilised 248 participants of 22 nationalities. Among the 218 European participants, 124 were French. 29 researchers came from North and South America, Asia and Africa. This conference gathered 123 caENTI members (researchers and/or actors) and 115 other researchers and actors. At the end of the event, the conference blog had been visited more than 600 times, and it has been visited more than 2500 times up to now. Many participants want to be members of the next network of excellence and more than 12 teams offered to organize seminars and coordination meetings for preparing this project.

The next international conference of territorial intelligence, "Territorial Intelligence and culture of development" will take place in Salerno (Italy), from 4th to 6th November, 2009. The themes of the conference correspond to the research axes envisaged for the future network:

• State of the art of territorial intelligence
• From territories knowledge to territorial action (knowlege, information and indicators, analysis methods, exploitation tools, decision-making process)
• Governance, vulnerable people, territories in tension
• Culture, tourism et sustainable territory developement (the culture, the fourth mainstay of sustainable development, governance and cultural diversity, heritage and planning, access to culture and cultural planning of territories, cultural tourism and sustainable development)