Ålesund Study Visit June 18th & 19th PROACTsme

Møre og Romsdal fylkeskommune hosted a study visit in Ålesund to further exchange knowledge and experiences between the PROACTsme Interreg Europe partners during the days 18th and 19th of June. The day started off with presentations of each partner on the topic of stakeholder engagement and policy improvements. After such we had three insightful visits at the Digicat.AI and AugmentCity, located at the Norsk Maritimt Kompetansesenter, and Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). Some key concepts:

• Bjørn Dimmen, CEO Digicat Norsk Katapultsenter, showed us how we can predict and analyze the ocean moviment, tidal waves, ship monitoring as a way to simulate any potential situation in the scope of the Ålesund ocean surroundings.
• Richard Adewale, Global Business Development Manager at AugmentCity, revealed that from a digital twin of the city of Stavanger we can analyze what are the necessities in a city as well as how we can create an impact in CO2 reduction via areas such as sustainable and green housing, traffic and public transport.
• Rune Volden and Arne Styve, from the Department of ICT and Natural Sciences of the Faculty of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, exposed some very interesting projects about managing data in a sustainable way and how this can have a real impact in the Norwegian scope.

The first day culminated in a round table, which its main topic was the following question “Is data accessible in your country? What are the main challenges?”. All partners were invited to have an open discussion about data accessibility and how all the items that have been explained at the study visit portrayed an inspiration with data management and IA.

During the second day there was planned a series of workshops in relation to digitalization, IA and policy instrument improvements.

All activities were moderated by Eamon Leonard and Emer Owens, from both the University of Limerick, who is also an advisory partner in this project, and the Emerging Risk Group.

The workshops were structured in three sections with different dynamcs:

1. The first workshop revolved around the topic "PROACTsme for Impact and Stakeholder Perspective", where we discussed the impact of each policy instrument and how they are currently serving stakeholders in the best way possible.
2. The second workshop switch up the dynamics by encouraging a peer-to-peer discussion about user involvement and co-creation for improved policies. The challenge was to present the partner's journey through collaborative learning.
3. The third workshop, under the headline "action plans and forward outlook", outlined the challenges in the action plans as well as highlighted the future steps of each partner.

The last day summed with a roundtable in order to put together the main outputs of the workshops. Partners had the oportunity to discuss what they believed was important out of such topics.