[RIS3-MCAT Demo] Smart Specialisation Mapping Platform - A science and innovation policy-making, implementation and monitoring open data platform

[RIS3-MCAT – Smart Specialisation Mapping Platform]: The RIS3-MCAT Platform is an open government, artificial intelligence, data visualisation initiative that integrates and interrelates open data from science and innovation projects and provides an exploratory tool to visualise the development of the sectorial and technological specialisation of research and innovation projects financed by European funds. It is a main support tool for the monitoring of the Research and Innovation Strategy of Catalonia.

This demo presents a data platform and data visualisation web app supporting science and innovation policy decision-making, implementation and monitoring in Catalonia, in the context of smart specialisation. It contributes to a wider participatory process cutting across government departments (Universities and research, Industrial and innovation policy, Economic development) and bringing together stakeholders (government, universities and research centres, private companies and citizens and civil society) to participate in evidence-based policy-making.

It integrates and analyses data from 2.000 R&D projects funded by the European Commission and Generalitat de Catalunya and managed by regional and European institutions. It has been developed following open government principles; it is an ontology-based data access and integration platform; it uses artificial intelligence techniques to extract meaningful insights from extensive and heterogeneous data; it provides a co-designed data visualisation and analysis web app.

RIS3-MCAT was presented in late 2018 and during the present year is evolving in several lines. To support the definition of a challenge-oriented RIS3CAT in the next programming period (2021-2027), EU-funded projects integrated in the platform will be automatically classified into the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), using machine learning techniques, with the objective of:

1. Identify automatically RIS3-MCAT projects contributing to the SDGs
2. Analyse the relationship between RIS3CAT priorities and the SDGs
3. Characterise the projects’ specific thematic contributions to the SDGs
4. Map SDG value chains, subtopics and contributing actors
5. Build adequate tools to facilitate expert stakeholder collaboration and coordination