FUPOL was funded under objective 5.6 of the FP7 work program of the European Commission aiming at ICT solutions for governance and policy modeling. The objective targeted research focusing on development of advanced ICT tools for policy modeling, prediction of policy impacts, development of a new governance model and collaborative solving of complex societal problems.

Based on a consortium of 15 partner, including the UN-Habitat and the city of Yantai, FUPOL has elaborated a comprehensive approach to further advance the research and development in simulation, policy process modeling, semantic analysis and visualization. The scientific approach is based on complexity science. It aims at reducing the complexity through a comprehensive policy spiral design lifecycle approach deemed appropriate for complex societal problems.

Building on the current political environment and the public sector collective data, it enables all stakeholders to better forecast and understand future trends.  While the approach and the technologies itself are generic and can be used in any policy domain, the project focused on urban policy challenges since the majority of the world´s population is living in urban areas.

FUPOL Benefits

The FUPOL project generated a lot of benefits for governments, citizens and businesses alike:

• Politicians can get a better understanding of the needs of citizen and businesses.
• Direct, better feedback from all political stakeholders through multichannel social network based communication between politicians and citizens
• Improved prediction of impacts of policy measures leading to more efficient implementation of government policies
• Better decisions through forecasting of the potential impact of political decisions
• Increased engagement of citizens and wider use of ICT tools resulting in higher potential of innovation concerning interaction of citizens with the government.

Intelligent Visualizations in FUPOL

Researchers of the Group “Semantics Visualization” of the Competence Centre Information Visualization and Visual Analytics analyzed and developed in FUPOL innovative solutions for the graphical representation of heterogeneous political impact factors. Thereby technologies were developed which support the decision-making process using several sources of information, e.g. statistical data, social networks or regulatory and legal conditions, to support both, the adequate processes and their impacts. The research focuses on the development of a technology for semantics visualization of the whole policy lifecycle, based on the SemaVis technology.