One of the main problems that sparse communities like those within the Northern Periphery experience is finding information about the environment they live in. The aim of Northern Potential Project is to develop and populate a system that will provide the citizens and organisations within all the partners’ areas, (Highland Council in Scotland, Landsdelsutvalget in Norway and Norlandsförrbundet in Sweden) with a one-stop service for information about the Northern Periphery and their home territory. It is hoped that this one-stop service may also encourage external citizens and organisations to consider moving to or setting up within the Northen Periphery.
The project is supported by the Northern Periphery Programme and the ERDF (European Regional Development Fund). The illustrations demonstrate the current differing styles of the four portals, a single transnational portal and three regional portals. It is intended that all transnational information will appear on the combined portal with territory specific information appearing on the appropriate territorial portal. There may be some information appearing on both a territorial portal and the combined portal. This article shows the current intended appearance of the each portal although they may change as the project progresses.
A single source will be set up to which all partners will contribute. This will contain a number of Knowledge Bases on subjects key to helping existing and prospective citizens lead productive lives in the territory; and assist companies and organisations within the community to develop a common view of the areas. Initially the Knowledge Bases will remain basic and support a limited number of formats, but over time it is hoped they will develop to support a wider variety of formats. Longer term the definition of a Knowledge Base will become “a collection of information in a variety of formats that has a common theme”. The aim of the system is to pull this information together into a single location and make it available in machine readable form. A number of subject areas have been identified already for the Knowledge Bases – such as Farming, Fisheries, Business Directories, Economic and Population Statistics, etc. Knowledge Bases can be defined to cover any sub-set of the total Northern Periphery and can be expanded as the need arises.
Each Knowledge Base will have a number of nominated publishers and all users will be encouraged to contribute through the publishers. In addition to the Knowledge Bases there will be links to other sites of interest and Newsletters and other articles targeted at defined communities. Communities can be defined down to the smallest Village or Hamlet. To further encourage participation, Discussion Forums will be available and some information from these Forums may be incorporated into the Knowledge Bases as the system matures.
The system will also make use of the recently released Google Maps facility to provide a spatial interface for finding information. This will offer improved facilities for establishing details of the immediate environment. Where appropriate, information will have spatial co-ordinates allowing the displayed information to be limited to that relating to the area selected by the user.
There will also be facilities within the system to support registered users, although some territories may choose not to use these initially. For registered users there will be facilities to customise their home pages and to select items they are interested in e.g. “Tell me when anything is changed or added to this Knowledge Base”.
Initially the system is being developed for three partners as listed previously but it is hoped that over time the system may be rolled out to other partners within the Northern Periphery - and become the central repository for all information on the Northern Periphery. A conference of all Northern Periphery Projects is being considered for early next year to introduce them to Northern Potenial and what it can offer them. Currently each Project develops its own website and this results in an unstructured and fragmented approach to the delivery of information. Using the Northern Potential system will both reduce the individual project effort and improve cross project co-ordination.
A development partner has been selected and work is proceeeding with an expected launch at the end of August 2006.
Contact:
email : webmaster@highlandlife.net