Interviews: LÓPEZ CASILLAS, Alberto (AVILA)
Mr. LÓPEZ CASILLAS, Alberto
Project Officer at Diputación de Ávila (AVILA)
What is your role in CHAMELEON?
Diputación de Ávila faces the challenge of providing territories to establish and develop the CHAMELEON advances in rural communities. Our role in CHAMELEON is identifying the best places to develop the advances of the project in rural areas and providing the needed feedback from local stakeholders to promote the actualization and update of technical issues to be useful for the final users.
How does your expertise contribute to the overarching goals of the CHAMELEON project?
Diputación de Ávila contributes to the CHAMELEON goals with the experience and knowledge about local stakeholders in rural areas, as the main actors applying technology to the forest, farm and agrarian activity, and the translation of technical issues to real end users.
What are the main advantages CHAMELEON will bring to European citizens?
The rural areas, where most of primary production is conduced, face some challenges related to the adaptation to new technologies which can contribute to the competitiveness in those areas and industries. CHAMELEON is working on creating important advances in terms of services, provided with new technology, but with the focus of adapting this technology to bring real benefits for the end users. Rural companies and land managers will improve their activity thanks to the advances of CHAMELEON.
How is CHAMELEON designed to be user-friendly for those less familiar with technology in rural settings?
There is a constant worry from CHAMELEON technical developers for considering local stakeholders needs and to adapt the design for those actors who will use the advances but without an expert technical knowledge. CHAMELEON aims to overcome the gap of the lack of technical knowledge with an easy design, with a pre-defined needs supply and the adaptation of the outputs of all the advances for being useful for the average land manager in rural areas.
What feedback mechanisms are in place for rural inhabitants to voice their concerns or suggestions about CHAMELEON?
There have been and there will be constant contacts with the stakeholders who the users of CHAMELEON outputs will be.
