Digital innovation for heritage-led rural development in Sierra y Mancha Conquense
Programme: PoliRuralPlus – Develop Call, Financial Support for Third Parties
Status: Completed
Pilot territory: Sierra y Mancha Conquense, Spain
Coordinator: Obsidian Innovation Institute – Associação (OBSIDIAN)
Technical partner: Xilbi Sistemas de Informacion SL (XILBI)
Project platform: https://arise.xilbi.com/
Public repository: https://github.com/obsi-org/ARISE
About the project
ARISE – Archaeological Routes for Inclusive Synergy & Entrepreneurship – was developed within PoliRuralPlus to strengthen rural-urban connections through cultural heritage, digital visitor services, rural-business visibility and multi-actor collaboration.
The project focused on Sierra y Mancha Conquense, a rural territory with significant Roman archaeological heritage, including Segóbriga, Valeria and Ercávica. Despite the cultural importance of these assets, visitor information, local services and territorial coordination were distributed across different sources and organisations.
ARISE addressed this challenge by developing a Heritage Synergy Platform connecting heritage assets, rural businesses, visitor routes, territorial information and stakeholder coordination within a common digital environment.
OBSIDIAN’s role
OBSIDIAN coordinated the ARISE project and led project management, governance and compliance, stakeholder engagement, co-design, monitoring, evaluation, quality assurance and the sustainability and replication approach.
The organisation also contributed to the definition of the platform architecture and to the multi-actor governance model supporting continued territorial coordination.
Technical development and implementation of the platform were carried out in cooperation with XILBI.
The ARISE platform
ARISE combines a public visitor-facing service with protected operational and stakeholder environments.
The public platform allows visitors to explore cultural and territorial points of interest, discover rural businesses and services, prepare multi-stop routes, access territorial news and funding information and receive location-aware conversational guidance through the ARISE Chat Agent powered by PoliRural Jackdaw.
The platform is available in Spanish, English and Portuguese.
Behind the public service, ARISE provides administration functions for territorial content and platform operation together with an authenticated Multi-Actor Approach Tool workspace supporting stakeholder coordination, initiatives, tasks, route co-design, shared information and monitoring.
Results and impact
ARISE successfully completed its nine-month implementation period and achieved the performance targets established for the project.
The final result is a live and maintainable digital service connecting cultural heritage, rural businesses, visitors and territorial stakeholders. The project also established structured territorial datasets, documented interfaces, a stakeholder-collaboration environment and a practical basis for continued operation and replication.
ARISE demonstrates how digital technologies can support heritage valorisation while simultaneously strengthening rural-service visibility and cooperation between local and regional actors.
Contribution to PoliRuralPlus
ARISE applies PoliRuralPlus tools and approaches to a cultural-heritage and rural-tourism context.
The platform integrates PoliRural Jackdaw for spatially contextualised conversational guidance and uses a Multi-Actor Approach Tool environment to support stakeholder coordination and collaborative planning.
Structured data and documented interfaces also provide a basis for controlled reuse and future interoperability with the wider PoliRuralPlus ecosystem.
Sustainability and replication
The project concluded with both a live operational service and a reusable public software distribution.
The public distribution includes the application source code and the technical resources required to create and configure an independent ARISE deployment. Production data, personal information, stakeholder records, credentials and production-specific configuration are not included.
This approach allows the ARISE model to be adapted to other rural territories by introducing new heritage assets, businesses, routes, territorial information, languages, branding and stakeholder structures while retaining the principal technical architecture.
ARISE therefore provides not only a solution for Sierra y Mancha Conquense, but also a transferable model for other rural areas seeking to connect cultural heritage, visitor services, local enterprise and multi-actor governance.
Project conclusion
The funded implementation of ARISE has been completed.
The project leaves a functioning public digital service for Sierra y Mancha Conquense, an operational environment for stakeholder collaboration and a reusable technological and organisational foundation for future heritage-led rural-development initiatives.
Visit the ARISE platform:
https://arise.xilbi.com/
Public source code and replication resources:
https://github.com/obsi-org/ARISE
Funding acknowledgement
PoliRuralPlus has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under Grant Agreement No. 101136910.
Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Executive Agency (REA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
