Co-design and e-governance tools for sustainable land and water management in rural areas: the experience within the DESIRA H2020 project

Digitalisation has emerged as a transformative force in various domains, and the field of agriculture is no exception. This paper presents a study on designing an egovernment solution to support ordinary land management in rural areas, focusing on maintenance interventions aimed at mitigating floods and other related phenomena. We first reconstruct the existing socio-cyber-physical system currently in use for ordinary land management. Then, we develop a use case to understand how technology and human-centric approaches can enhance practices. Specifically, the use case aims to explore how digital tools can support the collection and analysis of information regarding maintenance intervention needs from both citizens and farmers. Finally, we implement a prototype system to support the process as defined in the use case. The system consists of a chatbot for citizens and farmers to report maintenance needs and a dashboard for the organization responsible to visualise the requests. The chatbot acts as an interactive platform for users to submit real-time information, enabling timely responses and streamlined communication. The dashboard provides decision-makers with a centralized and visual representation of the reported data, empowering them to prioritize and allocate resources effectively. By leveraging valuable insights and observations from citizens and farmers, the system can gain a comprehensive understanding of existing problems, and prioritize intervention strategies accordingly.