The FUPOL project is funded under the FP7 work program of the European Union. FUPOL focuses on developing an innovative IT solution for policy process modeling, simulation and forecasting, new governance, and the joint solution of complex societal problems.

The aim of FUPOL is to promote research and development in the areas of simulation, policy process modeling, semantic analysis, and visualization. The scientific method used in the project is based on complexity theory. This is considered suitable for complex social problems.

FUPOL is intended to help political organizations better predict and understand trends in the future. Although the approach and technology can be used in all political areas, the project focuses on urban policy, as the majority of the world’s population lives in urban areas.

Benefits of FUPOL

Governments, as well as citizens and businesses, will benefit from FUPOL:

Politicians can better understand the needs of citizens and businesses.
Communication between politicians and citizens via multi-channel social networks enables direct feedback.
Better forecasting of the effects of political measures enables more efficient implementation of government policy.
Forecasting the potential impact of political decisions allows better decisions to be made.

Intelligent visualizations in FUPOL

The researchers in the Semantic Visualizations group of the Information Visualization and Visual Analytics department are investigating and developing intelligent solutions for the graphical representation of complex political influencing factors in FUPOL. This involves developing technologies that support the decision-making process and bring together various information channels, such as statistical data, social networks or regulations and legal situations, in order to make both suitable measures and their effects visually analyzable and accessible. The core of the work lies in the development of a framework for the semantic visualization of the entire policy life cycle, based on the SemaVis technology.