The e-POLICY started in October 2011 and was concluded in December 2014. The main goal with this project was to support policy agents in decision-making processes. This is a multidisciplinary project that focuses on the lifecycle of policy-making engineering, with a particular emphasis on regional planning, and on promoting the assessment of the economic, social and environmental impact throughout the decision-making process. The main case study of the e-POLICY focused on the decision-making processes on energy policies in the region of Emilia Romagna, in Italy. However, the technology developed can be extended to other regions and/or areas.

The e-POLICY is based on visual techniques and tools that allow policy-makers, citizens and stakeholders to access data. The goal is to raise the awareness of decision-makers for generic questions, such as the impact of policies and budget restrictions, as well as for more individual questions, such as the opinions and reactions of the community.

The project was coordinated locally by Luís Torgo (LIAAD), and INESC TEC team involved was composed of  Alípio Jorge (LIAAD), Vítor Costa (CRACS) and Inês Dutra (CRACS).

Besides INESC TEC, the project consortium includes the following institutions: Università di Bologna (Italy, project coordinator), University of Surrey (United Kingdom), Università di Ferrara (Italy), University College Cork (Ireland), Regione Emilia Romagna (Italy), PPA Energy (United Kingdom), ASTER (Italy) and the Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics Research (Germany).

The INESC TEC researchers mentioned in this article are associated with the following partner institutions: FCUP.

INESC TEC, April 2015