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Comment by mbrain | Hacker News Reader

> The project is conducted in partnership with the Strengthening Social Cohesion and Peace in Sri Lanka (SCOPE) programme, co-funded by the European Union and German Federal Foreign Office. SCOPE is implemented by GIZ in partnership with the Ministry of Justice, Prisons Affairs and Constitutional Reforms.

Is this specific project really funded by tax-payers money?

> Curated thousands of 3D assets to replace default buildings

How does this help to achieve any of these below ?

> Potential applications include:

> Simulating changes in roads, transport routes

> Exploring effects of changes in private transport policies

> Visualizing impact of new infrastructure like monorails or wider pavements

> Assessing effects of introducing more green spaces or parking areas

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Yup. The 3D assets are from Steam workshop and impact visuals and population calculations (since pop calc is based on square footage). Otherwise, with Skylines' defaults, this would all look like the Netherlands.

They're funding us to do this and a few other things:

2) Create and publish maps of Sri Lanka, especially for journalists to use for environment and land use reporting, for 2017-2024, using Sentinel-2 data

3) Build and publish our wiki of 70+ crops that can be grown in Sri Lankan backyards

4) Build and publish our open-source DIY agricultural sensor kit

5) Design and publish our journalism and media literacy course for young journalists and the general public

In general, these folks (https://www.giz.de) are one of main european branches of NGO funding in the Global South. This is a very small project in their overall scheme of things - your tax money goes to a lot of places in the world.

It only seems fair to also include the previous block:

Ultimately, what we realized was that there had to be some visual way to bridge the gap between professional expertise (often confined to academic papers and reports) and public understanding.

Our virtual city of Colombo serves as a crude "Digital Twin," offering a platform to:

1. Visualize and understand current urban design issues

2. Test and communicate potential infrastructure changes

3. Explore the impact of policy decisions on traffic and population distribution

4. Educate students and the public about urban planning concepts

Note how it specifically mentions public understanding and education twice. If you want the public to be able to relate to such a simulation, you want it to look as close as possible to the real thing. Otherwise, it will just remain an abstract simulation in which people will have trouble recognizing their own city.

Playing Devil's Advocate, making the game look more like the real world (I am assuming this is what was meant by "curating 3D assets") would help tremendously in "simulating", "exploring", "visualizing", and "assessing" the impacts and effects of changes and new additions to city policies and infrastructure to the average man.

As for whether this is a good use of taxpayer money... well, it could be worse.

Seems worth it as a teaching method.

I thought it was a pretty cool project, thought it was self-funded. But I agree I have no idea why I should finance this with my European taxpayer money.

I'd rather they spend it on projects like these, where at least some people get joy playing videogames for work. Alternative is they get together and cook up some of the worst bureaucratic dogshit wrapped in catshit they call quality legislation.

wait until you see the Horizon Europe project

> Horizon Europe

For people who are unaware, Horizon Europe is a research initiative that spans a wide range of interests, from nuclear energy to basically anything else, with the fine restriction that all research has to be open and public.

https://research-and-innovation.ec.europa.eu/funding/funding...

I'm not sure what the "dunk" is supposed to mean here, are you saying funding research like this is a waste of taxpayers money?

Agreed!

I really enjoy seeing stuff like Horizon. There are so many bad examples for taxpayers money (e.g. Gaia-X), but Horizon ain't that.

People who dunk on public projects usually are unaware of all the research their own government finances

Or, it's possible, they are aware and don't support it. I don't think "My government is better then yours" was the goal here...

The same people might also dunk on public projects funded by their own governments.

But I think they may not be quite aware of:

1. How many present-day things we take for granted have been enabled by basic research, sometimes on weird or unimportant-sounding topics.

2. How basic research can't necessarily quite go only for "important" and big results and skip the "unimportant" results and topics, or know in advance which ones are going to be useful and which ones aren't.

3. How investments in fundamental research are, proportionally speaking, actually quite small. The 100 billion euros for Horizon Europe sounds like a lot, but that spans over seven years (2021 to 2027), and if it's funding a crapton of all kinds of research, there are also almost certainly going to be lots of results that are going to be useful. And, granted, also lots of ones that won't be, at least not directly. But even the vast majority of the useful ones are going to fly under the radar for just about everyone outside of the particular field so it's easy to not be aware of them (see also points 1 and 2).

The EU has a population of ~450 million. The 100B euros over 7 years means the costs are ~225 euros per EU resident in total, or ~32 euros per year. I'm almost certainly paying more than the average EU resident, so let's say I'm paying 70 euros per year for the whole deal.

I don't really have a huge problem with that. If it were for some kind of a small or narrow range of projects, I might. But it's not.

There is, of course, the possibility that he was being sarcastic.

Yeah, I suppose, but "EU throws tax payer money in the sea" and "EU stifles innovation with regulation" are so common sentiments around these parts that I'm unsure if it's sarcasm or not, 50/50 at this point.

I wasn't.

With the prevalence of uniformed opinions about the EU and how it works on HN, that is a long shot (or big reach as the kids say).

I think projects this magnitude are not good, with a 100B euro pricetag that will be diluted into paying for bureaucracy and conferences. It's good that it's keeping people busy though, can't criticise that.

Just so others get a sense of the scale involved here:

Currently the portal (CORDIS) has 13674 projects listed as part of Horizon Europe[0]. 100B eur would on average be ~73K EUR per project.

While Horizon Europe itself is a huge project, the projects funded from it isn't always huge projects but sometimes small, incremental steps towards something, and sometimes larger projects.

But with a perspective on how many projects are within the framework, 100B doesn't sound so much anymore.

- [0] https://cordis.europa.eu/search?q=contenttype%3D%27project%2...

You think 100B doesn't sound much? Do you want to up the numbers to 200B instead? I mean after all it's Cancer research

> You think 100B doesn't sound much?

I think "~73K EUR per project" doesn't sound much, and I'd happily pay more taxes if I could be sure research would receive more of my taxes.

I mean look at this project, https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101183057 "A digital twin of human milk". Sounds like a homerun right? I'd say 80% of the projects are just filled with buzzwords to get funding, and they rarely produce any good outcomes

> rarely produce any good outcomes

That's the nature of research.

> The research and innovation program, named GALATEA, stands as a pioneering venture targeting infant nutrition through the development of a digital twin of human milk.

> The overarching objective is to create a sophisticated simulation platform that mirrors the intricate composition of human milk, allowing for the formulation of personalized nutrition plans for infants, particularly those born prematurely.

> Anticipated outcomes include enhanced health outcomes for newborns, a deeper understanding of human milk for the advancement of artificial milk formulations, and the establishment of a robust research community dedicated to neonatal nutrition.

I mean, the ideal outcomes sound pretty good. And the non-ideal outcome is we learnt about a bunch of stuff that doesn't work, that's how research works after all.

What, exactly, is your critique about that particular research? That they call it a "digital twin", or what?

I don't see any buzzwords there; simulation is an indispensable tool modern for biochemistry.

If you stopped reading at the (admittedly daft) acronym, it's worth keeping in mind that, outside computer circles, 'digital twin' now refers to any kind of simulation or tracking of a physical resource. This is not some nebulous proposal for a blockchain NFT of human milk, it's genuine scientific research.

It's not a monolithic project, it's a funding pool where an organisation can apply for access. It's not even limited to EU member states, the UK has returned as a partner after the Conservative party got their panties in a twist about it during Brexit.

And latest news is that Canada also joined up :)

> Canada is joining the growing group of non-EU countries who have associated to the EU's research and innovation programme, Horizon Europe, and will work jointly on large-scale projects tackling our biggest challenges.

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_24_...

The more the merrier!

In the US we spend 10x that on military expenditures that have marginal benefit to our own society.

I think the EU model is preferable.

Horizon Europe funds many of the research projects my organisation works on, such as cancer research, COVID-19 and general microbiology research...

Do you mind sharing this?

The EU is the world's main source of and main destination for foreign direct investment (FDI). Inward and outward FDI play a fundamental role for generating sustainable economic growth, business opportunities, employment, technological development and innovation.

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