The Context: Why Bacău County?
The GeoEDUHealth Access - Bacău project is implemented by MEDIA TREND SRL, the only Romanian company selected under the ENHANCE cascade funding call, part of the PoliRuralPlus Horizon Europe programme. The project validates the JackDaw GeoAI platform, developed within the European PoliRuralPlus consortium, in the specific context of Bacău County - a predominantly rural territory in north-eastern Romania facing significant disparities in access to education, healthcare, and road infrastructure.
With approximately 70% of its population living in rural areas, Bacău County is a relevant testing environment for validating a GeoAI solution. Traditional GIS tools have been used to map these disparities, but they require specialist expertise and produce static outputs that are difficult to translate into public-policy recommendations. This second workshop marks the conclusion of the validation of this solution in Bacău County.
From the First Workshop to Consolidated Results
The feedback received during the first workshop, on 27 April 2026, was an integral part of the validation process, not a formality. Based on the observations made by the partner institutions, the MEDIA TREND team continued to integrate and verify local data, correlating information from domains often considered separately: education, healthcare, transport and road infrastructure.
Requests raised at the first workshop were also taken on board - such as including data on the geographical distribution of children with special educational needs, for better-targeted planning of support services, or correlating the school network with the enrolment plan. In parallel, policy-oriented scenarios were presented and the first version of the structured feedback report was prepared. The result was a set of analyses that describe the territorial accessibility of the county's public services far more precisely.
The Validated Results
To ensure the results were credible, the analysis started from the county's real data, not from estimates. In education, the county's entire network was ingested - more than 460 units. In infrastructure, nearly 2,455 kilometres of public roads (national, county, and local), with a density slightly above the national average. In healthcare, a system concentrated in the County Emergency Hospital, which alone serves almost half of the county's population, complemented by the units in Onești, Moinești, Comănești, and Buhuși.
On this data, JackDaw produced answers comparable to the results of classical GIS tools, together with scenario simulations useful for prioritising public investment. The analysis confirmed that the platform produces results consistent with those obtained through classical GIS, while significantly reducing the time and expertise required to generate them.
The Second Validation Workshop
On 29 June 2026, MEDIA TREND organised the second and final validation workshop at the Bacău County Council headquarters. The event brought together approximately 20 participants, with all partner institutions foreseen in the programme present: the European Parliament, the Bacău County Council, the Bacău County School Inspectorate, the Bacău Public Health Directorate, the “Prof. Dr. Eduard Apetrei” Hospital in Buhuși, the “Sf. Gherasim” Clinic in Bacău, “Vasile Alecsandri” University of Bacău, the North-East Regional Development Agency (ADR Nord-Est), the Anghel Saligny Technological High School, the Centre for Inclusive Education No. 1 Bacău, and Ardeoani Secondary School, alongside representatives of the private sector and the media.
After a recap of the project's journey, delivered by project manager Alexandru-Norbert Droiman, General Director Constantin Avrămescu presented the platform's validated results, together with further comparative demonstrations between classical GIS tools and the JackDaw AI agent. The proceedings benefited from the intervention of Member of the European Parliament Dragoș Adrian Benea, Chair of the Committee on Regional Development (REGI) of the European Parliament, who highlighted the role of European cohesion policy in the smart development of regions and the contribution that AI-based tools can make to grounding public investment. Representatives of ADR Nord-Est presented European funding perspectives, while the Bacău County Council highlighted the project's complementarity with the European initiative AI4Citizens, in which the institution is a partner.
Voices of the Participants
“Today we did not validate a piece of software, but the capacity of artificial intelligence to support institutional decision-making. Access to services does not mean only that a school or a hospital exists, but the real time it takes for a citizen to reach it.” — Alexandru-Norbert Droiman, Project Manager, MEDIA TREND SRL
“Classical GIS tools are indisputable, but using platforms such as JackDaw democratises access to local data - there is no longer a need for GIS specialists in every institution that requires such information and tools.” - Constantin Avrămescu, General Director & AI/GIS Expert
“Bacău becomes the first county in Romania where such an artificial intelligence solution has been validated for access to education, healthcare, and road infrastructure. One challenge will be turning the AI agent into a reliable and robust instrument at the disposal of decision-makers in public administration, and extending the solution to other domains, in order to ‘map’ the county in its entirety.” - Dragoș Adrian Benea, Member of the European Parliament (S&D), Chair of the Committee on Regional Development (REGI), European Parliament
“GeoEDUHealth Access and AI4Citizens are two sides of the same vision: one establishes the governance framework for artificial intelligence in public administration, the other puts it into practice. Together, they position Bacău among the administrations that adopt AI coherently, rather than in isolation.” - Silviu Botez, Head of the European Projects Implementation Service, representative of the Bacău County Council
“Each European instrument covers one stage: Horizon Europe validates, Digital Europe deploys, and Interreg replicates. A well-designed project chains them together - and JackDaw, validated in Bacău, can become a transferable use case, carried further into other rural regions of the European Union.” - Andreea-Raluca Leru, Brussels Representation Office, North-East Regional Development Agency (ADR Nord-Est)
What These Results Mean
The workshop confirmed the genuine relevance of the JackDaw platform for public decision-making in a rural Romanian context. Its ability to answer complex spatial questions in natural language, without requiring GIS expertise, was consistently highlighted as the solution's most transformative feature.
Bacău County is the first territory in Romania to pilot this GeoAI solution, and MEDIA TREND is the only Romanian company selected under the ENHANCE call. The project contributes directly to the European Union's priorities in digitalisation, evidence-based policymaking, and the reduction of territorial disparities between urban and rural areas, positioning Bacău County as an emerging hub for data-driven innovation in Eastern Europe.
Next Steps
The feedback collected will be consolidated into a final report and a public-policy report, with concrete recommendations for the Bacău County authorities - a document conceived as a starting point for the county's strategic planning cycle. The County Council and its partners will be invited to endorse these recommendations, to ensure continuity beyond the project period.
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