In Europe it is a fact that human migratory flows are on the rise. This is not free of challenges. People who emigrate to another country are often faced, either because they do not speak the language well enough or because they do not have enough knowledge of the culture of the country or because they are not familiar with the administrative procedures of the country of residence, with problems of health care, isolation, or lack of employment opportunities, difficulties due to a lack of effective communication.

To deal with these challenges from a technological aspect, on 19 and 20 March, at UPF’s Poblenou campus the kick-off meeting of the European project KRISTINA (A Knowledge-Based Information Agent with Social Competence and Human Interaction Capabilities) was held. The project, which lasts three years, belongs to the Leadership in enabling and industrial technologies initiative of the EU Horizon 2020 programme. KRISTINA is coordinated by Leo Wanner, ICREA researcher at the Department of Information and Communication Technologies (DTIC) at UPF and director of the Natural Language Processing Research Group (TALN).

The main goal of the KRISTINA project is to study and develop technologies to help immigrants become socially competent and communicate in the language of the country of residence by means of mobile communication devices. The idea was especially devised so that these people can overcome the language and cultural barriers of the host country, particularly with regard to issues related to basic and health-related information.

The project will mainly involve research into dialogue management, the analysis of oral, facial and gestural communication, and multimodal communication. The validity of the technology developed will be assessed by means of two pilot phases among different user types.

The first pilot case will consist of evaluating the technological agent in two stages; first, the evaluation of natural communication in the elderly population of Turkish origin in a context of geriatrics and dependency, and second, in a group of carers of Polish origin who work with people with dementia in Germany.

The second pilot case will evaluate the information that North African immigrants have on the health care system of their country of residence; specifically those established in the cities of Barcelona and Malaga. The project software will provide information in the user’s native language (in this case Arabic) on crucial topics to their health, such as medical practices at their disposal, sexual and reproductive health, and mental health, among others.

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