  In the new research and innovation (R&I) paradigm, aimed at a transformation
towards more sustainable, inclusive and fair pathways to address societal and
environmental challenges, and at generating new patterns of specialisation and
new trajectories for socioeconomic development, it is essential to provide
monitoring systems and tools to map and understand the contribution of R&I
policies and projects. To address this transformation, we present the RIS3-MCAT
platform, the result of a line of work aimed at exploring the potential of open
data, semantic analysis, and data visualisation, for monitoring
challenge-oriented smart specialisation in Catalonia. RIS3-MCAT is an
interactive platform that facilitates access to R&I project data in formats
that allow for sophisticated analyses of a large volume of texts, enabling the
detailed study of thematic specialisations and challenges beyond classical
classification systems. Its conceptualisation, development framework and use
are presented in this paper.
