Conference Proceedings: Strategy Report of CEOS

Report of International Workshop on EO Education and Training
Dehradun, India, August 9-10, 2000

Indian Institute of Remote Sensing (IIRS), Dehradun, India during August 9-10, 2000, hosted the International EO Education and Training Workshop. The Workshop was organized by CEOS Working Group on Education and Training (WGEdu) and Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and was sponsored by Asian Institute of Technology (AIT); ITC; United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UN-OOSA); CSSTE-AP and IIRS. 41 delegates attended the Workshop from 11 countries. 20 presentations (list attached) and a Panel Discussion on "Road Map for EO education and training activities) were held as part of the Workshop.

Summary of Discussion
Noting the rapidly changing trends of EO technology; varied applications of EO - especially in the developing countries there is a need to focus on capability-building and capacity enhancement (e.g. a broad estimates the numbers to be trained is in thousands annually) amongst users of EO technology;

Recognising the efforts of many space agencies in EO education, training and technology transfer - both at national and international level and also that large amount of training materials and teaching aids have been developed by various space agencies;

Recognising that there are various institutions already undertaking EO education and training - both at the international level and within individual nations and also that these institutions have enabled the outreach of EO technology and applications;

Noting the UN efforts to establish the UN Regional Centres for Space Science and Technology Education and those they have initiated operational education and research programmes; UNISPACE-III recommendations, the recommendation of the Second Ministerial Conference;

Commends the initiative of Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS) to establish a Working Group on Education and Training (WGEdu) and to consider an action plan to support education and training activities;

Realising that EO applications have considerable societal outreach and that education and training efforts mainly rely on government support and resources;

Urges CEOS, United Nations, institutions, national governments and other inter-governmental bodies to consider the following recommendations and address them into their programmes.

Recommendations

Need for an effective coordination mechanism of the EO education and training efforts - where space agencies, institutions offering programmes, other experts could meet annually and exchange experiences and issues related to EO education and training.

Space agencies develop/promote a wide variety of materials and teaching aids and there is need to strengthen educational institutions with these resources. Space agencies could consider committing these materials and also advertise these on CEOS website.

Educational institutions need access to the variety of EO data available from the EO satellites of various space agencies for building applications and enabling scholars to utilize and get familiar with them.

Keeping in tune with the changing technology trends and application needs, educational institutions need to regularly update curricula. It is recognized that "standardization" is not possible but institutions could consider exchanging curricula information - may be in the forum proposed earlier. However, appropriate EO material and data needs to be made available for this.

Institutions and universities to consider tailor-made/customized training programmes for professionals to support application needs. University systems may formalize the educational programmes leading to the award of degrees/diplomas.

Specific education/training programmes are essential to cover the area of Global Change; Disaster Management; Sustainable Development and Earth Processes/System Science - which is an important element for developing countries to assimilate into their national systems. This will require combined support of space agencies, national governments and inter-governmental institutions like IGBP, WCRP, IGOS etc.

The curriculum design should take into consideration the region dependent socio-economic constraints to the adoption of space based technologies at the local level and emphasize on more larger and community awareness of the potential benefits of EO.

Training of trainers is important and institutions need to enable their faculty to acquire additional knowledge and newer skills and this could be integrated with specific training programmes or embedded into research programmes.

Efforts are required for increasing awareness of EO technology and applications in different countries - especially in developing countries and a coordinated programme is essential to address this - at national and international level.

It is essential to make school students aware and knowledgeable of EO technology and applications - requiring easy-to-understand capsules/packages designed for schools.

Enable the emergence of regional hubs of EO education/training by committing support to national / international and the UN regional centres. These centres can effectively enable the outreach of EO data/services/tools to the developing countries in the world.

Encourage national governments to establish and strengthen (if already institutions exist) institutional framework for EO education and training in the country.

Involve private sector for enhancing outreach of EO education and training activities and products.

CEOS agencies have professional experts in the field of EO and some of them could be forwarded to the educational institutions to serve as expert faculty.