Conference Proceedings: Strategy Report of CEOS

Recommendations to CEOS

WGEdu efforts are not meant to start CEOS actions in EO Education and Training ab-initio but to build or provide an over-arching framework on the already on-going efforts of CEOS agencies and other international agencies.

CEOS could provide 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. Plenary - and specifically bringing about a harmony between WGCALVAL, WGISS and EO Education and training activities could achieve this through institutionalization of WGEdu activities. The concept of International EO Education Workshop was quite successful and CEOS could encourage the conduct of an annual Workshop event to address the coordination issue.

CEOS agencies develop/promote a wide variety of materials and teaching aids and there is need to strengthen educational institutions with these resources. These materials vary from books, lecture material, multi-media materials, CD-ROMs, Databases, Exercise books, maps, image atlases etc. CEOS agencies could consider committing these materials to education/training institutions and also advertise these on CEOS website.

Educational institutions need access to the variety of EO data available from the EO satellites of various CEOS (and non-CEOS) agencies for building applications and enabling scholars to utilize and get familiar with them. CEOS agencies could make "contributions" of EO data to educational institutions and CEOS could bring together E/T institutions and space agencies to ensure diffusion of this resource to the most needy E/T institutions - the forum provided by CEOS could enable this.

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. 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. However, appropriate EO material and data needs to be made available for this. UN-OOSA has offered to host such an initiative for the UN Regional Centres in 2001. This would help the UN Centres (and others, if required) to upgrade their technical programmes and focus on emerging trends and resources. CEOS agencies could support this UN venture in an appropriate manner and WGEdu could coordinate the activities.

CEOS could also work with EO Education and Training institutions and enable education/training programmes in newer areas - Disaster Management Support, Interferometry, Global Change, Photogrammetry, Tropical region applications, Natural Resources Management, Education/Training Technologies, High Resolution Image Analysis techniques, Hyper-spectral Imaging techniques and applications, GIS Ingest and Integrated Modelling, Web-enabled EO techniques and Information Extraction techniques. CEOS agencies and E/T institutions need to work together to address these areas for future 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. Focus needs to be on case studies of relevance to developing countries/least developed countries and technologies that are affordable to most developing countries/least developed countries.

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

CEOS could consider working closely with education institutions, especially the recently established UN regional Centres for Space Science and Technology Education, so as to enable the outreach of EO data/services/tools/experts 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 could enable this interface in collaboration with ISPRS.

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. The best approach seems to be for E/T institutions to directly approach CEOS agencies and work out modalities - considering the positive response of the CEOS agencies.

CEOS WGCALVAL, WGISS and WG-DMS also address issues related to education and training and there is a need to establish a formal mechanism of coordination - either as back-to-back meetings or special dialogue sessions. This is felt essential to be able to bring about a harmony amongst the WGs on this issue.