Conference Proceedings: Strategy Report of CEOS

Survey of CEOS Agencies Education & Training Activities

Questionnaire responses were received from 17 CEOS agencies - ASI, BNSC, CNES, ISRO, ISPRS, INPE, NASA, NOAA, DLR, CSA, CCRS, EUMETSAT, WMO, UN-OOSA, UN-ESCAP, NSC and CRI. WGEdu is encouraged with the over-whelming response and is assured of committed support from other agencies - NASDA, CSIRO, CNES and ESA. The WG is also sure that other CEOS agencies also support the activities in the fullest manner and will endorse the report submitted.

Annexure-VI

CEOS Agencies and EO Education & Training: Almost all agencies have reported of EO education and training activities being carried out by their agencies. While much of these CEOS agency efforts are confined mainly to varying levels of national programmes at school-level, college/university-level and professional level, many CEOS agencies also support international effort of EO education and training - especially through UN initiatives. Inter-governmental agencies (Iike WMO, ESCAP, ISPRS) also have active programmes of training professionals - noteworthy of these are the WMO efforts in Meteorology (there could be many similar ones other than those mentioned). In short, EO education and training is an on-going activity in most CEOS agencies and thus CEOS efforts must build or provide an over-arching framework on these efforts.

EO benefits Society - Continuous need for E/T: All CEOS agencies agree that EO has immense societal benefits - specially for natural resources management, disaster management support, climate and weather predictions, understanding global processes etc. There is unanimity that the societal interface and outreach of benefits requires a continuous process of education and Training efforts (this can never seen to be "totally accomplished"). With technology trends in EO rapidly changing, the need for re-training and re-orientation also assumes increasing importance. The requirement is specifically highlighted as very essential for Developing Countries - so as to build their capabilities in the field of EO and generate a critical mass. From the responses received, an estimate is made of the total training requirements to be of the order of 25-50,000 every year in different fields. CEOS could consider the EO E/T action plan - specifically targeted to Society and in particular Developing Countries.
Distinction between Education and Training: Education can be seen a tool in the field of public outreach. The target audience in this case consists of school children of all ages, teachers, non-expert university students not necessarily in the field of remote sensing and, last not least, the broad public. The knowledge to transfer to this audience is not expert-knowledge, but concentrates on the more general usability of remote sensing technology, new methods and applications and its intention is mainly to enhance the awareness of remote sensing possibilities. The Internet will play an increasingly important role for the distribution of information, public outreach and for the dissemination of data sets suitable for education. Training focuses on the professional community rather then the public. The target audience consists of the potential professional users of remote sensing and GIS technologies, as they are addressed by professional training centers. The courses advertised are long-term, high level training courses which also include practical work on realistic projects. Mainly the focus of EO education and training needs to both education and training and targets of school students (as knowledge diffusion activity); university/college (as foundation programmes) and professionals (as HR base development) - the focus for each has to be different.

Resources for E/T activities. Most CEOS agencies have ear-marked budget for E/T activities - varying from 0.1% to 5% of total space agency budget. Further, all space agencies seem to have dedicated groups to address the E/T activities. Thus, CEOS agencies have an institutional framework within their agencies that support E/T activities. Majority of the responses indicate that private sector is encouraged and contracted to develop materials for E/T activities and thus a good civilian-private interaction exists already. EO E/T activities offer considerable scope for private sector participation and CEOS could consider promoting this as part of its Industry interface (through ISPRS).

EO Educational material. WGEdu envisages that, in a collective sense, large amount of E/T materials have already been generated by many of the agencies. These materials vary from books, lecture material, multi-media materials, CD-ROMs, Databases, Exercise books, maps, image atlases etc. Notable are the materials generated by CSA/CCRS, NOAA/NASA, DLR, ISRO, WMO, Eumetsat, INPE and others). Almost all the agencies have indicated that they would share these materials and make it accessible to other institutions. CEOS could consider modalities for such an "exchange counter" mechanism and enable a forum for agencies to share.

EO Data. Many CEOS agencies operate their own missions and thus have access to a repository of EO images of the world. EO data is a major resource for E/T and ensuring availability of the variety of EO datasets (today, we have SPOT, Landsat, ERS, IRS, Radarsat, TRMM, Meteosat, NOAA, DMSP, Terra, IKONOS and many other missions) of different parts of the globe would enable assured outreach of the technology/potentials through user-scholars. Most agencies offer to make available limited numbers of datasets (in certain cases larger numbers) for E/T activities. This would also enable generation of case studies of different areas and themes - which would provide the CEOS agencies a focus for developing operational (or even commercial) solutions subsequently. 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.