Conference Proceedings: Strategy Report of CEOS

Fellowships and Grants. On a specific query on CEOS agencies providing fellowships for travel/stay for students/trainees or grants to E/T institutions, WGEdu finds a positive approach of most CEOS agencies. It is also evident that many CEOS agencies are already providing for fellowships for national/international institutions. While no agency has given solutions that they would adopt, most of them indicate that this issue could be taken up on request-basis or on a bi-lateral/multi-lateral framework. Provision of direct grants to E/T institutions appears to be a major constraint.

However, the UN initiative of a special voluntary UN fund for addressing the needs of the UN Regional Centres is a positive development arising out of UNISPACE-III and hopefully CEOS agencies would take steps, through their national mechanisms, to support the UN Fund. This would enable the support to the UN Regional Centres that are already doing the outreach activities through 21 months education programmes over the past 5 years (Asia Pacific Centre has already a total of about 250 students trained; Morocco/Nigeria have started programmes last year and Brazil/Mexico propose operational programmes in 2001).

Curriculum Development. Agencies endorse support for a curriculum development initiative for the needy E/T institutions. 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 venture in whatever way they can.

Experts for E/T institutions. Most CEOS agencies indicate their willingness to provide experts to E/T institutions - in fact, many have indicated that they have already done this. However, a constraint seems to be the associated financial aspects and also the mechanism for this to happen. 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.

Areas for special focus on EO E/T programmes. The areas that require special focus for education and training have been listed in all responses. The focus seems to be on - 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.

What Should CEOS be Doing ? On this issue, all responses unanimously stress the need for a CEOS Action Plan for EO Education and Training. The fact seems to be that CEOS must have an enabling role as it has technologists, developers and users in its fold. Most agencies urge that CEOS must not take on duplication of efforts but must take an over-arching role. CEOS could provide a continuous forum as a coordinating or as a "clearing-house" for space agencies, users and E/T institutions to meet and address interfacing and cross-cutting issues.