To increase the Baltic region’s high-ranking public and private decision-maker comprehension of EO opportunities through political, operational, economic and environmental benefits, the Institute for Environmental Solutions (IES) will develop new training program and will organize two pilot training sessions for high-ranking decision-makers in Latvia and Baltic states.
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Copernicus as one of the most ambitious Earth Observation (EO) systems in the world is a powerful instrument to help monitor the environment and to support its protection, sustainable use, and public safety. Copernicus has created EO Sentinel satellites’ fleet which provide high-resolution optical and radar data of land, ocean, inland waterways, coastal areas, and marine habitats. Nevertheless, a strong effort is still required to increase awareness among the civil servants, private sector intermediate and end users about the Copernicus programme, its data and information products, the potential enhancements, and economic advantages, and efficiency gains this can bring to their processes and work flows.
In 2017, IES received the status of Copernicus Relay and Copernicus Academy. Since then IES has organized various awareness rising activities (hackathons, workshops, seminars, conferences, etc.) to promote the use of Copernicus data and services among Latvian organizations. IES stresses that knowledgeable and educated public policy leaders and company managers are an important and necessary element to increase the uptake of EO data. Therefore, on the 16th of July IES signed a contract with the European Space Agency for expanding Earth Observation awareness among key decision-makers. In the frame of the contract, IES will implement the following activities: designing and testing of a training curriculum; organizing of two pilot training sessions; development of new training materials; testing of closer engagement and co-creation of new EO application ideas with training participants.
The development EO training program for key-decision makers is a part of the European Space Agency programme’s “Plan for European Cooperating States” project “Expanding Earth Observation Awareness Among Key Decision-Makers (ExpandEO).
Find out more about ExpandEO project here.
