EO4GEO – building space / geospatial skills alliance

On the 16th of January, 26 academic, private and public organisations from 16 countries (including Latvia) will kick-off the EO4GEO project aiming to bridge the skills gap between supply and demand of education and training in the space / geospatial sector. 

Most of the project partners are members of the Copernicus Academy Network. The Institute for Environmental Solutions (IES) that is also a member of Copernicus Academy Network is the project coordinator from Latvia. During the project, IES will cooperate with the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Latvia, an associated partner of the EO4GEO. IES sees the project as a big opportunity for Latvia to develop innovative sustainable approach for space and geospatial education and training of the international quality.

During the four-year period, the project team demands to reinforce the existing academic and training ecosystem, foster the uptake and integration of space / geospatial data and services in end-user applications. EO4GEO will work in an multi- and interdisciplinary way and apply innovative solutions for its education and training actions including: case based and collaborative learning scenarios; learning while doing in a living lab environment; on the job training; the co-creation of knowledge, skills and competencies; etc.

EO4GEO will define a long-term and sustainable strategy to fill the gap between supply and demand for space / geospatial education and training taking into account the current and expected technological and non-technological development in the space / geospatial and related sectors (e.g. ICT). The strategy will be implemented by. Creating and maintaining an ontology – based Body of Knowledge for the space / geospatial sector based on previous efforts; developing and integrating a dynamic collaborative platform with associated tools; designing and developing a series of curricula and a rich portfolio of training modules directly usable in the context of Copernicus and other relevant programmes and conducting series of training actions for selected set of scenario’s in three sub-sectors – integrated applications, smart cities and climate change to test and validate the approach. Finally, a long-term Action Plan will be developed and endorsed to roll-out and sustain the proposed solutions.

The main coordinator of EO4GEO (Towards and innovative strategy for skills development and capacity building in the space geo-information sector supporting Copernicus user uptake) is Geographical Information Systems International Group (GISIG) and financially supported by the EU Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA) as a part of the Erasmus+ programme.