Project Summary

As the global community makes the transition from the millennium development goals to sustainable development goals, is turning its attention to the values of Earth Observation (EO) and geospatial information as critical development enablers. Geospatial data have become an essential fuel to boost digital economy and it is more timely than ever to realise that the geospatial industry is on the verge of something special: a data driven world where position is the common factor. EO/ geospatial aims to offer this essential move to create opportunities for the digital economy and this forms the basis for the topic of this proposal.

This project concentrates on Region 3 (Arab state countries). Whilst Arab state HEIs have high gross tertiary enrollment rates they lack to create the appropriate value chain of job openings. It is essential to raise awareness among the students and professionals about the significance of EO/geospatial information, encourage gender equity in this direction and update the relevance of curricula programs outcomes to market needs. The vision of ERODITE is to enhance and promote learning, extension, outreach, activities at the partner HEIs through the creation of geospatially- integrated collaboration. The mission is to develop a plan to make the partner HEIs geospatially- integrated universities where EO/geospatial science, thinking, and visualization are broadly applied across disciplines and are supported through readily accessible and high capacity EO material, training and expertise. The objectives are to develop (i) educational network with Arab state HEIs that will introduce strategies for the development of innovative educational approach for effective EO/geospatial pathways and (ii) an open, collaborative learning environment (EO platform) that will allow access to various thematic and training pathways and create new ones adapted to user groups.