About EO4GEO 2022-11-22T13:18:34+00:00

The EO4GEO project

An innovative strategy for skills development and capacity building in the EO/GI field

EO4GEO (January 2018 – June 2022) was an Erasmus+ Sector Skills Alliance gathering 25 partners from 13 EU countries, most of which are part of the Copernicus Academy Network. Be they from academia, public or private sector, they are all active in the education and training fields of the space / geospatial sectors.

Technological progress and globalisation offer tremendous opportunities for innovation, job creation and growth. This also requires people to acquire new skills in order to drive and support change.

But which skills are they, and how can we build and shape the workforce of the future? This is where EO4GEO steps in.

EO4GEO aimed to bridge the skills gap between the supply and demand of education and training in the space/geospatial sectors, fostering the uptake and integration of space/geospatial data and services in a broad range of application domains.

EO4GEO worked in a multi and interdisciplinary way and apply innovative solutions for its education and training actions: case-based and collaborative learning scenarios; learning-while-doing in a living lab environment; on-the-job training and co-creation of knowledge, skills and competencies.

The project started on January 1st, 2018 and ended in June 2022, closely collaborating with DG DEFIS (Copernicus) and DG EMPLOYMENT to reach its strategic objectives.

THE PROJECT

WHO WE ARE

EO4GEO was an Erasmus+ Sector Skills Alliance gathering 26 partners from 12 countries from academia, private and public sector active in the education/training and space/geospatial sectors.

WHY EO4GEO

The space/geospatial sector is of strategic importance since it already provides support to many European, national and sub-national policy domains. However, data and services are still used in a sub-optimal way. Especially the uptake of existing data and services and their integration in added value services for government, business and citizens could be improved a lot.

Several studies have revealed that the lack of specialized technical and scientific skills impedes this uptake by private companies and other actors. Moreover there is also a gap between the offerings of academic and of vocational education and training at both universities and private companies, and what is needed to make this uptake happen fluently.

MISSION & VISION

The VISION of the Sector Skills Strategy is to foster the growth of the European EO/GI sector ensuring a workforce with the right skills, in the right place, at the right time.

The MISSION of the Sector Skills Strategy is to ensure the strategic cooperation among stakeholders on skills development in the EO/GI sector (Sector Skills Alliance).

OBJECTIVES

EO4GEO aimed to help bridging the skills gap in the space/geospatial sector by creating a strong alliance of players from the sector/community.

Our main objective was to reinforce the existing EO/GI training and education ecosystem and fostering the uptake and integration of space/geospatial data and services in end-user applications.

STRATEGY

EO4GEO defined a long-term and sustainable strategy to fill the gap between supply of and demand for space/geospatial education and training taking into account the current and expected technological and non-technological developments in the space/geospatial and related sectors.

EO4GEO worked 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.

TANGIBLE OUTCOMES

  • Creation and maintenance of an ontology-based Body of Knowledge for the space/geospatial sector based on previous efforts.
  • Design and development of a series of curricula and a rich portfolio of training modules directly usable in the context of Copernicus and other relevant programmes.
  • Development of a dynamic collaborative platform with associated open tools.
  • Conduct a series of training actions for a selected set of scenario’s in three sub-sectors – integrated applications, smart cities and climate change to test and validate the approach.

Fostering Copernicus user uptake

Copernicus, Europe’s ambitious Earth Observation programme, is a huge leap forward in terms of technological progress. Its entry in the stage of operability is enabling the production of a huge wealth of data: With six Copernicus Sentinel satellites in orbit, the Contributing missions and in situ sensors, over 12 TB of Earth Observation (EO) data is available every day. With more Sentinels to come and the launch of 5 DIAS platforms to allow an easier access to Copernicus data, we can expect impacts in terms of innovation, growth and jobs.

Technological progress and globalisation offer tremendous opportunities for innovation, growth and jobs. However, these developments require specific skills for people who are able to drive and support change. The EO4GEO Sector Skills Alliance aims at supporting the use of Copernicus data and services and unleash the programme full potential in terms of benefits for the EU economy and for its citizens.

“The collaboration between the public and private sectors on the one hand (demand) as well as the education system on the other (offer) is a key enabler of the mutual recognition of professional qualifications in the sector. The EO4GEO objectives align with the spirit of the Copernicus programme as it puts users in the driver seat.”

Emanuele Barreca, Copernicus skills programme responsible. DG GROW.

“The cooperation resulting from EO4GEO should lead to gathering skills intelligence on the sector, to translating the sectoral growth strategy into a sectoral skills strategy, to developing European ‘core’ occupational profiles and related curricula, and to promoting relevant sectoral qualifications and certifications and their recognition.”

Felix Rohn, Policy Officer. DG EMPLOYMENT.

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