Date: Tuesday 19 November 2024, 9:00-17:00

Venue: University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Civil and Geodetic Engineering, Jamova cesta 2, Ljubljana, Slovenia

Introduction to the topic

Geospatial skills are essential to meet the challenges of the ecological and digital transition. These refer to common skills for citizens and more specific capacities for industries as well as academic communities. Europe is experiencing serious challenges concerning recruitment and capacity development in the geospatial domain. On the one hand, we see a very high demand for geospatial information experts. On the other hand, we observe that universities and other educational institutions are not being supported at the national level to meet this high demand or support the industry with life-long learning opportunities/capacity development. Moreover, the geospatial sector may seem less attractive to students and less trendy than others. One of the consequences is that the geospatial information industry is underperforming, becoming less innovative, and facing serious staffing shortfalls in the short- to medium-term. This situation is not only a European-wide phenomenon but is being experienced further afield, for example, in North America and Australia.

To address these challenges, EuroSDR, in collaboration with the Faculty of Civil and Geodetic Engineering at the University of Ljubljana and Slovenian Surveying and Mapping Authority, will organise a joint workshop focusing on the question of how to achieve a better match between this high demand for, and a rather poor supply of geospatial professionals. The main objective of the event is to have a better understanding of the current recruitment and capacity development challenges in the geospatial domain at the European level and to discuss potential solutions to tackle these challenges. 

This one-day event will start with invited presentations, with associated follow-up discussions, dealing with the human capacity building and recruitment challenges across Europe – viewed from both the demand as well as supply side. Through these presentations, we will gain better insights into the issue and identify the key challenges. In turn, these identified key challenges will be discussed in more detail in follow-up break-out sessions. In particular, we would like:

• To discuss how can the geospatial profession be made more attractive to young people;
• To discuss how we can raise the profile of the geospatial profession nationally and internationally;
• To discuss what are the future development trends of higher education in the geospatial domain,
• To look at examples of best-practice life-long learning approaches in the geospatial domain and to explore how these innovations can brought into practice, particularly in the context of national mapping (including geospatial data acquisition and processing, geospatial data infrastructures, and land administration). 

The presentations and break-sessions will be focused on two topics:

• Topic 1: Capacity development challenges in the geospatial domain, including challenges in education to enable and encourage life-long learning, in particular with regard to the needs of NSMAs, industry and public services
• Topic 2: Promotion of the geospatial information domain, including recruitment, student pipeline, and information data tools and services offered by national surveying and mapping agencies (NSMA) and others for education and training

Invitation

We welcome everyone interested in recruitment and capacity development in the geospatial domain across Europe - from demand (such as private companies and public agencies) and/or supply side (such as universities, other higher education institutions and professional bodies), innovations and life-long learning in the context of geospatial information.

The event will be organised in a hybrid form. However, we warmly invite you to join us in Ljubljana since a part of the afternoon discussion and social gathering will only be available for those who will be physically present.

Related to this event, the Slovenian Surveying and Mapping Authority (SMA) will organise a conference on future trends in National Spatial Data Infrastructure the day after (20 November 2024). This may allow you to join both the workshop and the SMA event since a part of the program will also be in English.

For more information, you can contact Anka Lisec (anka.lisec@fgg.uni-lj.si). 

Call for proposals/presentations:

If you would like to present at this workshop, please send your abstract (up to 10,000 characters), including the title of the presentation, to anka.lisec@fgg.uni-lj.si before October 18, 2024. 

Important dates

Deadline for abstract submission:                            October 18, 2024

Notification about the presentation acceptance:   October 24, 2024

Deadline for registration:                                           November 9, 2024

Workshop:                                                                  November 19, 2024

Program Committee

Anka Lisec, Erna Flogie Dolinar, Bénédicte Bucher, Conor Cahalane, Frédéric Cantat, Joep Crompvoets, Claire Ellul, Audrey Martin, Markéta Potůčková, Jantien Stoter and Mateja Urbančič