Western Balkans Academic Education Evolution and Professional’s Sustainable Training for Spatial Data Infrastructures Erasmus Project

Project Title

Western Balkans Academic Education Evolution and Professional’s Sustainable Training for Spatial Data Infrastructures

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Capacity Building in higher education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2016

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics:

Project Summary

A Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) is a framework to share and re-use spatial data amongst public authorities, private sector and citizens. SDI are based on a series of agreements on technology standards, institutional settings and policies to unlock geospatial resources for a wide range of applications: e.g. environmental monitoring, transportation planning, health care, urban planning, etc. Since they are based on complex and permanently evolving technologies, and require innovative organisational, legal and institutional settings, the academic education related to SDI is challenging. No single university can provide education covering the complete geospatial field, so joint efforts are necessary. Especially since many of the societal challenges are cross-border and cross-policy phenomena. BESTSDI project is based on the results of the EU IPA2010 project “INSPIRATION – Spatial Data Infrastructure in the Western Balkans” (2012-2013) and the project “Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the region of Western Balkan” (IMPULS), being under execution. The BESTSDI project refines and extends these developments in three ways:1) A successful SDI requires an active participation by all national and local governments within a country, its private sector and citizens. This active participation is impossible without appropriate SDI knowledge and skills. Thus, education on SDI must be properly introduced in higher education study programs for future professionals and life-long learning courses for present professionals. 2) An SDI comes to life, if published geospatial data is widely being (re-)used. BESTSDI covers both spatial data provision as well as its (re-)usage. Data (re-)usage scenarios cover requirements arising in the regional priority domains agriculture, forestry and fisheries. 3) All BESTSDI partner countries are either candidate or potential candidate countries of joining the European Union and have the obligation to implement EU Directives and policies.The BESTSDI project has raise knowledge level and awareness on SDI in higher education institutions in Western Balkans region developing SDI curriculum which has been implemented in teaching at all 15 partner institutions. It has provided students with new knowledge and skills to emerging labour market needed to implement EU Directives and policies on national levels. Moreover, it has attuned curricula to equip the students with transversal skills, such as entrepreneurship and general digital skills, improving their ability to work with other people. Through the project 15 SDI labs have been established at the partner universities supporting modern education methods and approaches enabling more than 2.500 student to attend new or modernized courses with SDI content in third year of project lifetime. The BESTDI project has also supported development of methodology and business models for introduction of delivery of the Life-long courses for professionals at the partner universities what has been implemented in third year of project lifetime.The BESTSDI project has also supported project partners to take proactive role u development of national SDI’s in their countries. For this purpose for the first time project partners (academic institutions) delivered for the first time the annual national SDI reports promoting importance of SDI education and stakeholder cooperation. This resulted for partner countries universities in cooperation with several other projects, agreements with the national authorities, new conferences, strengthening regional cooperation and internationalization of universities.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 978166,66 Eur

Project Coordinator

SVEUCILISTE U ZAGREBU & Country: HR

Project Partners

• HOCHSCHULE BOCHUM
• UNIVERSITETI POLITEKNIK I TIRANES
• UNIVERSITETI BUJQESOR I TIRANES
• UNIVERZITET U BANJOJ LUCI
• UNIVERSITY OF MOSTAR
• UNIVERZITET U SARAJEVU
• JAVNA USTANOVA UNIVERZITET U TUZLI UNIVERSITAS STUDIORUM TUZLAENSIS