<< Background >>Both in the public and private sectors, the construction and geospatial (mapping)l industry is demanding new approaches for urban planning, asset design and management. In order to reduce costs, environmental impact and carbon footprints, an integrated information management based on standards is required. One of the fundamental approaches in this developments is by bringing together BIM and GIS technologies. By connecting the construction and geospatial information management, an increased improvement of the construction processes, asset management, including buildings, roads, and other essential public facilities will be provided. It also helps to create a more sustainable and flexible transportation infrastructure and to create infrastructure investments with a reduced negative social, economic and environmental impact.However, the data integration of these sectors requires high expertise from professionals of both domains. According to surveys within the stakeholders in Sweden, Italy, Spain and Croatia, there is a lack of skilled personnel and VET courses addressing the competencies required to achieve BIM/GIS integration. Existing VET programs across Europe for civil engineers, architects, land surveyors, geographers and other professionals working on the built environment and urban management, usually include courses in BIM or GIS, but not their intersection. As a consequence, professionals of these domains rarely know how to solve problems where a unified approach to BIM and GIS data management and lack the technical skills needed.<< Objectives >>There is a clear need on the labour market for BIM/GIS integration competences. The project’s main objective is to bridge the gap between supply and demand of these skills by increasing the quality of the existing VET offer by developing new courses. The execution of projects using both BIM and GIS data require knowledge about data, operations and processes in both disciplines. To fulfil this need, new learning materials aiming at developing the necessary skills to integrate BIM and GIS will be carefully planned and developed. This material will specify learning outcomes addressing the achievement of knowledge on methods and mechanisms (mostly software tools and data modelling) but also on practical application cases.The expected general impact will be the improvement of quality of the VET programs within the partnership and the possibility of using these courses by other training providers as well.<< Implementation >>The project work will be structured around four main activities and related tasks.In order to create the right skills, materials should meet the needs of different target groups. To be addressed, these needs will be carefully studied during the first phase of the project. The first project activity will therefore investigate the market requirements (in each participating country) in order to specify the desired learning objectives. Analysis of existing materials, surveys to experts and market study analysis techniques will be used in order to define the specifications of the courses to be developed.Another crucial activity to be performed is the adaptation of existing GIS/BIM training materials from the participating VET providers to different languages and national needs. For this, translation activities are foreseen and it is noteworthy also the effort that will be dedicated to the harmonisation of the datasets to be used in the contexts of hands-on exercises.The core activity of the project will be the development of new courses for specific skills and competences, required by the industry. These courses will be used by the training providers to improve the quality of their VET programs. Training materials will be developed fulfilling the requested learning objectives identified in the first project activity and the process of creation these materials will be based on the SCRUM methodology, which is a well-known methodology in collaborative software engineering.The last activity of the project will be based on the assessment and test of the developed courses and related learning outcomes in the context of real training actions conducted by the participating organisation. This activity will assure further developments, updates and improvements of the materials based on real feedback coming from the trainees.<< Results >>New courses will be created and existing materials will be improved by experts in both BIM and GIS following identified requirements. The materials to be developed or adapted will be curated by experts on the domain and will include the latest advancements in both technologies. The courses will contain lectures, videos as well as data sets, assignments, reading suggestions and test questionnaires. By following the courses, we expect that GIS professionals will recognize the importance and understand the capabilities and information structure of BIM, how to harmonize and use this information in their studies and integrate it in their databases. On the other side, by learning how to use GIS data in their workflows, BIM developers and AEC Professionals (Architects, Engineers, and Contractors) will achieve greater understanding and access to valuable information to be accessed, managed, and used for decision-making.The project results will be provided under open licenses. In order to optimize the spread and usage of these results, dissemination actions will specifically address training providers adhering to the open learning paradigm. In addition, the project results will also substantially improve the training offer and capacity within the participating organisations.Another important project result will be the organisation of events addressing other VET providers and also potential employers and trainees in order to present and promote the project results and the importance of GIS/BIM integration. Furthermore, dedicated training events will be organized by the training providers involved in the project in order to test and assess the developed training materials in real training situations.

Human society is facing a number of global challenges (e.g. climate change, population growth and migrations, food and energy security). In an effort to solve those challenges decision makers must rely on spatial data (SD). An efficient use of SD requires that they are well structured and directly available. Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) as frameworks to share and re-use SD by public authorities, private sector and citizens, and Earth Observation (EO) as one of the main sources for SD, are key elements for different application domains. Precondition for a successful use of SD are the relevant knowledge and skills in SDI and EO technologies amongst professionals. This means also that institutions of higher education must have the knowledge and capacities to provide modern education to their students and offer professionals the right VET programmes to raise the overall level of expertise in SDI & EO. The region of Northern Africa (NA) is also exposed to the above mentioned global challenges, but is currently facing a lack of SD and EO use in decision and policy making, which is directly related with the lower level of SDI development and the sub-optimal use of EO data. It is therefore essential that academic institutions in NA countries raise their capacities regarding SDI & EO. The SEED4NA project aims to: 1) develop the required knowledge, skills and competencies on SDI & EO within partner universities; 2) help introducing modern SDI & EO courses in engineering and agriculture/forestry studies; 3) implement supporting VET programmes; 4) help partner universities to support the development of SDI in their country and 5) promote a European approach to SDI & EO. SEED4NA will result in the establishment of capable, well trained pools of experts within academic institutions which will introduce in their turn a modern approach in academic and VET education on SDI & EO in their respective countries, thereby becoming promotors of SDI development and EO use.

EO4GEO – “Towards an innovative strategy for skills development and capacity building in the space geo-information sector supporting Copernicus User Uptake”. EO4GEO is 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. EO4GEO aims to help bridging the skills gap between supply and demand of education and training in the space/geospatial sector by reinforcing the existing ecosystem and fostering 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 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 (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 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. Finally a long-term Action Plan will be developed and endorsed to roll-out and sustain the proposed solutions.

ARinfuse targets education and training at Higher Education institutions (HEI) and Vocational Education and Training (VET) in the field of Geoinformatics, with special reference to management and operations of utility underground infrastructures, such as water, sewage, electricity, gas, fiber optics, etc.The project is supporting individuals in acquiring and developing basic skills and key competences within the field of Geoinformatics and utility infrastructure, in order to foster employability. This objective is addressed through the development of new learning modules where Augmented Reality (AR) technologies are merged with Geoinformatics and applied within the utility infrastructure sector. The project also address, to some extent, the VET priority of promoting work-based learning, by introducing case-based learning, where the industry partners specify the requirements based on the needs of the work places.In order to achieve the above objectives and bring about the desired impact ARinfuse partnership delivered the below concrete tangible results:1. Complete set of tailor made holistic educational and training material including 24 (6 of them new) lectures, videos and self-assessment exercises through a state of the art professional educational platform. Available here: https://arinfuse.moodle.school 2. Custom made AR software with trainers and trainee mode and a freely developed 2D & 3D data viewer. Available here: https://www.arinfuse.eu/software/ 3. Datasets and data creation techniques for demo purposes and a free sample data of Nicosia city, Cyprus to try the software https://www.arinfuse.eu/software/ All of the above have been disseminated to target audiences through 6 Multiplier events and 3 training actions receiving positive evaluations from the audience, while at the same time an active communication campaign had been running through the project website and partners’ individual channels. For more information please visit: https://www.arinfuse.eu/

According to current discussion within the community of stakeholders, there is in the Geographic Information (GI) sector a gap between the knowledge currently being offered by the European universities and the knowledge and skills requested by the enterprises and public authorities. This is partly due to a fast technological development but also due to societal changes, for instance the EU INSPIRE directive and the e-government action plans within the member states.giCASES, as a Knowledge Alliance project, aimed to enable and strengthen innovation in GI education and industry and to facilitate the collaborative creation, management and sharing of knowledge.These objectives have been addressed by developing new methods for co-creation of knowledge, where industrial partners and universities jointly developed new case-based learning materials by facilitating the exchange flow and co-creation of this knowledge. The project specifically addressed the Geographic Information (GI) sector.The giCASES method for co-creation of knowledge consists of process patterns, supplementary material and a collaboration platform. A process pattern is here a general description of a business process, which may be slightly modified in a particular case in order to suit the specific conditions better. All case studies are different from each other, but the processes they use to co-create knowledge have many characteristics in common which are captured in giCASES by the concept of business process patterns.giCASES considered the following paradigms:• co-creation of knowledge: the process through which two or more organizations and/or actors interact with each other in a collaborative fashion to generate learning content. • case studies: consisting of a real-world problem, which tackle specific topics and issues and has well-defined scopes, learning outcomes, results, actors and corresponding roles, and is addressed in a learning environment. • case-based (collaborative) learning: the educational approach adopted within the giCASES project, where knowledge is cooperatively produced by all the actors involved in the specific case studies planned. • (case-based) learning/training material: the whole of materials produced and/or used to co-create knowledge. • (case-based) learning/training tools: the solutions and technical tools adopted to store, visualize, reproduce, present or aid the development and exchange of learning/training material as well as the results of the learning process.The specific objectives of the giCASES project have been to improve the quality and relevance of GI courses provided by the University members of the consortium, to facilitate the growth of new knowledge-sharing processes and tools between enterprises and universities.In the approach taken in this project, enterprises and academia collaborated both when creating learning material based on real cases and during the courses. Collaborative web-tools have been identified to support the collaboration and co-creation of knowledge among different stakeholder groups. The new learning material and collaborative teaching have been tested in university settings. The project outcomes are provided under open licenses. In order to optimize the spread and usage of the project results, dissemination actions have been specifically addressed to external universities adhering to the open learning paradigm and companies that want to have a close connection to academia. In addition, the project results can also improve the knowledge management within the participating organisations. Questions related to processes for creation of knowledge and knowledge repositories have been placed at a strategic level, also within the enterprise, including Public Authorities with the possibility to enlarge their vision and perspective in the Academic context and in the European level.