<< 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.

The overall objective of CopHub.AC is to create a knowledge and innovation hub with several nodes (secretariat, research briefs, knowledge landscape, outreach, sustainability) to focus and link ongoing R&D activities in Copernicus-relevant academic fields, and to sustain the innovation process from academia to businesses on the highest possible scientific and technical level, with a clear commitment to a full thematic and geographic coverage for a Europe-wide boost in space uptake. The CopHub.AC consortium led by PLUS / Z_GIS will provide the following objectives: i) foster the enlargement of the Copernicus Academy ecosystem through a well-orchestrated set of tools and structures; ii) reinforce the R&I capacities of Copernicus Academies and channel their outputs within an improved format of research briefs; iii) inform industry, educational networks, authorities and the citizen about Copernicus and its societal benefits. iv) promote capacity building of and connectivity with the Copernicus Relays Network; v) promote the long-term impact and sustainability of the Copernicus Academy network through the establishment of a secretariat, a monitoring process and a forward looking roadmap. A duration of 24 months is envisaged. During the second year, the EC will be provided with recommendations for the continuation of the activities under long-term funding.

Higher education institutions aim to prepare students to succeed in the labor market. Professional life requires professionals to excel in collaborative and communication skills at an international, cross-cultural environment. Thus, international exposure during studies, having a significant impact on personal and inter-personal development of students, plays a key role in promoting students employability.Innovative teaching paradigms are required in order to develop soft skills and facilitate international contact to higher education students within the available timespan and resources without demanding for costly curricula revisions. Blended mobility overcomes typical barriers to mobility thus allowing students to take advantage of the benefits of mobility and international exposure despite these barriers. However, blended mobility is hardly used and barely recognized as a serious alternative with great potential to overcome the common barriers to international mobility.Blended-AIM raises awareness to the added value of blended mobility with regards to its potential to overcome barriers to international mobility and provides the information and the tools to facilitate its implementation in HEI and companies. Blended-AIM aims to the sustainable promotion of students’ employability by means of blended mobility. The specific objectives of Blended-AIM are grouped in structural and pedagogical objectives.Structural objectives:• Settle the European foundation for blended mobility• Foster internationalization of education• Deploy, test and disseminate a blended mobility project course unit combining best practicesPedagogical objectives:• Promote students’ employability through non-formal learning not requiring curricula changes• Promote international experience of undergraduate students• Boost the provision of professional skills, support collaborative learning and critical thinkingThe partnership that implemented Blended-AIM and continues developing blended mobility in higher education is growing since 2015 when the project started. The original consortium includes 10 full partners, including 8 HEI, one association operating in the field of Geographical Information Systems, grouping organizations from more than 20 European countries, and the European Association of Erasmus Coordinators, a reputable partner in the European Higher Education Area, with nearly 200 associates.During the last 3 years, the Blended-AIM concept attracted several stakeholders in Europe and abroad. We have enlarged the partnership with four companies, coming from Germany, Italy and Belgium and three universities, coming from Portugal, Slovenia and Iraq.The core activities of Blended-AIM are related to the three pilot course editions that were held in the academic years between 2015/16 and 2017/18 (IO4 to IO6). These pilot editions provided inputs to improve the initial drafts of the blended mobility student kit (IO1) and a course guide (IO3) specifying a set of rules and guidelines for the implementation of project course units following the Blended-AIM paradigm. Another key activity with regards to raising awareness to blended mobility was the development of a Wikipedia entry on blended mobility in the partners’ languages (IO7). All these, built on top of a preliminary analysis of the current state of the art of blended mobility in Europe (IO2).Each pilot course edition includes two training sessions were the students are introduced to multicultural teamwork, work organization, online groupware tools, agile methodologies for system development and pitching ideas.A significant number of dissemination activities were promoted by all partners. As a direct consequence of the dissemination efforts taken during the project, in the last edition of the pilot course funded by the project we had more offers from companies than those we could cope with. There are several companies supporting the continuation of the Blended-AIM course. We are running the 2018/19 edition with 18 students and two companies that we had to select from nearly 10 offers. Also the universities are interested in the continuation of this course unit at their own expenses. In the 2018/19 course edition we have 19 students from 8 universities organized in two teams to develop two solutions for two companies. This is the most significant and rewarding impact we have achieved. The Blended-AIM proved to be a valuable approach for all direct stakeholders (students, companies, universities) and the sustainability is assured due to its intrinsic added value.Companies see Blended-AIM as an innovative, effective and valuable approach, particularly in developing and testing proof of concept. We are driving Blended-AIM to be recognized in the long term as an option to develop proof of concept, mainly for SME; a way for SME to have access to R&D through the cooperation with a multidisciplinary team of higher education students and their supervisors.

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.