engleski

Interaction in Geosciences Education and Spatial Data Infrastructure Development – example Western Balkans – Issues, Impact and Projects

Rapid development of GIS application in the last decade highlights two problems in the efficient usage of GIS technologies, entailing the usage of spatial data in general. The first problem was the lack of the concept in organizing the spatial data and the other problem lies in the fact that the subjects and the users didn’t and still do not have enough knowledge about GIS and how to organize spatial data. Development of Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) concept can be understood as a response of society on the first problem, the growing demand for spatial information, respectively growing relevancy of spatial information for everyday’s functioning of states, business and citizens. In Europe frame for development of national and European SDI’s is given by European Union INSPIRE Directive, regardless to fact is some country member of European Union or not. This is also valid for seven countries in the region of Western Balkans, which have joined their efforts to solve the issues and develop their national SDI’s in line with INSPIRE through the execution of number of national and today regional INSPIRATION project. Mentioned activities and projects are also dealing with second problem, the lacking knowledge about GIS, SDI, other modern technologies and managerial skills necessary for NSDI development. But, in the field of education there is no clear guidance, like INSPIRE directive regarding legislative and technical issues, so therefore the differences in approaches are bigger and issues requesting responses and solutions even more visible and critical. Past decade in development of modern government administrations supported with GIS based and SDI organized public spatial information in the region has shown that many issues are relevant for it. Those issues, structured in legislative, technical and educational segment, should be well balanced and interconnected to achieve synergy between them. In the segment of (geosciences) education there are several critical areas which require attention. Promoters of SDI development lack on information about stakeholders and users level of technical and educational preparation and their perception of SDI, stakeholders and users need support and additional education to become able to participate in SDI development, educational institutions need to participate in SDI development to be able to define curricula’s and courses for all SDI involved groups, etc. Dealing with mentioned issues, this paper presents the current situation in the education referring to GIS and IPP, and describes the activities carried out for the purpose of creating the environment that would provide quicker and more efficient implementation of NSDI based on better information given to the subjects and users in the region of Western Balkans with emphasis on Croatia.

education ; SDI ; Western Balkan

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