EDUCATIONAL AND TRAINING EXPERIENCES IN GEOMATICS: TAILORED APPROACHES FOR DIFFERENT AUDIENCE

Abstract

The recent outbreak of geospatial information to a wider audience, represents an inexorable flow made possible by the technological and scientific advances that cannot be opposed. The democratization of Geomatics technologies requires training opportunities with different level of complexity specifically tailored on the target audience and on the final purpose of the digitization process. In this frame, education plays a role of paramount importance, to create in the final users the awareness of the potentials of Geomatics-based technologies and of the quality control over the entire process.This paper outlines the current educational offer concerning the Geomatics Academic discipline in the Italian higher education system, highlighting the lack of dedicated path entirely devoted to the creation of specifically trained figure in this field. The comparison with the International panorama further stresses out this necessity. The purpose of this work is to present different educational approaches by distinguishing between the starting knowledge level of the students/participants and the final aim of the training activities. Three main audiences have been identified: i) experts, who already know some basics of Geomatics to understand the theoretical concepts behind its technologies; ii) intermediate audience, who are interested in learning about Geomatics technologies and methodologies, without any previous or poor education concerning these topics; iii) non-experts, a mix of a wide group of people, with different educations and interests, or without any interest at all.For each group, the multi-year experience concerning educational and training activities for the geomatics-based knowledge transfer in all the multi-level approaches of the GECO Lab (University of Florence) is presented.