8-12 May 2017 / Pretoria, South Africa
This symposium is a major international meeting for the remote sensing community and an opportunity to find the focus of the Earth observations from space. This year, it coincided with the recently adopted African Space Policy and Strategy, which is regarded as a big step towards the development of African space science.
The sessions on education, where EUMETSAT was more active, consisted of five presentations of training formulas and courses, followed by questions, most of them on efficiency and accessibility, and on the selection of participants for courses. Several presenters dealt with online formulas, and only EUMETSAT emphasised the importance of classroom sessions for discussion and hands-on-work as an effective combination, in particular after the motivation and interest triggered by the online phase.
The majority of participants came from South Africa, followed by Europe, then a reduced American component. EUMETSAT attended the symposium at the suggestion and invitation of ARSET (applied remote sensing training), a NASA organisation which offers training on the skills to integrate science in decision-making.